(Encyclopedia) elephant seal or sea elephant, a true seal of the genus Mirounga. It is the largest of the fin-footed mammals, or pinnipeds, exceeding the walrus in size. There is a northern species,…
(Encyclopedia) Hurston, Zora Neale, 1891?–60, African-American writer, b. Notasulga, Ala. She grew up in the pleasant all-black town of Eatonville, Fla., and graduated from Barnard College, where she…
(Encyclopedia) geodesygeodesyjēŏdˈĭsē [key] or geodetic surveying, theory and practice of determining the position of points on the earth's surface and the dimensions of areas so large that the…
(Encyclopedia) neutron star, extremely small, extremely dense star, with as much as double the sun's mass but only a few miles in radius, in the final stage of stellar evolution. Astronomers Baade…
(Encyclopedia) Kerouac, Jack (John Kerouac)Kerouac, Jackkĕrˈəwăkˌ [key], 1922–69, American novelist, b. Lowell, Mass., studied at Columbia. One of the leaders of the beat generation, a term he is…
(Encyclopedia) marsh antelope, name for members of a group of deerlike African antelopes, usually found in reeds or tall grasses near water. The males of this group have horns that curve back, up,…
(Encyclopedia) Bent's Fort, trading post of the American West, on the Arkansas River in present-day SE Colorado, E of Rocky Ford and La Junta and several miles above the mouth of the Purgatoire. The…
(Encyclopedia) Burroughs, William Seward, 1914–97, American novelist, b. St. Louis, grad. Harvard, 1936, moved to New York City, 1943. He was an elder member of the beat generation. Junkie (1953),…
(Encyclopedia) Bingham, Hiram, 1875–1956, American archaeologist, historian, and statesman, b. Honolulu; son of Hiram Bingham (1831–1908). He was educated at Yale (B.A., 1898), the Univ. of…
