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Black Country

(Encyclopedia)Black Country, highly industrialized region, historically mostly in Staffordshire but partly in Worcestershire and Warwickshire, W central England. It includes Dudley, Rowley Regis (see Warley), Tipto...

Peirce, Benjamin

(Encyclopedia)Peirce, Benjamin, 1809–80, American mathematician and astronomer, b. Salem, Mass., grad. Harvard, 1829. From 1833 he was a professor at Harvard; he helped establish the Harvard Observatory and was a...

Polanyi, John Charles

(Encyclopedia)Polanyi, John Charles, 1929–, Canadian chemist. Raised and educated in England, he worked as a researcher in Canada before taking a teaching position at the Univ. of Toronto in 1956. He used spectro...

Carter, Mrs. Leslie

(Encyclopedia)Carter, Mrs. Leslie, 1862–1937, American actress, b. Lexington, Ky., whose maiden name was Caroline Louise Dudley. She became a protégée of Belasco and first appeared in 1890 in The Ugly Duckling....

Allingham, Margery

(Encyclopedia)Allingham, Margery ălˈĭng-əm [key], 1904–66, English detective-story writer, b. London. Most of her novels feature Mr. Albert Campion, a scholarly detective of noble birth, bespectacled, mild, a...

Oldenbarneveldt, Johan van

(Encyclopedia)Oldenbarneveldt, Johan van yōhänˈ vän ôlˌdənbärˈnəvĕlt [key], 1547–1619, Dutch statesman. He aided William the Silent in the struggle for Dutch independence from Spain and opposed the dic...

Hough, George Washington

(Encyclopedia)Hough, George Washington hŭf [key], 1836–1909, American astronomer, b. Montgomery co., N.Y., grad. Union College, 1856. He discovered 627 double stars and made systematic studies of the surface of ...

Webster

(Encyclopedia)Webster, town (1990 pop. 16,196), Worcester co., S Mass., near the Conn. line; settled c.1713, set off from Dudley and Oxford and inc. 1832. The chief manufactures are clothing, lenses, fabrics, and t...

Edward VI

(Encyclopedia)Edward VI, 1537–53, king of England (1547–53), son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour. Edward succeeded his father to the throne at the age of nine. Henry had made arrangements for a council of regent...

Macpherson, James

(Encyclopedia)Macpherson, James, 1736–96, Scottish author. Educated at Aberdeen and Edinburgh, he spent his early years as a schoolmaster. In later life he held a colonial secretaryship in West Florida (1764–66...