(Encyclopedia) Langdon, Harry, 1884–1944, American silent film comedian and director, b. Council Bluffs, Iowa. He repeatedly ran away from home to join traveling shows and circuses as a youngster,…
(Encyclopedia) Bakunin, MikhailBakunin, Mikhailmēkhəyēlˈ bək&oomacr;ˈnyĭn [key], 1814–76, Russian revolutionary and leading exponent of anarchism. He came from an aristocratic family but entered…
(Encyclopedia) Berger, ThomasBerger, Thomasbûrˈgər [key], 1924–2014, American novelist, b. Cincinnati, grad. Univ. of Cincinnati (B.A., 1948). He is known for bitterly comic novels that often deal…
(Encyclopedia) Paleolithic periodPaleolithic periodpāˌlēəlĭthˈĭk, –lēō–, pălˌ– [key] or Old Stone Age, the earliest period of human development and the longest phase of mankind's history. It is…
(Encyclopedia) Gordon, Charles William, pseud. Ralph Connor, 1860–1937, Canadian clergyman and novelist. His popular stories were based on his experience as a Presbyterian missionary in the lumber…
(Encyclopedia) anagram [Gr.,=something read backward], rearrangement of the letters of a word or words to make another word or other words. A famous Latin anagram was an answer made out of a question…
(Encyclopedia) John, Elton Hercules, 1947–, English popular singer, pianist, and composer, b. Reginald Kenneth Dwight. By the mid-1970s he had become famous presenting his own and other composers'…
(Encyclopedia) Madách, ImréMadách, Imréĭmˈrĕ mŏˈdäch [key], 1823–64, Hungarian poet and dramatist. Madách is best known for his dramatic epic, The Tragedy of Man (1861, tr. 1908), which relates the…