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bellows

(Encyclopedia)bellows, expansible, gas-tight chamber used to pump or store a gas. One of the simplest and most familiar types of bellows is the manual one used for providing a forced draft to a fire. The expansible...

Vigilius

(Encyclopedia)Vigilius vĭjĭlˈēəs [key], pope (537–55), a Roman; successor of St. Silverius. Empress Theodora exiled Silverius and made Vigilius pope in the expectation that he would compromise with the Monop...

shell money

(Encyclopedia)shell money, medium of exchange consisting of shells, the most widely distributed type of ancient currency. Shells are particularly useful as money because they may be strung in long strips of proport...

cowbird

(Encyclopedia)cowbird, New World bird of the blackbird and oriole (hangnest) family. The male eastern, or common, cowbird is glossy black, about 8 in. (20 cm) long, with a brown head and breast; the female is gray....

Chouans

(Encyclopedia)Chouans sho͞oˈənz, Fr. shwäN [key] [Norman Fr.,=owls], peasants of W France who rose against the French Revolutionary government in 1793. One of their first leaders was Jean Cottereau, traditional...

Coke, Thomas

(Encyclopedia)Coke, Thomas ko͝ok, kōk [key], 1747–1814, English clergyman and early bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America. After taking orders (1777) in the Church of England, he openly allied him...

Genzel, Reinhard

(Encyclopedia)Genzel, Reinhard, 1952–, German astrophysicist, Ph.D. Univ. of Bonn, 1978. He was on the faculty at the Univ. of California, Berkeley, from 1980 to 1986, when he left to become director at the Max P...

Amana Church Society

(Encyclopedia)Amana Church Society əmănˈə [key], corporate name of a group of seven small villages in E central Iowa, clustered around the Iowa River NW of Iowa City; settled 1855 by members of the Ebenezer Soc...

Pond, Peter

(Encyclopedia)Pond, Peter, 1740–1807, American fur trader and explorer of the Old Northwest, b. Milford, Conn. He served in the French and Indian War and in 1765 became a western trader from Detroit. He later rem...

Prendergast, Maurice Brazil

(Encyclopedia)Prendergast, Maurice Brazil, 1859–1924, American painter, b. St. John's, N.L., Canada, educated in Boston. In 1886 he worked his way to Europe on a cattle boat and studied in Paris at Julian's and a...