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tobacco

(Encyclopedia)tobacco, name for any plant of the genus Nicotiana of the Solanaceae family (nightshade family) and for the product manufactured from the leaf and used in cigars and cigarettes, snuff, and pipe and ch...

McClellan, George Brinton

(Encyclopedia)McClellan, George Brinton, 1826–85, Union general in the American Civil War, b. Philadelphia. After graduating (1846) from West Point, he served with distinction in the Mexican War and later worked ...

commonwealth

(Encyclopedia)commonwealth, form of administration signifying government by the common consent of the people. To Locke and Hobbes and other 17th-century writers the term meant an organized political community simil...

Crittenden Compromise

(Encyclopedia)Crittenden Compromise, in U.S. history, unsuccessful last-minute effort to avert the Civil War. It was proposed in Congress as a constitutional amendment in Dec., 1860, by Sen. John J. Crittenden of K...

Hakluyt, Richard

(Encyclopedia)Hakluyt, Richard hăkˈlo͞ot, hăkˈəlwĭt [key], 1552?–1616, English geographer. He graduated in 1574 from Oxford, where he later lectured on geography. A passionate interest in the history of di...

Gilman, Alfred Goodman

(Encyclopedia)Gilman, Alfred Goodman, 1941–2015, American biochemist, b. New Haven, Conn., M.D., Ph.D. Case Western Reserve Univ., 1969. He taught at the Univ. of Virginia (1971–1981) before becoming a professo...

Fort Duquesne

(Encyclopedia)Fort Duquesne dəkānˈ, do͞o– [key], at the junction of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers, on the site of Pittsburgh, SW Pa. Because of its strategic location, it was a major objective in the l...

Murry, John Middleton

(Encyclopedia)Murry, John Middleton, 1889–1957, English critic and editor. In 1919 he became editor of the Athenaeum and in 1923 founded his own review, the Adelphi, with which he was associated until 1948. He wa...

Auerbach, Erich

(Encyclopedia)Auerbach, Erich, 1892–1957, German-American philologist, literary scholar, and critic, b. Berlin, Ph.D. Univ. of Greifswald, 1921. He is known primarily for Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in...

North, Oliver Laurence

(Encyclopedia)North, Oliver Laurence, 1943–, American military officer and broadcasting personality, b. San Antonio, Tex. Raised in Philmont, N.Y., he entered the U.S. Marines, graduated from Annapolis (1968), se...