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Stowe, Harriet Beecher

(Encyclopedia)Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811–96, American novelist and humanitarian, b. Litchfield, Conn. With her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, she stirred the conscience of Americans concerning slavery and thereby inf...

ventilation

(Encyclopedia)ventilation, process of supplying fresh air to an enclosed space and removing from it air contaminated by odors, gases, or smoke. Proper ventilation requires also that there be a movement or circulati...

yellow fever

(Encyclopedia)yellow fever, acute infectious disease endemic in tropical Africa and many areas of South and Central America. Yellow fever is caused by a virus transmitted by the bite of the female Aedes aegypti mos...

Sea Islands

(Encyclopedia)Sea Islands, chain of more than 100 low islands off the Atlantic coast of S.C., Ga., and N Fla., extending from the Santee River to the St. Johns River. The ocean side of the islands is generally sand...

San Antonio

(Encyclopedia)San Antonio săn ăntōˈnēō, əntōnˈ [key], city (1990 pop. 935,933), seat of Bexar co., S central Tex., at the source of the San Antonio River; inc. 1837. The third largest city in Texas, it is ...

Guangzhou

(Encyclopedia)Guangzhou kănˌtŏnˈ, kănˈtŏnˌ [key], city (1994 est. pop. 3,113,800), capital of Guangdong prov., S China, a major deepwater port on the Pearl River delta. Guangzhou became a part of China in...

adaptation

(Encyclopedia)adaptation, in biology, has several meanings. It can mean the adjustment of living matter to environmental conditions and to other living things either in an organism's lifetime (physiological adaptat...

Saratoga campaign

(Encyclopedia)Saratoga campaign, June–Oct., 1777, of the American Revolution. Lord George Germain and John Burgoyne were the chief authors of a plan to end the American Revolution by splitting the colonies along ...

coral reefs

(Encyclopedia)coral reefs, limestone formations produced by living organisms, found in shallow, tropical marine waters. In most reefs, the predominant organisms are stony corals, colonial cnidarians that secrete an...

herring

(Encyclopedia)herring, common name for members of the large, widely distributed family Clupeidae, comprising many species of marine and freshwater food fishes, including the sardine (Sardinia), the menhaden (Brevoo...