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Guthrie, Samuel

(Encyclopedia)Guthrie, Samuel, 1782–1848, American physician, b. Brimfield, Mass. In Sackets Harbor, N.Y., where he settled after serving as surgeon in the War of 1812, he invented a percussion powder and a punch...

Menger, Carl

(Encyclopedia)Menger, Carl kärl mĕngˈər [key], 1840–1921, Austrian economist, a founder of the Austrian school of economics. He was professor of economics at the Univ. of Vienna from 1873 until 1903, when he ...

Three Emperors' League

(Encyclopedia)Three Emperors' League, informal alliance among Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Russia, announced officially in 1872 on the occasion of the meeting of emperors Francis Joseph, William I, and Alexander I...

Welsbach mantle

(Encyclopedia)Welsbach mantle or Welsbach burner [for C. A. von Welsbach], cylindrical framework of gauze impregnated with oxides of thorium and cerium. When heated in a gas flame, it produces a very bright light b...

Vienna, Congress of

(Encyclopedia)Vienna, Congress of, Sept., 1814–June, 1815, one of the most important international conferences in European history, called to remake Europe after the downfall of Napoleon I. Although the territo...

Swedish literature

(Encyclopedia)Swedish literature, literary works in the Swedish language. In the early 20th cent. the fiction of Hjalmar Söderberg presaged a renewed emphasis on restraint and realism. Ludvig Nordström, Gust...

perestroika

(Encyclopedia)perestroika pərˈĕstroyˈkə [key], Soviet economic and social policy of the late 1980s. Perestroika [restructuring] was the term attached to the attempts (1985–91) by Mikhail Gorbachev to transfo...

Bustamante, Sir Alexander

(Encyclopedia)Bustamante, Sir Alexander bŭsˌtəmănˈtē [key], 1884–1977, prime minister of Jamaica (1962–67). Born William Alexander Clarke, the son of an Irish father and a Jamaican mother, he was adopted...

Voronin, Vladimir

(Encyclopedia)Voronin, Vladimir vlädēˈmēr vōrōnˈyĭn [key], 1941–, Moldovan political leader. Voronin rose through the ranks of the Communist party in what was then the USSR's Moldavian SSR to become the r...

Sturm und Drang

(Encyclopedia)Sturm und Drang shto͝orm o͝ont dräng [key] or Storm and Stress, movement in German literature that flourished from c.1770 to c.1784. It takes its name from a play by F. M. von Klinger, Wirrwarr; od...