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smallpox

(Encyclopedia)smallpox, acute, highly contagious disease causing a high fever and successive stages of severe skin eruptions. Occurring worldwide in epidemics, it killed up to 40% of those who contracted it and acc...

tea

(Encyclopedia)tea, tree or bush, its leaves, and the beverage made from these leaves. The plant (Camellia sinensis, Thea sinensis, or C. thea) is an evergreen related to the camellia and indigenous to Assam (India)...

Democratic party

(Encyclopedia)Democratic party, American political party; the oldest continuous political party in the United States. In 1960, John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated the Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon, in the ...

Gore, Albert Arnold, Jr.

(Encyclopedia)Gore, Albert Arnold, Jr., 1948–, Vice President of the United States (1993–2001), b. Washington, D.C., grad. Harvard, 1969. After serving in the army in Vietnam and working as a reporter, he was e...

income tax

(Encyclopedia)income tax, assessment levied upon individual or corporate incomes. Although personal incomes were occasionally taxed in medieval Italian cities, the income tax is essentially a modern form of taxatio...

Florida, state, United States

(Encyclopedia) CE5 Florida ...

Blair, Tony

(Encyclopedia)Blair, Tony (Anthony Charles Lynton Blair), 1953–, British politician, b. Edinburgh. An Oxford-educated lawyer, he was first elected to Parliament in 1983 as the Labour party candidate from a distri...

health insurance

(Encyclopedia)health insurance, prepayment plan providing services or cash indemnities for medical care needed in times of illness or disability. It is effected by voluntary plans, either commercial or nonprofit, o...

International Criminal Court

(Encyclopedia)International Criminal Court (ICC), first permanent world court created specifically to try individuals for genocide, war crimes, crimes of aggression, and crimes against humanity, est. 2002; located ...

desert

(Encyclopedia)desert, arid region, usually partly covered by sand, having scanty vegetation or sometimes almost none, and capable of supporting only a limited and specially adapted animal population. The so-called ...