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Woburn, city, United States

(Encyclopedia)Woburn wo͞oˈbərn [key], city (1990 pop. 35,943), Middlesex co., NE Mass.; settled 1640, inc. as a city 1888. Formerly a major center for tanneries, the city has electrical, pharmaceutical, chemical...

Wright, Carroll Davidson

(Encyclopedia)Wright, Carroll Davidson, 1840–1909, American statistician, b. Dunbarton, N.H. His varied experience included a term (1872–73) in the Massachusetts senate. As U.S. commissioner of labor he organiz...

Billings, Josh

(Encyclopedia)Billings, Josh, pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw, 1818–85, American humorist and lecturer, b. Lanesboro, Mass. After a roving life as farmer, explorer, and coal miner, he settled in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., ...

Sewell, Jonathan

(Encyclopedia)Sewell, Jonathan, 1766–1839, Canadian jurist, b. Cambridge, Mass. He was educated in England and emigrated to Canada in 1785. A lawyer, he became attorney general of Lower Canada (Quebec) in 1795 an...

Bartlett, Josiah

(Encyclopedia)Bartlett, Josiah, 1729–95, political leader in the American Revolution, signer of the Declaration of Independence, b. Amesbury, Mass. He practiced medicine in Kingston, N.H., and was a delegate to t...

Richardson, Ernest Cushing

(Encyclopedia)Richardson, Ernest Cushing, 1860–1939, American librarian and bibliographer, b. Woburn, Mass. He was assistant librarian at Amherst (1879–80), librarian and professor of bibliology at Hartford The...

Richardson, William Adams

(Encyclopedia)Richardson, William Adams, 1821–96, American jurist and U.S. secretary of the Treasury, b. Tyngsboro, Mass. Admitted to the bar in 1846, he helped to codify the statute law of Massachusetts in 1855....

iceberg

(Encyclopedia)iceberg, mass of ice that has become detached, or calved, from the edge of an ice sheet or glacier and is floating on the ocean. Because ice is slightly less dense than water about one ninth of the to...

Mayflower, ship

(Encyclopedia)Mayflower, ship that in 1620 brought the Pilgrims from England to New England. She set out from Southampton in company with the Speedwell, the vessel that had borne some of the English separatists fro...

meitnerium

(Encyclopedia)meitnerium mītnĭrˈēəm [key], artificially produced radioactive chemical element; symbol Mt; at. no. 109; mass number of most stable isotope 276; m.p., b.p., sp. gr., and valence unknown. Situated...