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Itzamna

(Encyclopedia)Itzamna ētsämˈnä [key], chief deity of the Maya. Son of Hunab Ku, the creator, he was believed to be lord of the heavens, day, and night. Thought by the Maya to have been the inventor of writing a...

Dillenius, Johann Jakob

(Encyclopedia)Dillenius, Johann Jakob dĭlāˈnēəs [key], 1687–1747, English botanist, of German birth. He published catalogs of the plants of Eltham, Kent, and of Geissen, Germany, and a work on mosses that pl...

culminate

(Encyclopedia)culminate, in astronomy, the maximum height in the sky reached by a celestial body on a given day. At the culminate the body is crossing the observer's celestial meridian and is said to be in upper tr...

Constitution of Athens

(Encyclopedia)Constitution of Athens, treatise by Aristotle or a member of his school, written in the late 4th cent. b.c. It was lost until discovered on Egyptian papyrus in 1890. It is a history of the Athenian go...

Charlet, Nicolas Toussaint

(Encyclopedia)Charlet, Nicolas Toussaint nēkôläˈ to͞osăNˈ shärlāˈ [key], 1792–1845, French lithographer and painter. He was famous for his lithographs depicting political and social subjects. Those conc...

Shunem

(Encyclopedia)Shunem sho͞oˈnəm [key], in the Bible, town of Issachar, on the north side of the vale of Jezreel. The adjective Shulamite probably refers to it. It is the present-day Sulam (Israel). ...

Babbitt metal

(Encyclopedia)Babbitt metal, an antifriction metal first produced by Isaac Babbitt in 1839. In present-day usage the term is applied to a whole class of silver-white bearing metals, or “white metals.” These all...

Bijns, Anna

(Encyclopedia)Bijns, Anna äˈnä bīns [key], 1494?–1575?, Flemish poet of Antwerp. Her three volumes (1528, 1548, 1567) of lyric verse place her among the foremost Dutch poets of her age. She excelled in robust...

Celaenae

(Encyclopedia)Celaenae sĭlēˈnē [key], ancient city of Asia Minor, in Phrygia, near the source of the Maeander River, in present-day W central Turkey. In the days of the Persian Empire, Cyrus the Great had a pal...

Holly, Buddy

(Encyclopedia)Holly, Buddy, 1936–59, American rock singer, songwriter, and guitarist, b. Lubbock, Tex., as Charles Hardin Holley. He performed country and western m...