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Williams, Sir Bernard

(Encyclopedia)Williams, Sir Bernard (Sir Bernard Arthur Owen Williams), 1929–2003, English philosopher, grad. Oxford (1951). One of the most important philosophers of his era, he is credited with reviving the fie...

wisent

(Encyclopedia)wisent vēˈsənt [key], name for the European bison, Bison bonasus. It is a close relative of the American bison, B. bison. Longer legged and less heavily built than its American cousin, the wisent m...

Zanuck, Darryl Francis

(Encyclopedia)Zanuck, Darryl Francis, 1902–79, American movie producer, b. Wahoo, Nebr. Beginning his Hollywood career as a scriptwriter, he was hired (1924) by Warner Brothers and made a name for himself penning...

Belichick, Bill

(Encyclopedia)Belichick, Bill (William Stephen Belichick), 1952–, American professional football coach, b. Nashville, Tenn. The son of a college coach, he played football at Wesleyan Univ. He held various coachin...

Sahl, Mort

(Encyclopedia) Sahl, Mort, 1927-2021, American comedian and social commentator, b. Montreal, Canada, as Morton Lyon Sahl, Univ. of Southern Calirofnia (B.A., 1950). ...

Canadian Shield

(Encyclopedia)Canadian Shield or Laurentian Plateau lôrĕnˈchən [key], U-shaped region of ancient rock, the nucleus of North America, stretching N from the Great Lakes to the Arctic Ocean. Covering more than hal...

polyphony

(Encyclopedia)polyphony pəlĭfˈənē [key], music whose texture is formed by the interweaving of several melodic lines. The lines are independent but sound together harmonically. Contrasting terms are homophony, ...

Pécs

(Encyclopedia)Pécs pāch [key], Ger. Fünfkirchen, city (1991 est. pop. 170,000), SW Hungary, near the Croatian border. A county administrative seat and a railroad hub, Pécs is the industrial center of Hungary's ...

Bacon, Francis, English painter

(Encyclopedia)Bacon, Francis, 1910–92, English painter, b. Dublin. A self-taught artist, Bacon rejected abstraction in painting to explore a repertoire of strange, fractured, and often bizarre figurative images, ...

Alps

(Encyclopedia)Alps, great mountain system of S central Europe, c.500 mi (800 km) long and c.100 mi (160 km) wide, curving in a great arc from the Riviera coast on the Mediterranean Sea, along the borders of N Italy...