(Encyclopedia) Clapham Sect, group of English social reformers, active c.1790–1830, so named because their activities centered on the home in Clapham, London, of Henry Thornton and William…
(Encyclopedia) Hopkins, Esek, 1718–1802, American Revolutionary naval hero, b. Scituate, R.I.; brother of Stephen Hopkins. He commanded a privateer in the French and Indian War, and in Dec., 1775, he…
(Encyclopedia) May, Philip William (Phil May), 1864–1903, English pen-and-ink caricaturist, b. Leeds. After living in poverty for many years, he made numerous drawings for the St. Stephen's Review.…
(Encyclopedia) Arguedas, AlcidesArguedas, Alcidesälsēˈᵺās ärgāˈᵺäs [key], 1879–1946, Bolivian writer and diplomat. His essays and novels, which have social and moralizing tendencies, are a reaction…
(Encyclopedia) Volk, Leonard Wells, 1828–95, American sculptor, b. Wellstown (now Wells), N.Y. In 1848 he went to St. Louis, where he studied drawing and worked at funerary sculpture. With the aid of…
(Encyclopedia) VácVácväts [key], Ger. WaitzenVácvīˈtsən [key], town (1991 est. pop. 33,858), N central Hungary, on the Danube River. A commercial center producing textiles, footwear, cement, and…
Born: 1832 Water tube steam boiler—Thomas Edison once proclaimed it to be “…the best boiler God has permitted man yet to make.” Even today, nearly half of the electricity produced in the United…
(Encyclopedia) semantics [Gr.,=significant] in general, the study of the relationship between words and meanings. The empirical study of word meanings and sentence meanings in existing languages is a…
novelist, poetBorn: 1893Birthplace: Newcastle under Lyme, England The daughter of a wealthy paper manufacturer, Brittain dropped out of Somerville College at Oxford to work as a nurse's aide in…