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Perseus, in Greek mythology

(Encyclopedia)Perseus pûrˈsēəs, –so͝os [key], in Greek mythology, son of Zeus and Danaë. His grandfather, Acrisius, had been warned by an oracle that his grandson would kill him and therefore put Perseus an...

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft

(Encyclopedia)Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1797–1851, English author; daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. In 1814 she fell in love with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, accompanied him abroad, and ...

obelisk

(Encyclopedia)obelisk ŏbˈəlĭsk [key], slender four-sided tapering monument, usually hewn of a single great piece of stone, terminating in a pointed or pyramidal top. Among the ancient Egyptians these monoliths ...

Berenson, Bernard

(Encyclopedia)Berenson, Bernard bĕrˈənsən [key], 1865–1959, American art critic and connoisseur of Italian art, b. Lithuania, grad. Harvard, 1887. An expert and an arbiter of taste, he selected for art collec...

Streep, Meryl

(Encyclopedia)Streep, Meryl, 1949–, American actress, b. Summit, N.J., as Mary Louise Streep. She attended Yale Drama School and appeared in many Broadway and off-Broadway productions during the early 1970s. Movi...

Lucca

(Encyclopedia)Lucca lo͞okˈkä [key], city (1991 pop. 87,100), capital of Lucca prov., Tuscany, N central Italy, near the Ligurian Sea. It is a commercial and industrial center and an agricultural market (olive oi...

city-state

(Encyclopedia)city-state, in ancient Greece, Italy, and Medieval Europe, an independent political unit consisting of a city and surrounding countryside. The first city-states were in Sumer, but they reached their p...

clearing

(Encyclopedia)clearing, in banking, the periodic settling of bankers' claims against each other, for which local banks establish clearinghouse associations. Clearinghouses are said to have existed in Florence by a....

Fermi, Enrico

(Encyclopedia)Fermi, Enrico ĕnrēˈkō fĕrˈmē [key], 1901–54, American physicist, b. Italy. He studied at Pisa, Göttingen, and Leiden, and taught physics at the universities of Florence and Rome. He contribu...