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Jefferson, Joseph

(Encyclopedia)Jefferson, Joseph, 1829–1905, American actor. He was the foremost of an old and distinguished family of English and American actors. Jefferson began his stage career as a child actor, and when the f...

John Birch Society

(Encyclopedia)John Birch Society, ultraconservative, anti-Communist organization in the United States. It was founded in Dec., 1958, by manufacturer Robert Welch, headquartered in Belmont, Mass., and named after Jo...

Moore, George

(Encyclopedia)Moore, George, 1852–1933, English author, b. Ireland. As a young man he lived in Paris, studying at various art schools. Inspired by Zola, Flaubert, Turgenev, and the 19th-century French realists, M...

Middleton, Thomas

(Encyclopedia)Middleton, Thomas, 1580–1627, English dramatist, b. London, grad. Queen's College, Oxford, 1598. His early plays were chiefly written in collaboration with Dekker, Drayton, and others. Between 1604 ...

MacLeish, Archibald

(Encyclopedia)MacLeish, Archibald məklēshˈ [key], 1892–1982, American poet and public official, b. Glencoe, Ill., grad. Yale, 1915, LL.B Harvard, 1919. He practiced law for only three years and during the 1920...

Mason, George

(Encyclopedia)Mason, George, 1725–92, American political leader, b. Fairfax co., Va. He was one of the most affluent of the colonial Virginia planters. In his triple capacity as trustee of Alexandria (1754–79),...

Lloyd's

(Encyclopedia)Lloyd's, London insurance underwriting corporation of many separate syndicates; often called Lloyd's of London. Founded in the late 17th cent. by a group of merchants, shipowners, and insurance broker...

La Fontaine, Jean de

(Encyclopedia)La Fontaine, Jean de zhäN də [key], 1621–95, French poet, whose celebrated fables place him among the masters of world literature. He was born at Château-Thierry to a bourgeois family. A restless...

Benton, Thomas Hart, American painter

(Encyclopedia)Benton, Thomas Hart, 1889–1975, American regionalist painter, b. Neosho, Mo.; grandnephew of Sen. Thomas Hart Benton and son of Rep. Maecenas E. Benton. In 1906 and 1907 he attended the Art Institut...

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