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runner

(Encyclopedia)runner or stolon, slender, creeping stem capable of taking root where its nodes touch the ground and thereby producing new shoots. The runner itself usually dies at the end of the season, leaving inde...

Patroon painters

(Encyclopedia)Patroon painters, group of portraitists active in colonial New York from 1715 to 1730. Their work embodied the first clearly American style. The Patroon painters served the Dutch families of New York,...

Mitchell, Arthur

(Encyclopedia)Mitchell, Arthur, 1934–2018, American dancer and choreographer, b. New York City. Mitchell studied in New York City at the School of American Ballet and appeared on Broadway and with various compani...

Green Mountain Boys

(Encyclopedia)Green Mountain Boys, popular name of armed bands formed (c.1770) under the auspices of Ethan Allen in the Green Mountains of what is today Vermont. Their purpose was to prevent the New Hampshire Grant...

Babylonian captivity

(Encyclopedia)Babylonian captivity, in the history of Israel, the period from the fall of Jerusalem (586 b.c.) to the reconstruction in Palestine of a new Jewish state (after 538 b.c.). After the capture of the cit...

Tiffany, Louis Comfort

(Encyclopedia)Tiffany, Louis Comfort, 1848–1933, American artist, decorative designer, and art patron, b. New York City; son of Charles Lewis Tiffany. He studied painting with Inness and in Paris and painted oils...

Parcells, Bill

(Encyclopedia)Parcells, Bill, 1941–, American football coach, b. Englewood, N.J., as Duane Charles Parcells, nicknamed “the Big Tuna.” He played for Colgate and Wichita State before being drafted (1964) and c...

Bemelmans, Ludwig

(Encyclopedia)Bemelmans, Ludwig, 1898–1962 American author and illustrator of children's books, b. Meran, Austria-Hungary (now in Italy), to Belgian and German parents. Trained in the hotel and restaurant busines...

Adams, James Truslow

(Encyclopedia)Adams, James Truslow trŭˈslō [key], 1878–1949, American historian, b. Brooklyn, N.Y. The Founding of New England (1921), which brought him the Pulitzer Prize in history for 1922, was followed by ...

state flowers

(Encyclopedia)state flowers. Each state of the United States has designated, usually by legislative action, one flower as its floral emblem; the rose has been designated by Congress as the national flower of the Un...