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Chaplin, Charlie

(Encyclopedia)Chaplin, Charlie (Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin), 1889–1977, English film actor, director, producer, writer, and composer, b. London. Chaplin began on the music-hall stage and then joined a pantomime ...

Grand Ole Opry

(Encyclopedia)Grand Ole Opry, weekly American radio program featuring live country and western music. The nation's oldest continuous radio sho...

Joplin, Scott

(Encyclopedia)Joplin, Scott jŏpˈlĭn [key], 1868–1917, American ragtime pianist and composer, b. Texarkana, Tex. Self-taught, Joplin left home in his early teens to seek his fortune in music. He lived in St. Lo...

Javanese music

(Encyclopedia)Javanese music, one of the richest and most distinctive of Asian musical cultures. It was and is of enormous importance in religious, political, and entertainment functions. It possesses two separate ...

Bowie, David

(Encyclopedia)Bowie, David, 1947–2016, British rock-and-roll singer and songwriter who successfully, merged rock, art, and fashion, b. London as David Robert Jones. After singing with five different bands in the ...

Almodóvar, Pedro

(Encyclopedia)Almodóvar, Pedro pāˈᵺrō älmōᵺōˈbär [key], 1951–, Spanish film director. Almodóvar began making short films using an inexpensive Super 8 camera in the early 1970s, graduated to longer 1...

Hayes, Rutherford Birchard

(Encyclopedia)Hayes, Rutherford Birchard, 1822–93, 19th President of the United States (1877–81), b. Delaware, Ohio, grad. Kenyon College, 1843, and Harvard law school, 1845. He became a moderately successful l...

Metropolitan Museum of Art

(Encyclopedia)Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, founded in 1870. The Metropolitan Museum is the foremost repository of art in the United States and one of the world's great museums. It opened in 1880 on it...

McNamara, Robert Strange

(Encyclopedia)McNamara, Robert Strange măkˈnəmârˌə [key], 1916–2009, U.S. secretary of defense (1961–68), b. San Francisco, grad Univ. of California, Berkeley (B.A., 1937), Harvard (M.B.A., 1939). He taug...

Bierce, Ambrose Gwinett

(Encyclopedia)Bierce, Ambrose Gwinett ămˈbrōz gwĭnĕtˈ bĭrs [key], 1842–1914?, American satirist, journalist, and short-story writer, b. Meigs co., Ohio. He fought with extreme bravery in the Civil War, and...