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Kouchner, Bernard

(Encyclopedia)Kouchner, Bernard bârnärˈ ko͞oshnârˈ [key], 1939–, French physician, diplomat, and politician. A gastroenterologist by training, he earned his medical degree in France in the late 1960s. He pr...

Lassalle, Ferdinand

(Encyclopedia)Lassalle, Ferdinand fĕrˈdēnänt läsälˈ [key], 1825–64, German socialist. The son of a Jewish merchant, he studied at the universities of Breslau and Berlin, where he became a philosophical Heg...

Verwoerd, Hendrik Frensch

(Encyclopedia)Verwoerd, Hendrik Frensch hĕnˈdrək frĕnsh fərvo͞ortˈ [key], 1901–66, South African political leader, b. Holland. He was taken as an infant to South Africa when his parents emigrated as missio...

Snowden, Philip Snowden, 1st Viscount

(Encyclopedia)Snowden, Philip Snowden, 1st Viscount snōˈdən [key], 1864–1937, British statesman. Born to poverty, he was a civil service clerk until crippled by a spinal ailment. Resigning in 1893, he began to...

Servan-Schreiber, Jean-Jacques

(Encyclopedia)Servan-Schreiber, Jean-Jacques, 1924–2006, French journalist, politician, and public intellectual, b. Paris, grad. École Polytechnique (1947). A political writer at Le Monde (1948–53), he moved o...

Silone, Ignazio

(Encyclopedia)Silone, Ignazio ēnyäˈtsyō sēlōˈnā [key], 1900–1978, Italian novelist and journalist, whose original name was Secondo Tranquilli. A Socialist and for a time a Communist, he broke with Stalin ...

Ribbentrop, Joachim von

(Encyclopedia)Ribbentrop, Joachim von yōˈaäkhĭm fən rĭbˈəntrôp [key], 1893–1946, German foreign minister (1938–45). After World War I he became a wealthy champagne merchant. He joined the National Soci...

Whig

(Encyclopedia)Whig, English political party. The name, originally a term of abuse first used for Scottish Presbyterians in the 17th cent., seems to have been a shortened form of whiggamor [cattle driver]. It was ap...

Basque Country

(Encyclopedia)Basque Country băsk, bäsk [key], Basque Euzkadi, Span. País Vasco, autonomous communit...

Morris, William

(Encyclopedia)Morris, William, 1834–96, English poet, artist, craftsman, designer, social reformer, and printer. He has long been considered one of the great Victorians and has been called the greatest English de...