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O'Neal, Shaquille

(Encyclopedia)O'Neal, Shaquille (Shaquille Rashaun O'Neal) shəkēlˈ rəshônˈ ōnēlˈ [key], 1972–, American basketball player, b. Newark, N.J. Joining the Orlando Magic of the National Basketball Association...

spinet

(Encyclopedia)spinet, musical instrument of the harpsichord family. Although the terms virginal and spinet, interchangeable until the end of the 17th cent., were sometimes used indiscriminately to designate any har...

Verga, Giovanni

(Encyclopedia)Verga, Giovanni jōvänˈnē vĕrˈgä [key], 1840–1922, Italian novelist, b. Sicily. He abandoned the study of law for literature and wrote several novels of passion in the style of the French real...

Bates, H. E.

(Encyclopedia)Bates, H. E. (Herbert Ernest Bates), 1905–74, English author, b. Rushden, Northamptonshire. During World War II he served with the Royal Air Force. A good storyteller, Bates had the ability to rende...

Richelieu

(Encyclopedia)Richelieu rĭshˈəlo͞o [key], river, c.75 mi (120 km) long, issuing from the north end of Lake Champlain, near the N.Y.–Que. border, and flowing N across S Que. to the St. Lawrence River at Sorel....

Monod, Jacques

(Encyclopedia)Monod, Jacques zhäk mônōˈ [key], 1910–76, French biologist, educated at the Univ. of Paris (D.Sc., 1941). He was a leader of the French resistance in World War II. He shared the 1965 Nobel Prize...

Greenaway, Kate

(Encyclopedia)Greenaway, Kate, 1846–1901, English illustrator and watercolorist. She is famous for her fanciful, humorous, delicately colored drawings of child life. She influenced children's clothing and the ill...

Solvay process

(Encyclopedia)Solvay process [for Ernest Solvay], commercial process for the manufacture of sodium carbonate (washing soda). Ammonia and carbon dioxide are passed into a saturated sodium chloride solution to form s...

Chadwick, Sir James

(Encyclopedia)Chadwick, Sir James, 1891–1974, English physicist, grad. Manchester Univ., 1908. He worked at Manchester under Ernest Rutherford on radioactivity. He was assistant director of radioactive research i...

Ferdinand, czar of Bulgaria

(Encyclopedia)Ferdinand, 1861–1948, czar of Bulgaria (1908–18), after being ruling prince (1887–1908). A grandnephew of Ernest I of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, he was chosen prince of Bulgaria after the enforced abdic...