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Ghent

(Encyclopedia)Ghent gĕnt [key], Du. Gent, Fr. Gand, city, capital of East Flanders prov., W Belgium, at th...

poet laureate

(Encyclopedia)poet laureate lôˈrēĭt [key], title conferred in Britain by the monarch on a poet whose duty it is to write commemorative odes and verse. It is an outgrowth of the medieval English custom of having...

diamond

(Encyclopedia)diamond, mineral, one of two crystalline forms of the element carbon (see allotropy), the hardest natural substance known, used as a gem and in industry. The discoveries of 1870–71 in South Africa...

Ford, Henry

(Encyclopedia)Ford, Henry, 1863–1947, American industrialist, pioneer automobile manufacturer, b. Dearborn, Mich. Henry Ford's son, Edsel Bryant Ford, 1893–1943, b. Detroit, shared in the control of the vast ...

Shanghai

(Encyclopedia)Shanghai shăngˈhīˈ, shängˈhīˈ [key], city and municipality (2010 pop. 23,019,148), in, but independent of, Jiangsu prov., E China, on the Huangpu (Whangpoo) River where it flows into the Chang...

Saint Petersburg, city, Russia

(Encyclopedia)Saint Petersburg, formerly Leningrad, Rus. Sankt-Peterburg, city (1990 est. pop. 5,036,000), capital of the Leningrad region (although not administratively part of it) and the administrative center of...

Missouri, state, United States

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Missouri mĭzo͝orˈē, –ə [key], one of the midwestern states of the United States. It is bordered by Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee, across the Mississippi River (E), Arkansas (S), Okla...

Dutch and Flemish literature

(Encyclopedia)Dutch and Flemish literature, literary works written in the standard language of the Low Countries since the Middle Ages. It is conventional to use the term Dutch when referring to the language spoken...

Swedish literature

(Encyclopedia)Swedish literature, literary works in the Swedish language. In the early 20th cent. the fiction of Hjalmar Söderberg presaged a renewed emphasis on restraint and realism. Ludvig Nordström, Gust...

geology

(Encyclopedia)geology, science of the earth's history, composition, and structure, and the associated processes. It draws upon chemistry, biology, physics, astronomy, and mathematics (notably statistics) for suppor...