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Detroit Mercy, University of

(Encyclopedia)Detroit Mercy, University of, at Detroit; coeducational; Jesuit; est. 1877 as a college, inc. 1881, became a university 1911. The present school was formed with the 1990 merger of the Univ. of Detroit...

Dwight, Henry Otis

(Encyclopedia)Dwight, Henry Otis, 1843–1917, American missionary in Turkey, b. Constantinople, studied at Ohio Wesleyan Univ.; son of Harrison Gray Otis Dwight. In 1867 he returned to Constantinople as secular ag...

Howard, Oliver Otis

(Encyclopedia)Howard, Oliver Otis, 1830–1909, Union general in the Civil War, founder of Howard Univ., b. Leeds, Maine, grad. Bowdoin College, 1850, and West Point, 1854. Made a brigadier general of volunteers (S...

Otis, Elisha Graves

(Encyclopedia)Otis, Elisha Graves, 1811–61, American inventor, b. Halifax, Vt. From his invention (1852) of an automatic safety device to prevent the fall of hoisting machinery he developed the first passenger el...

Whitman, Charles Otis

(Encyclopedia)Whitman, Charles Otis, 1842–1910, American zoologist, b. Woodstock, Maine, grad. Bowdoin, 1868, Ph.D. Univ. of Leipzig, 1878. From 1892 he was professor of zoology at the Univ. of Chicago. He founde...

Purdy, James Otis

(Encyclopedia)Purdy, James Otis, 1914–2009, American writer, b. near Hicksville, Ohio; studied Bowling Green State College (B.A., 1935), Univ. of Chicago (M.A., 1937), Univ. of Pueblo, Mexico. Idiosyncratic and a...

Stamp Act

(Encyclopedia)Stamp Act, 1765, revenue law passed by the British Parliament during the ministry of George Grenville. The first direct tax to be levied on the American colonies, it required that all newspapers, pamp...

Dease, Peter Warren

(Encyclopedia)Dease, Peter Warren dēs [key], 1788–1863, Canadian explorer. He was in the North West Company before its merger with the Hudson's Bay Company and later was a Hudson's Bay Company trader. He was a m...

Christopher, Warren Minor

(Encyclopedia)Christopher, Warren Minor, 1925–2011, U.S. government official, b. Scranton, N.Dak. He studied law at Stanford (1946–49) and was a clerk to Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas (1949–50). A ...

Fairbanks, Charles Warren

(Encyclopedia)Fairbanks, Charles Warren, 1852–1918, Vice President of the United States (1905–9), b. Union co., Ohio. He became wealthy as a railroad lawyer in Indianapolis, rose in Republican politics, and ser...