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Dutch West India Company

(Encyclopedia)Dutch West India Company, trading and colonizing company, chartered by the States-General of the Dutch republic in 1621 and organized in 1623. Through its agency New Netherland was founded. The phenom...

Crazy Horse

(Encyclopedia)Crazy Horse, d. 1877, war chief of the Oglala Sioux. He was a prominent leader in the Sioux resistance to white encroachment in the mineral-rich Black Hills. When Crazy Horse and his people refused to...

Shriver, Robert Sargent

(Encyclopedia)Shriver, Robert Sargent, 1915–2011, U.S. public official, b. Westminster, Md., husband of Eunice Shriver. A lawyer, he served in World War II and was (1945–46) an assistant editor of Newsweek maga...

toxic waste

(Encyclopedia)toxic waste is waste material, often in chemical form, that can cause death or injury to living creatures. It usually is the product of industry or commerce, but comes also from residential use, agric...

Cartier-Bresson, Henri

(Encyclopedia)Cartier-Bresson, Henri äNrēˈ kärtēāˈ-brĕsôNˈ [key], 1908–2004, French photojournalist, b. Chanteloup, near Paris. Cartier-Bresson is renowned for his countless memorable images of 20th-cen...

xenon

(Encyclopedia)xenon zēˈnŏn [key] [Gr.,=strange], gaseous chemical element; symbol Xe; at. no. 54; at. wt. 131.293; m.p. −111.9℃; b.p. −107.1℃; density 5.86 grams per liter at STP; valence usually 0. Xeno...

Tasaday

(Encyclopedia)Tasaday, alleged band of 25 hunter-gatherers living in the Philippine rain forest, purportedly contacted by Westerners for the first time in 1971 in southern Mindanao (Cotabato Province). They reporte...

spiritism

(Encyclopedia)spiritism or spiritualism, belief that the human personality continues to exist after death and can communicate with the living through the agency of a medium or psychic. The advocates of spiritism ar...

Carrera, Rafael

(Encyclopedia)Carrera, Rafael räfäĕlˈ [key], 1814–65, president of Guatemala, a caudillo. He led the revolution against the anticlerical liberal government of Guatemala, and his ultimate success in 1840 helpe...

East Peoria

(Encyclopedia)East Peoria, city (2020 pop. 22,484), Tazewell co., N central Ill., on the Illinois River opposite Peoria; inc. 1919. A rail and warehousing center for ...