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Amesbury, town, England

(Encyclopedia)Amesbury āmzˈbərē [key], town, Wiltshire, S central England. Located on Salisbury plain, the town is among the oldest continuously settled locations in Great Britain. In 980 the widow of King Edga...

Cunningham, Sir Alexander

(Encyclopedia)Cunningham, Sir Alexander, 1814–93, English archaeologist and army engineer; son of Allan Cunningham. He retired (1861) as a major general after 30 years of service with the Bengal engineers and the...

Kenneth II

(Encyclopedia)Kenneth II, d. 995, Scottish king (971–995). The son of Malcolm I (reigned 943–54), he became king of the united Picts and Scots in 971 and immediately led a savage raid on the British in Northumb...

ballad

(Encyclopedia)ballad, in literature and music, short, narrative poem or song usually relating a single, dramatic event. Two forms of the ballad are often distinguished—the folk ballad, dating from about the 12th ...

Hounsfield, Sir Godfrey Newbold

(Encyclopedia)Hounsfield, Sir Godfrey Newbold, 1919–2004, British electrical engineer. A radar expert for the Royal Air Force during World War II, in the 1950s Hounsfield began developing computer and X-ray techn...

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke

(Encyclopedia)Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, case decided in 1978 by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court held in a closely divided decision that race could be one of the factors considered in choos...

Edward the Martyr

(Encyclopedia)Edward the Martyr, c.962–978, king of the English (975–78), son of Edgar by his first wife. Despite the opposition of some of the nobles, Edward succeeded his father to the throne and was crowned....

Tate, Nahum

(Encyclopedia)Tate, Nahum nāˈhəm [key], 1652–1715, English poet and dramatist, b. Dublin. He wrote several popular adaptations of Shakespeare, the most famous being his King Lear (1681), in which he omitted th...

Brown, Charles Brockden

(Encyclopedia)Brown, Charles Brockden, 1771–1810, American novelist and editor, b. Philadelphia, considered the first professional American novelist. After the publication of Alcuin: A Dialogue (1798), he wrote s...

Quiroga, Horacio

(Encyclopedia)Quiroga, Horacio ôräˈsyō kērōˈgä [key], 1878–1937, Uruguayan short-story writer. Quiroga is considered a master of the short story. His work was deeply influenced by Kipling, Poe, Chekhov, a...