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mountain climbing

(Encyclopedia)mountain climbing, the practice of climbing to elevated points for sport, pleasure, or research. Also called mountaineering, it is practiced throughout the world. Many mountain climbing clubs have...

Plymouth Colony

(Encyclopedia)Plymouth Colony, settlement made by the Pilgrims on the coast of Massachusetts in 1620. After several years the colonists could no longer be restrained from settling on the more productive land to t...

Penal Laws

(Encyclopedia)Penal Laws, in English and Irish history, term generally applied to the body of discriminatory and oppressive legislation directed chiefly against Roman Catholics but also against Protestant nonconfor...

acting

(Encyclopedia)acting, the representation of a usually fictional character on stage or in films. At its highest levels of accomplishment acting involves the employment of technique and/or an imaginative ...

Roses, Wars of the

(Encyclopedia)Roses, Wars of the, traditional name given to the intermittent struggle (1455–85) for the throne of England between the noble houses of York (whose badge was a white rose) and Lancaster (later assoc...

Reagan, Ronald Wilson

(Encyclopedia)Reagan, Ronald Wilson rāˈgən [key], 1911–2004, 40th president of the United States (1981–89), b. Tampico, Ill. In 1932, after graduation from Eureka College, he became a radio announcer and spo...

Virginia, state, United States

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Virginia, state of the S Middle-Atlantic United States. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean (E), North Carolina and Tennessee (S), Kentucky and West Virginia (W), and Maryland and the District...

Maine, state, United States

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Maine, largest of the New England states of the NE United States. It is bordered by New Hampshire (W), the Canadian provinces of Quebec (NW) and New Brunswick (NE), the Bay of Fundy (E), and th...

Antarctica

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Antarctica ăntärkˈtĭkə, –ärˈtĭkə [key], the fifth largest continent, c.5,500,000 sq mi (14,245,000 sq km), asymmetrically centered on the South Pole and almost entirely within the An...

criticism

(Encyclopedia)criticism, the interpretation and evaluation of literature and the arts. It exists in a variety of literary forms: dialogues (Plato, John Dryden), verse (Horace, Alexander Pope), letters (John Keats),...