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Avon, former county, England

(Encyclopedia)Avon, former county, SW England, bordering the Severn estuary and the Bristol Channel. Created in 1974 from S Gloucestershire, Bristol, and N Somerset. it was dissolved in 1996 into four unitary autho...

rummy

(Encyclopedia)rummy, card game played by two to six players with a standard deck. The cards usually rank from king down through ace. Seven cards are dealt to each player in the three- or four-hand game, one card is...

Kimberley, geographical area, Australia

(Encyclopedia)Kimberley, geographical area, c.139,000 sq mi (360,010 sq km), Western Australia, NW Australia. The Kimberley Goldfield was the site (1882) of the first major Western Australian gold strike. Cattle an...

Houston, University of

(Encyclopedia)Houston, University of, at Houston, Tex.; coeducational; est. 1927 as a junior college, became a four-year institution in 1934, became a state-supported university in 1963. Campuses at Clear Lake, Vic...

Pandharpur

(Encyclopedia)Pandharpur pŭnˈdərpo͝or [key], town (1991 pop. 79,902), Maharashtra state, W India, on the Bhima River. Many Hindu pilgrims attend the festivals held four times a year at the temple of Vishnu. ...

Dunbar, Paul Laurence

(Encyclopedia)Dunbar, Paul Laurence dŭnˈbär [key], 1872–1906, American poet and novelist, b. Dayton, Ohio. The son of former slaves, he won recognition with his Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896)—a collection of po...

exclusion principle

(Encyclopedia)exclusion principle, physical principle enunciated by Wolfgang Pauli in 1925 stating that no two electrons in an atom can occupy the same energy state simultaneously. The energy states, or levels, in ...

parathyroid glands

(Encyclopedia)parathyroid glands pârˌəthīˈroid [key], four small endocrine bodies, located behind the thyroid gland, that govern calcium and phosphorus metabolism. These four masses of tissue (each about the s...

Schnittke, Alfred

(Encyclopedia)Schnittke, Alfred, 1924–98, Russian composer. He studied music in Vienna (1946–48) and at the Moscow Conservatory (1953–58), where he later (1962–72) taught instrumentation. Thereafter, he ear...

internal-combustion engine

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Internal-combustion engines: In the four-stroke reciprocating engine (above), a mixture of fuel and air is taken into the chamber on the down-stroke of the piston, is compressed on the up-strok...