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peddler

(Encyclopedia)peddler or hawker, itinerant vendor of small goods. In rural America peddlers carried their packs or drove a horse and cart from door to door. While the importance of peddlers to the small American co...

trumpet

(Encyclopedia)trumpet, brass wind musical instrument of part cylindrical, part conical bore, in the shape of a flattened loop and having three piston valves to regulate the pitch. Its origin is ancient; records of ...

Decorated style

(Encyclopedia)Decorated style, name applied to the second period of English Gothic architecture from the late 13th to the mid-14th cent. The basic structural elements developed during the Early English style (late ...

James, Thomas, American fur trader and pioneer

(Encyclopedia)James, Thomas, 1782–1847, American fur trader and pioneer, b. Maryland. He accompanied the 1809 expedition of the Missouri Fur Company up the Missouri River. He left the expedition at the Mandan vil...

Monocacy

(Encyclopedia)Monocacy mənŏkˈəsē [key], river, c.60 mi (100 km) long, rising in S Pa., and flowing S across Md. to join the Potomac River near Frederick, Md. On its banks, just E of Frederick, the Civil War ba...

Baer, Karl Ernst von

(Encyclopedia)Baer, Karl Ernst von, 1792–1876, Estonian biologist. He was a professor at Würzburg and Königsberg and from 1834 at St. Petersburg. Considered a founder of modern embryology, he discovered the not...

Ramusio, Giambattista

(Encyclopedia)Ramusio, Giambattista jämˌbät–tēˈstä rämo͝oˈzyō [key], 1485–1557, Italian editor and compiler, b. Treviso. He served in diplomatic posts for the Venetian state and eventually in the Coun...

Eleusinian Mysteries

(Encyclopedia)Eleusinian Mysteries ĕlyo͞osĭnˈēən [key], principal religious mysteries of ancient Greece. The mysteries may have originated as part of an early agrarian festival peculiar to certain families in...

Commonwealth Fund

(Encyclopedia)Commonwealth Fund, foundation established (1918) by Anna M. Harkness, wife of Stephen V. Harkness, an early Standard Oil investor, “for the welfare of mankind.” Its headquarters are in New York Ci...

Irnerius

(Encyclopedia)Irnerius ûrˌnērˈēəs [key], c.1055–c.1130, Italian jurist and founder of the law school (c.1088) at Bologna, which became the center of legal scholarship in Europe. Though little is known of hi...