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Raffles, Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley

(Encyclopedia)Raffles, Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley, 1781–1826, British East Indian administrator. He was one of the founders of Britain's empire in East Asia. Beginning his career (1795) as a clerk in the British...

Stoph, Willi

(Encyclopedia)Stoph, Willi vĭlˈē shtôf [key], 1914–99, East German political leader. A member of the German Communist party from 1931, he helped build the East German Socialist Unity (Communist) party after W...

Dark Ages

(Encyclopedia)Dark Ages: see Middle Ages.

Assyrian religion

(Encyclopedia)Assyrian religion: see Middle Eastern religions. ...

Babylonian religion

(Encyclopedia)Babylonian religion: see Middle Eastern religions. ...

coronavirus

(Encyclopedia)coronavirus, any of a group (family Coronaviridae, subfamily Orthocoronavirinae) of enveloped single-stranded RNA viruses that have a crownlike or sunlike appearance under an electron microscope due t...

fermentation

(Encyclopedia)fermentation, process by which the living cell is able to obtain energy through the breakdown of glucose and other simple sugar molecules without requiring oxygen. Fermentation is achieved by somewhat...

Ismailis

(Encyclopedia)Ismailis ĭsmäēlˈēz [key], Muslim Shiite sect that holds Ismail, the son of Jafar as-Sadiq, as its imam. On the death of the sixth imam of the Shiites, Jafar as-Sadiq (d. 765), the majority of Shi...

Melaka

(Encyclopedia)Melaka or Malacca both: məlăkˈə [key], state (1991 pop. 504,502), 640 sq mi (1,658 sq km), Malaysia, S Malay Peninsula, on the Strait of Malacca. Formerly one of the Straits Settlements, it was co...

Armenian language

(Encyclopedia)Armenian language, member of the Thraco-Phrygian subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Indo-European). There is evidence that in ancient times a distinct subfamily of Indo-European l...