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jade

(Encyclopedia)jade, common name for either of two minerals used as gems. The rarer variety of jade is jadeite, a sodium aluminum silicate, NaAl(SiO3)2, usually white or green in color; the green variety is the more...

Smith, Stevie

(Encyclopedia)Smith, Stevie (Margaret Florence Smith), 1902–71, English poet and novelist, b. Hull, Yorkshire. At first unnoticed as a poet, she worked in a London publisher's office until 1953. Steadily gaining ...

Tallmadge, Benjamin

(Encyclopedia)Tallmadge, Benjamin tălˈmĭj [key], 1754–1835, American Revolutionary soldier, b. Brookhaven, N.Y. Joining a Connecticut regiment, he served throughout the Revolution, fighting at Brandywine, Germ...

Carey, Hugh Leo

(Encyclopedia)Carey, Hugh Leo, 1919–2011, American politician, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., grad. St. John's Univ. (1942), St. John's Univ. School of Law (1951). A liberal Democrat, Carey was elected to Congress in 1960 an...

Kahn, Louis Isadore

(Encyclopedia)Kahn, Louis Isadore , kän [key], 1901–74, American architect, b. Estonia. He and his family moved to Philadelphia in 1905, and he later studied at the Univ. of Pennsylvania. From the 1920s through ...

Dick, Philip K.

(Encyclopedia)Dick, Philip K. (Philip Kindred Dick), 1928–82, American science-fiction writer, b. Chicago. Dick often wrote of the psychological states of individuals caught in altered realities where the everyda...

revolution

(Encyclopedia)revolution, in a political sense, fundamental and violent change in the values, political institutions, social structure, leadership, and policies of a society. The totality of change implicit in this...

Burroughs, William Seward

(Encyclopedia)Burroughs, William Seward, 1914–97, American novelist, b. St. Louis, grad. Harvard, 1936, moved to New York City, 1943. He was an elder member of the beat generation. Junkie (1953), originally publi...

Arthur, Chester Alan

(Encyclopedia)Arthur, Chester Alan, 1829–86, 21st President of the United States (1881–85), b. Fairfield, Vt. He studied law and before the Civil War practiced in New York City. In the war he was (1861–63) qu...

Longworth, Alice Lee Roosevelt

(Encyclopedia)Longworth, Alice Lee Roosevelt, 1884–1980, American socialite, b. New York City. The only child of Theodore Roosevelt and his first wife, Alice Hathaway Lee, she was a teenager when her father assum...

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