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Tangier, island, United States

(Encyclopedia)Tangier, island, E Va., in S Chesapeake Bay. Capt. John Smith first visited the island in 1608, and in 1620 settlers arrived from Cornwall, England. Isolated from the mainland, the people of Tangier d...

Saba, island, West Indies

(Encyclopedia)Saba säˈbə [key], island (1990 est. pop. 1,100), 5 sq mi (13 sq km), a special municipality of the Netherlands, one of the NW Leeward Islands, West Indies. It was formerly part of the Netherlands A...

San Salvador, island, Bahamas

(Encyclopedia)San Salvador, island of the Bahamas, West Indies. Many historians believe that it was the first land sighted by Columbus in the New World in 1492. The indigenous population called it Guanahani, and it...

Rhode Island, University of

(Encyclopedia)Rhode Island, University of, at Kingston; coeducational; land-grant and state-supported; chartered 1888, opened as a school 1890, as an agricultural and mechanical college 1892. From 1909 to 1951 it w...

Rhode Island Red chicken

(Encyclopedia)Rhode Island Red chicken, American breed of poultry, no longer raised commercially, but still maintained for use in breeding programs. See Red Rock chicken. ...

Mather, John Cromwell

(Encyclopedia)Mather, John Cromwell, 1946–, American astrophysicist, b. Roanoke, Va., Ph.D. Univ. of California, Berkeley, 1974. He has been a researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., s...

Gist, Christopher

(Encyclopedia)Gist, Christopher gĭst [key], c.1706–1759, American frontiersman, b. Maryland. Commissioned by the Ohio Company to explore their western lands. In 1750 he descended the Ohio River, explored E Kentu...

Benjamin, Judah Philip

(Encyclopedia)Benjamin, Judah Philip, 1811–84, Confederate statesman and British barrister, b. Christiansted, St. Croix, Virgin Islands, of Jewish parents. His family moved (c.1813) to Wilmington, N.C., and final...

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