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Brown, John, Scottish essayist

(Encyclopedia)Brown, John, 1810–82, Scottish essayist. He was a physician. His writing was collected in Horae Subsecivae (3 vol., 1858–82), which included his unique picture of a dog, Rab and His Friends (1859)...

geometric problems of antiquity

(Encyclopedia)geometric problems of antiquity, three famous problems involving elementary geometric constructions with straight edge and compass, conjectured by the ancient Greeks to be impossible but not proved to...

gavotte

(Encyclopedia)gavotte gəvŏtˈ [key], originally a peasant dance of the Gavots in upper Dauphiné, France. A type of circle dance characterized by lively, skipping steps, it was introduced at the court of Louis XI...

Oxford, Edward de Vere, 17th earl of

(Encyclopedia)Oxford, Edward de Vere, 17th earl of, 1550–1604, English poet, b. Castle Heddingham, Essex, educated at Queens' and St. John's colleges, Cambridge. He traveled in Italy, acted in and produced plays,...

Opie, John

(Encyclopedia)Opie, John, 1761–1807, English portrait and historical painter. Opie showed a remarkable talent as a young man. He became the protégé of the poet John Wolcot, and enjoyed a brief popularity as a f...

Formulas for Various Areas (table)

(Encyclopedia)Formulas for Various Areas 1 The abbreviations used are: b = base (length of any side of a plane figure); a = altitude (perpendicular distance from the farthest point of the figure to t...

ellipse

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Ellipse ellipse, closed plane curve consisting of all points for which the sum of the distances between a point on the curve and two fixed points (foci) is the same. It is the conic section fo...

Kara Sea

(Encyclopedia)Kara Sea kärˈə [key], Rus. Karskoye More, shallow section of the Arctic Ocean, off N Russia, between Severnaya Zemlya and Novaya Zemlya. It has an average depth of 420 ft (128 m). It receives the O...

Brooks Range

(Encyclopedia)Brooks Range, mountain chain, northernmost part of the Rocky Mts., extending about 600 mi (970 km) from east to west across N Alaska. Mt. Chamberlin, 9,020 ft (2,749 m) high, near the Canadian border,...

Prudhoe Bay

(Encyclopedia)Prudhoe Bay, inlet of the Beaufort Sea and Arctic Ocean, N Alaska, in the Alaska North Slope region, east of the Colville River delta. In 1968 one of the largest oil reserves in North America was disc...