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Boston Public Library

(Encyclopedia)Boston Public Library, founded in 1848, chiefly through the gift of Joshua Bates, and opened to the public in 1854. It is the oldest free public city library supported by taxation in the world and the...

Treat, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Treat, Robert, 1622?–1710, American colonial governor of Connecticut, b. England. He was taken to America when a child; his father was an early settler of Wethersfield, Conn., and a patentee of the ...

Snodgrass, W. D.

(Encyclopedia)Snodgrass, W. D. (William DeWitt Snodgrass), 1926–2009, American poet and translator, b. Wilkinsburg, Pa., grad. Univ. of Iowa, 1959. He is particularly known for his debut book, Heart's Needle (195...

Saumur

(Encyclopedia)Saumur sōmürˈ [key], town (1990 pop. 30,150), Maine-et-Loire dept., W France, on the Loire River. Saumur is noted for its religious-medal industry (dating from the 17th cent.) and for its sparkling...

Sherwood, Robert Emmet

(Encyclopedia)Sherwood, Robert Emmet, 1896–1955, American dramatist, b. New Rochelle, N.Y., grad. Harvard, 1918. After serving in World War I, he wrote for Vanity Fair and Life, serving as editor of the latter fr...

Alfonso X, Spanish king of Castile and León

(Encyclopedia)Alfonso X (Alfonso the Wise), 1221–84, Spanish king of Castile and León (1252–84); son and successor of Ferdinand III, whose conquests of the Moors he continued, notably by taking Cádiz (1262). ...

Feldman, Morton

(Encyclopedia)Feldman, Morton, 1926–87, American modernist composer, b. New York City. An associate of John Cage and other experimental composers, Feldman was part of the so-called New York school. He was also a ...

Eliot, John

(Encyclopedia)Eliot, John, 1604–90, English missionary in colonial Massachusetts, called the Apostle to the Indians. Educated at Cambridge, he was influenced by Thomas Hooker, became a staunch Puritan, and emigra...

Gueux

(Encyclopedia)Gueux gö [key] [Fr.,=beggars], 16th-century Dutch revolutionary party. In 1566 more than 2,000 Dutch and Flemish nobles and burghers (both Protestants and Roman Catholics) signed a document—the so-...

Juan Carlos I

(Encyclopedia)Juan Carlos I hwän kärˈlōs [key], 1938–, king of Spain (1975–2014), b. Rome. The grandson of Alfonso XIII, he was educated in Switzerland and in Spain. Placed by his father, Don Juan de Borbó...