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Fifty-four forty or fight

(Encyclopedia)Fifty-four forty or fight, in U.S. history, phrase commonly used by extremists in the controversy with Great Britain over the Oregon country. The rights of the United States, they maintained, extended...

Fair Employment Practices Committee

(Encyclopedia)Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC), established (1941) within the Office of Production Management by executive order of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was created to promote the fulle...

Woodsworth, James Shaver

(Encyclopedia)Woodsworth, James Shaver, 1874–1942, Canadian politician. Having done social welfare work while serving as a Methodist minister, he later gave up the ministry to devote himself wholly to labor and w...

Tanguy, Yves

(Encyclopedia)Tanguy, Yves ēv täNgēˈ [key], 1900–1955, French surrealist painter. At first a merchant seaman, he saw a picture by Chirico in 1923 and instantly decided to take up painting. He created vast ima...

Bennett, Michael

(Encyclopedia)Bennett, Michael, 1943–87, American dancer and choreographer, b. Buffalo, N.Y. He appeared in West Side Story and Subways Are for Sleeping. During the 1970s, he was one of the most successful direct...

Valentinus

(Encyclopedia)Valentinus văləntēˈnəs [key], fl. c.135–c.160, founder of the Valentinians, the most celebrated of the Gnostic sects (see Gnosticism) of the 2d cent. The little that is known of his life is fou...

biochemistry

(Encyclopedia)biochemistry, science concerned chiefly with the chemistry of biological processes; it attempts to utilize the tools and concepts of chemistry, particularly organic and physical chemistry, for elucida...

Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna

(Encyclopedia)Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna blətvătˈskē [key], 1831–91, Russian theosophist and occultist. She was the daughter of a German named Hahn who had settled in Russia and who was distantly connected wi...

Johnson, Lyndon Baines

(Encyclopedia)Johnson, Lyndon Baines, 1908–73, 36th President of the United States (1963–69), b. near Stonewall, Tex. Johnson lost the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination to John F. Kennedy, but accepte...

Homer

(Encyclopedia)Homer, principal figure of ancient Greek literature; the first European poet. The Odyssey is written in 24 books and begins nearly ten years after the fall of Troy. In the first part, Telemachus, Od...