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Uncle Sam

(Encyclopedia)Uncle Sam, name used to designate the U.S. government. The origins of the term are unclear. The term was believed to have arisen in the War of 1812, when it seems to have been used at first derisively...

Philip II, king of France

(Encyclopedia)Philip II or Philip Augustus, 1165–1223, king of France (1180–1223), son of Louis VII. During his reign the royal domains were more than doubled, and the royal power was consolidated at the expens...

category, in philosophy

(Encyclopedia)category, philosophical term that literally means predication or assertion. It was first used by Aristotle, whose 10 categories formed a list of all the ways in which assertions can be made of a subje...

African Methodist Episcopal Church

(Encyclopedia)African Methodist Episcopal Church, Methodist denomination (see Methodism). It was established in 1816 in Philadelphia with Richard Allen as its first bishop. In 1991 there were about 3.5 million memb...

Alamoth

(Encyclopedia)Alamoth ălˈəmōth [key], in the Bible, musical term, unknown in meaning, although some have guessed “soprano,” connecting it with a word for “maidens.” It occurs in First Chronicles and in ...

Achenwall, Gottfried

(Encyclopedia)Achenwall, Gottfried gôtˈfrēt äkhˈənväl [key], 1719–72, German statistician and political scientist. He used the term Statistik for the first time in his Staatsverfassung der heutigen vornehm...

Liliencron, Detlev, Freiherr von

(Encyclopedia)Liliencron, Detlev, Freiherr von dĕtˈlĕf frīˈhĕr fən lēˈlyənkrôn [key], 1844–1909, German lyric poet, b. Schleswig-Holstein. First a Prussian army officer and later a minor government off...

atheism

(Encyclopedia)atheism āˈthē-ĭzˌəm [key], denial of the existence of God or gods and of any supernatural existence, to be distinguished from agnosticism, which holds that the existence cannot be proved. The te...

Henderson, Richard, Scottish molecular biologist

(Encyclopedia)Henderson, Richard, 1945–, Scottish molecular biologist, Ph.D. Cambridge, 1969. Henderson has been a researcher at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge since 1973. In 2017 he was awarded...

Heath, Sir Edward Richard George

(Encyclopedia)Heath, Sir Edward Richard George, 1916–2005, British statesman. Educated at Oxford, he served in the Royal Artillery during World War II, rising to the rank of colonel. He was elected to Parliament ...