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conducting

(Encyclopedia)conducting, in music, the art of unifying the efforts of a number of musicians simultaneously engaged in musical performance. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance the conductor was primarily a time beat...

employment bureau

(Encyclopedia)employment bureau, a government-run establishment for bringing together the employer offering work and the employee seeking it. As a not-for-profit service, employment bureaus operate differently from...

Nibelungen

(Encyclopedia)Nibelungen –lētˌ [key] [song of the Nibelungen] is a long Middle High German epic by a south German poet of the early 13th cent. It includes pagan legends and traditions but is patently the produc...

Taft-Hartley Labor Act

(Encyclopedia)Taft-Hartley Labor Act, 1947, passed by the U.S. Congress, officially known as the Labor-Management Relations Act. Sponsored by Senator Robert Alphonso Taft and Representative Fred Allan Hartley, the ...

Tristram and Isolde

(Encyclopedia)Tristram and Isolde trĭsˈtrəm, ĭsōlˈdə, ĭzōlˈ– [key], medieval romance. The earliest extant version (incomplete) was written (c.1185) by Thomas of Britain in Anglo-Norman French verse. Abo...

Wright brothers

(Encyclopedia)Wright brothers, American airplane inventors and aviation pioneers. Orville Wright 1871–1948, was born in Dayton, Ohio, and Wilbur Wright, 1867–1912, near New Castle, Ind. Their interest in aviati...

rhenium

(Encyclopedia)rhenium rēˈnēəm [key], metallic chemical element; symbol Re; at. no. 75; at. wt. 186.207; m.p. about 3,180℃; b.p. about 5,625℃; sp. gr. 21.02 at 20℃; valence −1, +2, +3, +4, +5, +6, or +7....

protactinium

(Encyclopedia)protactinium prōˌtăktĭnˈēəm [key], radioactive chemical element; symbol Pa; at. no. 91; mass number of most stable isotope 231; m.p. greater than 1,600℃; b.p. 4,026℃; sp. gr. 15.37 (calcula...

Dos Passos, John Roderigo

(Encyclopedia)Dos Passos, John Roderigo, 1896–1970, American novelist, b. Chicago, grad. Harvard, 1916. He subsequently studied in Spain and served as a World War I ambulance driver in France and Italy. In his fi...

Gordimer, Nadine

(Encyclopedia)Gordimer, Nadine nādēnˈ gôrˈdəmər [key], 1923–2014, South African writer, b. Springs. A member of the African National Congress, Gordimer fought apartheid in her political life and in her wri...