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Alabama claims

(Encyclopedia)Alabama claims, claims made by the U.S. government against Great Britain for the damage inflicted on Northern merchant ships during the American Civil War by the Alabama and other Confederate cruisers...

Rush-Bagot Convention

(Encyclopedia)Rush-Bagot Convention rŭsh-băgˈət [key], 1817, agreement between the United States and Great Britain concerning the Canadian border. It consisted of the exchange of notes signed by Richard Rush, A...

Prince of Wales, Cape

(Encyclopedia)Prince of Wales, Cape, at the tip of the Seward Peninsula, NW Alaska, on the Bering Strait; westernmost point of North America. Cape Dezhnev, Siberia, is only 55 mi (89 km) to the west. ...

Hitchings, George Herbert

(Encyclopedia)Hitchings, George Herbert, 1905–98, American pharmacologist, b. Hoquiam, Wash., Ph.D. Harvard, 1933. Hitchings spent most of his career at Burroughs Wellcome Laboratories (1942–75), where he and f...

Darwin, Erasmus

(Encyclopedia)Darwin, Erasmus, 1731–1802, English physician and poet. During most of his life he practiced medicine in Lichfield and cultivated a botanical garden. He was a prominent member of the Lichfield liter...

beat generation

(Encyclopedia)beat generation, term applied to certain American artists and writers who were popular during the 1950s. Essentially anarchic, members of the beat generation rejected traditional social and artistic f...

Whig party

(Encyclopedia)Whig party, one of the two major political parties of the United States in the second quarter of the 19th cent. By the time Fillmore had succeeded to the presidency, the disintegration of the party ...

Norton Sound

(Encyclopedia)Norton Sound, inlet of the Bering Sea, c.150 mi (240 km) long and 125 mi (200 km) across at its widest point, W Alaska, S of the Seward Peninsula. Norton Bay is its northeast arm. Nome is on the north...

Elion, Gertrude Belle

(Encyclopedia)Elion, Gertrude Belle ĕlˈēən [key], 1918–99, American pharmacologist, b. New York City, B.S. Hunter College, 1937. Unable to find research work (largely because she was a woman), she taught high...

Liberal

(Encyclopedia)Liberal, city (1990 pop. 16,573), seat of Seward co., SW Kans.; founded 1888, inc. 1945. It is the trade center for a grazing and farm area. Oil and natural gas are extracted, and helium is processed ...