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Baird, Spencer Fullerton

(Encyclopedia)Baird, Spencer Fullerton, 1823–87, American zoologist, b. Reading, Pa., grad. Dickinson College, 1840. He was professor of natural history at Dickinson from 1846 to 1850. While at the Smithsonian In...

Szent-Gyorgyi, Albert von

(Encyclopedia)Szent-Gyorgyi, Albert von älˈbĕrt fən sĕntˌ-dyörˈdyĭ [key], 1893–1986, American biochemist, b. Hungary, M.D. Univ. of Budapest, 1917; Ph.D. Cambridge, 1927. After teaching at the universiti...

Johnson, Richard Mentor

(Encyclopedia)Johnson, Richard Mentor, 1780–1850, Vice President of the United States (1837–41), b. Kentucky, on the site of present Louisville. Admitted (1802) to the bar, he became prominent in state politics...

White, Hugh Lawson

(Encyclopedia)White, Hugh Lawson, 1773–1840, American political leader, b. Iredell co., N.C. He moved (1787) to what is now E Tennessee and served in the wars against the Creek and Cherokee. He was (1793) secreta...

Pearl, river, United States

(Encyclopedia)Pearl, river, 485 mi (781 km) long, rising in E Miss. and flowing S to Lake Borgne, an inlet of the Gulf of Mexico; its lower section (116 mi/187 km) forms the Miss.-La. boundary. Above Jackson, Miss....

Port Republic

(Encyclopedia)Port Republic, village, NW Va., on the South Fork of the Shenandoah River. During the Civil War, on June 8–9, 1862, the last battle of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson's successful Shenandoah vall...

roller

(Encyclopedia)roller, common name for brightly colored Old World birds noted for performing somersaults in flight. They include the rollers proper (subfamily Coraciinae) and ground rollers (subfamily Brachypteracii...

Ewell, Richard Stoddert

(Encyclopedia)Ewell, Richard Stoddert, 1817–72, Confederate general, b. Georgetown, D.C., grad. West Point, 1840. Ewell rose rapidly in the Confederate army, becoming a major general by Oct., 1861. In 1862 he fou...

Chancellorsville, battle of

(Encyclopedia)Chancellorsville, battle of, May 2–4, 1863, in the American Civil War. Late in Apr., 1863, Joseph Hooker, commanding the Union Army of the Potomac, moved against Robert E. Lee, whose Army of Norther...

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

(Encyclopedia)Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at Cambridge; coeducational; chartered 1861, opened 1865 in Boston, moved 1916. It has long been recognized as an outstanding technological institute and its Slo...