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Fort Snelling

(Encyclopedia)Fort Snelling, on a bluff above the junction of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers, SE Minn.; est. 1820. It served as a regional protective barrier and as a nucleus for settlement. Minneapolis and S...

Balls Bluff

(Encyclopedia)Balls Bluff, hill on the south bank of the Potomac River, near Leesburg, Va. In the Civil War, Union troops who had crossed the river were severely repulsed there on Oct. 21, 1861. Dissatisfaction wit...

Assad, Bashar al-

(Encyclopedia)Assad, Bashar al- bäshärˈ äl-äsˈsäd [key], 1965–, Syrian political leader, son of Hafez al-Assad. A medical doctor, he left Syria (1992) for an ophthamology residency i...

Toledo, Francisco de , Spanish viceroy of Peru

(Encyclopedia)Toledo, Francisco de fränthēˈskō ᵺā tōlāˈᵺō [key], 1515?–84, Spanish viceroy of Peru (1569–81). He came from one of the noblest families of Spain and had served Charles V and Philip I...

Du Pont, Samuel Francis

(Encyclopedia)Du Pont, Samuel Francis, 1803–65, American naval officer, b. Bergen Point, N.J.; grandson of Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours. Appointed a midshipman in 1815, he saw his first active duty in the Med...

Banks, Nathaniel Prentiss

(Encyclopedia)Banks, Nathaniel Prentiss, 1816–94, American politician and Union general in the Civil War, b. Waltham, Mass. After serving in the Massachusetts legislature (1849–53), Banks entered Congress as a ...

Montero Ríos, Eugenio

(Encyclopedia)Montero Ríos, Eugenio āo͞ohāˈnyō mōntāˈrō rēˈōs [key], 1832–1914, Spanish statesman and jurist. He was professor of canon law at the universities of Oviedo, Santiago, and Madrid. He ent...

Cervera y Topete, Pascual

(Encyclopedia)Cervera y Topete, Pascual päskwälˈ thĕrvāˈrä ē tōpāˈtā [key], 1839–1909, Spanish admiral. During the Spanish-American War of 1898 he was given command of the Atlantic fleet and sent, aga...

Reconstruction

(Encyclopedia)Reconstruction, 1865–77, in U.S. history, the period of readjustment following the Civil War. At the end of the Civil War, the defeated South was a ruined land. The physical destruction wrought by t...

Martínez de Campos, Arsenio

(Encyclopedia)Martínez de Campos, Arsenio ärsāˈnyō märtēˈnĕth dā kämˈpōs [key], 1831–1900, Spanish general. He served in Morocco (1859–60), in Mexico (1861–63), and in Cuba (1869–72). He played...