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capital punishment

(Encyclopedia)capital punishment, imposition of a penalty of death by the state. Since the 1970s almost all capital sentences in the United States have been imposed for homicide. There has been intense debate reg...

Spanish civil war

(Encyclopedia)Spanish civil war, 1936–39, conflict in which the conservative and traditionalist forces in Spain rose against and finally overthrew the second Spanish republic. For Germany and Italy the Span...

Roses, Wars of the

(Encyclopedia)Roses, Wars of the, traditional name given to the intermittent struggle (1455–85) for the throne of England between the noble houses of York (whose badge was a white rose) and Lancaster (later assoc...

pine

(Encyclopedia)pine, common name for members of the Pinaceae, a family of resinous woody trees with needlelike, usually evergreen leaves. The Pinaceae reproduce by means of cones (see cone) rather than flowers and m...

still life

(Encyclopedia)still life, a pictorial representation of inanimate objects. The term derives from the 17th-century Dutch still-leven, meaning a motionless natural object or objects. In East Asia still-life subj...

Persian literature

(Encyclopedia)Persian literature, literary writings in the Persian language, nearly all of it written in the area traditionally known as Persia, now Iran. The 15th cent. period of the second Turko-Tartar invasi...

English literature

(Encyclopedia)English literature, literature written in English since c.1450 by the inhabitants of the British Isles; it was during the 15th cent. that the English language acquired much of its modern form. For the...

French literature

(Encyclopedia)French literature, writings in medieval French dialects and standard modern French. Writings in Provençal and Breton are considered separately, as are works in French produced abroad (as at Canadian ...

Alaska

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Alaska əlăˈskə [key], largest in area of the United States but one of the smallest in population, occupying the northwest extremity of the North American continent, separated from the coter...

cotton

(Encyclopedia)cotton, most important of the vegetable fibers, and the plant from which the fiber is harvested. Today the leading cotton states are Texas, Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Louisi...