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picnic

(Encyclopedia)picnic, social gathering at which each participant generally brings food to be shared. The Picnic Society was formed in London early in the 19th cent. by a group of fashionable people for purposes of ...

Petty, Sir William

(Encyclopedia)Petty, Sir William, 1623–87, English statistician and physician. He was a founder of the Royal Society and was physician general to the army of Ireland in 1652. Petty's survey of the Irish estates a...

Passy, Frédéric

(Encyclopedia)Passy, Frédéric frādārēkˈ päsēˈ [key], 1822–1912, French economist, winner (1901, with J. H. Dunant) of the first Nobel Peace Prize. He studied law but abandoned it for journalism and the s...

Sabbatarians

(Encyclopedia)Sabbatarians, persons who insist upon strict observance of Sunday as the Sabbath. Societies promoting Sabbatarian objectives include the Lord's Day Alliance of the United States and the Lord's Day Obs...

Salvian

(Encyclopedia)Salvian sălˈvēən [key], fl. 5th cent., Christian writer of Gaul. His Latin name was Salvianus. He was a monk and priest of Lérins (from c.424) and became a renowned preacher and teacher of rhetor...

Beebe, William

(Encyclopedia)Beebe, William (Charles William Beebe) bēˈbē [key], 1877–1962, American ornithologist, explorer, and author, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., B.S. Columbia, 1898. He became (1899) curator of ornithology and la...

Paducah

(Encyclopedia)Paducah pədyo͞oˈkə, –do͞oˈ– [key], city (1990 pop. 27,256), seat of McCracken co., SW Ky., on the Ohio River at the mouth of the Tennessee River; inc. as a city 1856. It is a tobacco market,...

Page, William

(Encyclopedia)Page, William, 1811–85, American historical and portrait painter, b. Albany, N.Y., studied with S. F. B. Morse and at the National Academy of Design. Among his best-known works are Farragut's Triump...

Osborne, Thomas Mott

(Encyclopedia)Osborne, Thomas Mott, 1859–1926, American prison reformer, b. Auburn, N.Y., grad. Harvard, 1884. As chairman (1913) of the state commission on prison reform he became a voluntary prisoner in the Aub...

Vincent, George Edgar

(Encyclopedia)Vincent, George Edgar, 1864–1941, American educator, organizer, and sociologist, b. Rockford, Ill., grad. Yale, 1885, Ph.D. Univ. of Chicago, 1896; son of Bishop John Heyl Vincent. He was associated...