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Christina

(Encyclopedia)Christina krĭstēˈnə [key], 1626–89, queen of Sweden (1632–54), daughter and successor of Gustavus II. From her father's death (1632) until 1644 she was under a regency headed by Chancellor Axe...

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...

Rommel, Erwin

(Encyclopedia)Rommel, Erwin ĕrˈvēn rômˈəl [key], 1891–1944, German field marshal. He entered the army in 1910 and rose slowly through the ranks. In 1939, Adolf Hitler made him a general. Rommel brilliantly ...

Serra, Richard

(Encyclopedia)Serra, Richard, 1939–, American sculptor, b. San Francisco; grad. Univ. of California, Santa Barbara (B.A., 1961), Yale (B.F.A., M.F.A., 1974). Many of his early works (1960s) are cast in rubber or ...

Shaffer, Sir Peter

(Encyclopedia)Shaffer, Sir Peter shăfˈər [key], 1926–2016, English playwright, b. Liverpool, grad. Cambridge, 1950. Before turning to the stage he wrote for radio and television and was the author of several m...

Sand Creek

(Encyclopedia)Sand Creek, Colorado, site of a massacre (1864) of Cheyenne by Col. John M. Chivington and his Colorado Volunteers. The Cheyennes, led by Black Kettle, had offered to make peace and, at the suggestion...

Thomas, Clarence

(Encyclopedia)Thomas, Clarence, 1948–, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1991–), b. Pin Point (Savannah), Ga. Raised in a poor family, he graduated (1974) from the Yale Law School and became a promin...

Thousand and One Nights

(Encyclopedia)Thousand and One Nights or Arabian Nights, series of anonymous stories in Arabic, considered as an entity to be among the classics of world literature. The cohesive plot device concerns the efforts of...

Beckmann, Max

(Encyclopedia)Beckmann, Max mäks bĕkˈmän [key], 1884–1950, German painter. A member of the Berlin secession from 1908 to 1911, he was impressionistic in his early style. A subsequent expressionistic phase was...

rammed earth

(Encyclopedia)rammed earth, material consisting chiefly of soil of sufficiently stiff consistency that has been placed in forms and pounded down. It has been used for buildings and walls since ancient times and was...