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Opie, John

(Encyclopedia)Opie, John, 1761–1807, English portrait and historical painter. Opie showed a remarkable talent as a young man. He became the protégé of the poet John Wolcot, and enjoyed a brief popularity as a f...

Herbert, A. P.

(Encyclopedia)Herbert, A. P. (Sir Alan Patrick Herbert), 1890–1971, English author and member of Parliament. He was a regular contributor to the comic magazine Punch from 1910 until his death. Herbert served in P...

Venezuela Boundary Dispute

(Encyclopedia)Venezuela Boundary Dispute, diplomatic controversy, notable for the tension caused between Great Britain and the United States during much of the 19th cent. Of long standing, the dispute concerned the...

Cowell, Henry Dixon

(Encyclopedia)Cowell, Henry Dixon kouˈəl [key], 1897–1965, American composer and pianist, b. Menlo Park, Calif., largely self-educated, studied musicology in Berlin (1931–32). Cowell experimented with new mus...

Campbell, Mrs. Patrick

(Encyclopedia)Campbell, Mrs. Patrick, 1865–1940, English actress, whose maiden name was Beatrice Stella Tanner. Remembered today for her association with G. B. Shaw, she was an actress of great beauty and wit. Sh...

Thessaly

(Encyclopedia)Thessaly thĕsˈəlē [key], largest ancient region of Greece in N central Greece. It corresponded roughly to the present-day nomes of Larissa and Tríkkala, which form part of the modern region known...

Daryal

(Encyclopedia)Daryal dărēĕlˈ [key], pass, c.3,950 ft (1,204 m) high, N Georgia, in the central Greater Caucasus Mts. below Mt. Kazbek. Situated above the Terek River, it is noted for its wild grandeur. The Geor...

West, Jerry

(Encyclopedia)West, Jerry (Jerome Alan West), 1938–, American basketball player, b. Cheylan, W.Va. One of the game's great shooting guards, he led West Virginia Univ. to the 1959 National Collegiate Athletic Asso...

astronaut

(Encyclopedia)astronaut, crew member on a U.S. manned spaceflight mission; the Soviet term is cosmonaut. Candidates for manned spaceflight are carefully screened to meet the highest physical and mental standards, a...

Turing test

(Encyclopedia)Turing test, a procedure to test whether a computer is capable of humanlike thought. As proposed (1950) by the British mathematician Alan Turing, a person (the interrogator) sits with a teletype machi...