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Bart, Jean

(Encyclopedia)Bart, Jean zhäN bär [key], 1650–1702, French naval hero, b. Dunkirk. Of a seafaring family, he enlisted in the Dutch navy but entered French service as a privateer at the outbreak of the Dutch War...

scarab beetle

(Encyclopedia)scarab beetle or scarab, name for members of a large family of heavy-bodied, oval beetles (the Scarabaeidae), with about 30,000 species distributed throughout most of the world and over 1,200 in North...

Chapman, George

(Encyclopedia)Chapman, George, 1559?–1634, English dramatist, translator, and poet. He is as famous for his plays as for his poetic translations of Homer's Iliad (1612) and Odyssey (1614–15). Chapman was a clas...

Homer

(Encyclopedia)Homer, principal figure of ancient Greek literature; the first European poet. The Odyssey is written in 24 books and begins nearly ten years after the fall of Troy. In the first part, Telemachus, Od...

Church, Sir Richard

(Encyclopedia)Church, Sir Richard, 1784–1873, British army officer. After varied service, he organized a Greek regiment to defend (1812–15) the Ionian Islands, and in 1827 he was made generalissimo of the Greek...

Lascaris, Constantine

(Encyclopedia)Lascaris, Constantine kŏnˈstəntēn lăsˈkərĭs [key], d. 1501?, Greek grammarian. After the fall of Constantinople, Lascaris went to Italy and in Milan obtained the patronage of Francesco Sforza....

Heck, Richard Fred

(Encyclopedia)Heck, Richard Fred, 1931–2015, American chemist, b. Springfield, Mass., Ph.D. Univ. of California, Los Angeles, 1954. Heck was a researcher at the Hercules Corporation in Wilmington, Del., from 1957...

Longinus, c.213–273, Greek rhetorician and philosopher

(Encyclopedia)Longinus (Cassius Longinus), c.213–273, Greek rhetorician and philosopher of the Neoplatonic school. He taught rhetoric at Athens. He later became counselor to Queen Zenobia of Palmyra; when the ant...

Cuchulain

(Encyclopedia)Cuchulain kəho͝olˈən, –ho͞oˈlən [key], Irish legendary hero of Ulster, of prodigious strength and remarkable beauty. He is the central figure of the Ulster legends, the greatest work of which...

Ellsworth, Elmer Ephraim

(Encyclopedia)Ellsworth, Elmer Ephraim, 1837–61, American Civil War hero, b. near Mechanicville, N.Y. Just before the Civil War he became famous for his Zouave company, which toured the North giving exhibition dr...