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Connecticut Wits

(Encyclopedia)Connecticut Wits or Hartford Wits, an informal association of Yale students and rectors formed in the late 18th cent. At first they were devoted to the modernization of the Yale curriculum and declari...

Matthiessen, F. O.

(Encyclopedia)Matthiessen, F. O. (Francis Otto Matthiessen) măthˈĭsĕn [key], 1902–50, American critic, b. Pasadena, Calif., grad. Yale Univ., 1923, B.Litt., Oxford, 1925, Ph.D., Harvard, 1927. A Rhodes schola...

Lyndhurst, John Singleton Copley, Baron

(Encyclopedia)Lyndhurst, John Singleton Copley, Baron, 1772–1863, British jurist, b. Boston, Mass.; son of John Singleton Copley, the American painter. Educated in England, he was called to the bar in 1804. He at...

Tewodros II

(Encyclopedia)Tewodros II or Theodore II, 1818–68, emperor of Ethiopia (1855–68), originally named Kasa or Lij Kasa. He was a commoner and a bold and clever warrior. He seized control of his native province, Ka...

Reed, Stanley Forman

(Encyclopedia)Reed, Stanley Forman, 1884–1980, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1938–57), b. Macon co., Ky. After receiving the B.A. degree from both Kentucky Wesleyan (1902) and Yale (1906), he stu...

Thanksgiving Day

(Encyclopedia)Thanksgiving Day, national holiday in the United States commemorating the Pilgrims' celebration of the harvest reaped by the Plymouth Colony in 1621, after a winter of great starvation and privation. ...

Diaz de la Peña, Narciso Virgilio

(Encyclopedia)Diaz de la Peña, Narciso Virgilio dyäs də lä pānyäˈ [key], 1808–76, French landscape and figure painter of the Barbizon school, b. Bordeaux, of Spanish parents. Mainly self-taught, he was inf...

Alexius III

(Encyclopedia)Alexius III (Alexius Angelus) ănˈjələs [key], d. after 1210, Byzantine emperor (1195–1203). He acceded to power by deposing and blinding his brother Isaac II. This act served as pretext for the ...

Godefroy

(Encyclopedia)Godefroy gôdfrwäˈ [key], family of French scholars. Denis Godefroy, 1549–1622, was a Calvinist who fled (c.1580) to Geneva and later became a professor of law at Strasbourg and Heidelberg. He com...

Union Pacific Railroad

(Encyclopedia)Union Pacific Railroad, transportation company chartered (1862) by Congress to build part of the nation's first transcontinental railroad line. Under terms of the Pacific Railroads Act, the Union Paci...