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Biddle, Nicholas, American financier

(Encyclopedia)Biddle, Nicholas, 1786–1844, American financier, b. Philadelphia. After holding important posts in the American legations in France and England, he returned to the United States in 1807 and became o...

Billings, John Shaw

(Encyclopedia)Billings, John Shaw, 1838–1913, American surgeon and librarian, b. Indiana. In the Civil War he was medical inspector of the Army of the Potomac. After the war he was given charge of the Surgeon Gen...

Raleigh

(Encyclopedia)Raleigh rôlˈē, rälˈē [key], city (1990 pop. 207,951), state capital, and seat of Wake co., central N.C.; the site was selected for the capital in 1788, and the city was laid out and inc. 1792. I...

spoils system

(Encyclopedia)spoils system, in U.S. history, the practice of giving appointive offices to loyal members of the party in power. The name supposedly derived from a speech by Senator William Learned Marcy in which he...

Banat

(Encyclopedia)Banat bäˈnät [key], region extending across W Romania, NE Serbia, and S Hungary. The term banat originally referred to any of several frontier provinces of Hungary and Croatia that were ruled by ba...

Canadian Prime Ministers since Confederation (table)

(Encyclopedia)Canadian Prime Ministers since Confederation ...

New Orleans

(Encyclopedia)New Orleans ôrˈlēənz –lənz, ôrlēnzˈ [key], city (2006 pop. 187,525), coextensive with Orleans parish, SE La., between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, 107 mi (172 km) by water f...

Foucault, Michel

(Encyclopedia)Foucault, Michel, 1926–84, French philosopher and historian. He was professor at the Collège de France (1970–84). He is renowned for historical studies that reveal the sometimes morally disturbin...

Welty, Eudora

(Encyclopedia)Welty, Eudora, 1909–2001, American author, b. Jackson, Miss., grad. Univ. of Wisconsin, 1929. One of the important American regional writers of the 20th cent. and one of the finest short-story write...

Duhamel, Georges

(Encyclopedia)Duhamel, Georges zhôrzh düämĕlˈ [key], 1884–1966, French novelist and playwright. From Duhamel's experience as a surgeon during World War I came Vie des martyrs (1917, tr. The New Book of Marty...