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O'Grady, Standish Hayes

(Encyclopedia)O'Grady, Standish Hayes, 1832–1915, Irish scholar. His great work was the Silva Gadelica (1892), a collection of old Irish tales. He also translated heroic stories from the Gaelic and began a catalo...

Winnebago, Lake

(Encyclopedia)Winnebago, Lake, 215 sq mi (557 sq km), E Wis.; largest lake in Wisconsin. Fed and drained by the Fox River, the lake is part of an all-water route between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. O...

Stassfurt

(Encyclopedia)Stassfurt shtäsˈfo͝ort [key], city (1994 pop. 24,025), Saxony-Anhalt, central Germany. It is a center of one of the world's great potash-mining regions. City manufactures include chemicals, foodstu...

Mahabharata

(Encyclopedia)Mahabharata məhäˌbärˈətə [key], classical Sanskrit epic of India, probably composed between 200 b.c. and a.d. 200. The Mahabharata, comprising more than 90,000 couplets, usually of 32 syllables...

Darius I

(Encyclopedia)Darius I (Darius the Great) dərīˈəs [key], d. 486 b.c., king of ancient Persia (521–486 b.c.), called also Dariavaush and Darius Hystaspis (after his father, Hystaspes or Vishtaspa). A distant c...

Hagia Sophia

(Encyclopedia)Hagia Sophia häˈjə sōfēˈə, hāˈjēə, [key] [Gr.,=Holy Wisdom] or Santa Sophia, Turkish Ayasofya, originally a Christian church at Constantinople (now İstanbul, Turkey) and then a mosque unde...

Schiller, Friedrich von

(Encyclopedia)Schiller, Friedrich von, 1759–1805, German dramatist, poet, and historian, one of the greatest of German literary figures, b. Marbach, Württemberg. The poets of German romanticism were strongly inf...

Novgorod

(Encyclopedia)Novgorod nôvˈgərət [key], city (1989 pop. 229,000), capital of Novgorod region, NW European Russia, on the Volkhov River near the point where it leaves Lake Ilmen. Novgorod's industries produce ch...

Parliament

(Encyclopedia)Parliament, legislative assembly of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Over the centuries it has become more than a legislative body; it is the sovereign power of Great Britain,...

Apraksin, Feodor Matveyevich

(Encyclopedia)Apraksin, Feodor Matveyevich fyôˈdər mətvyāˈəvĭch əpräkˈsyĭn [key], 1671–1728, Russian admiral. He helped Peter I (Peter the Great) create the Russian navy and won several naval battles ...