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Babbage, Charles

(Encyclopedia)Babbage, Charles băbˈĭj [key], 1792–1871, English mathematician and inventor. He devoted most of his life and expended much of his private fortune and a government subsidy in an attempt to perfec...

Paine, John Knowles

(Encyclopedia)Paine, John Knowles, 1839–1906, American composer, organist, and educator, b. Portland, Maine, studied in Berlin. In 1862 he began to teach music at Harvard and held (from 1875) the first chair of m...

Béranger, Pierre Jean de

(Encyclopedia)Béranger, Pierre Jean de pyĕr zhäN də bāräNzhāˈ [key], 1780–1857, French lyric poet. He was a protégé of Lucien Bonaparte and a friend of some of the most eminent men of his day. His first...

whirlwind

(Encyclopedia)whirlwind, revolving mass of air resulting from local atmospheric instability, such as that caused by intense heating of the ground by the sun on a hot summer day. Examples of whirlwinds are waterspou...

Bernardine of Siena, Saint

(Encyclopedia)Bernardine of Siena, Saint bûrˈnərdĭn, sēĕnˈə [key], 1380–1444, Italian preacher. He was a Franciscan of the Observant congregation and one of the most effective and most widely known preach...

Tallemant des Réaux, Gédéon

(Encyclopedia)Tallemant des Réaux, Gédéon zhādāôNˈ täləmäNˈ dā rāōˈ [key], 1619–92, French writer. His one great work is a series of brief anecdotal portraits of persons prominent in the Paris of h...

The Dalles Dam

(Encyclopedia)The Dalles Dam, 260 ft (79 m) high and 8,875 ft (2,705 m) long, on the Columbia River between Oregon and Wash., NE of The Dalles, Oreg.; built 1952–57 by the U.S. Corps of Engineers. The dam, a majo...

Sarai

(Encyclopedia)Sarai sərīˈ [key], former city, S European Russia, near present-day Volgograd. Founded in 1241 by Batu Khan, it was (13th–15th cent.) the capital of the Tatar Golden Horde, to which the Russians ...

Sánchez Ferlosio, Rafael

(Encyclopedia)Sánchez Ferlosio, Rafael räfäĕlˈ sänˈchĕth fārlōˈsyō [key], 1927–, Spanish novelist, b. Rome. He has published two novels. Industrias y andanzas de Alfanhuí [the projects and wanderings...

Resende, Garcia de

(Encyclopedia)Resende, Garcia de gərsēˈə də rəzĕnˈdə [key], c.1470–1536, Portuguese poet and chronicler. Resende's Cancioneiro geral (1516) is a compilation of the court poetry of his day, the best of wh...