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Reading, cities, United States

(Encyclopedia)Reading. rĕdˈĭng [key] 1 Town (1990 pop. 22,539), Middlesex co., NE Mass., a suburb of Boston; settled 1639, set off from Lynn and inc. 1644. Printing is the major industry. A 17th-century tavern i...

Shays's Rebellion

(Encyclopedia)Shays's Rebellion, 1786–87, armed insurrection by farmers in W Massachusetts against the state government. Debt-ridden farmers, struck by the economic depression that followed the American Revolutio...

chansons de geste

(Encyclopedia)chansons de geste shäNsôNˈ də zhĕst [key] [Fr.,=songs of deeds], a group of epic poems of medieval France written from the 11th through the 13th cent. Varying in length from 1,000 to 20,000 lines...

Fahrenheit temperature scale

(Encyclopedia)Fahrenheit temperature scale fârˈənhītˌ [key], temperature scale in which the temperature difference between two reference temperatures, the melting and boiling points of water, is divided into 1...

Pentagon Papers

(Encyclopedia)Pentagon Papers, government study of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. Commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara in June, 1967, the 47-volume, top secret study covered the period from ...

Bingham, George Caleb

(Encyclopedia)Bingham, George Caleb, 1811–79, American painter and politician, b. Augusta co., Va. His family moved (1819) to Missouri, which was the site of most of Bingham's activities. In 1837 he studied for a...

Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (table)

(Encyclopedia)Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel ...

Arnold, Benedict

(Encyclopedia)Arnold, Benedict, 1741–1801, American Revolutionary general and traitor, b. Norwich, Conn. As a youth he served for a time in the colonial militia in the French and Indian Wars. He later became a pr...

Lviv

(Encyclopedia)Lviv ləvēˈo͞o, ləvēfˈ [key], Rus. Lvov, Pol. Lwów, Ger. Lemberg, city (1989 pop. 791,000), capital of Lviv region, W Ukraine, at the watershed of the Western Bug and Dniester rivers and in the...

Sandinistas

(Encyclopedia)Sandinistas, members of a left-wing Nicaraguan political party, the Sandinist National Liberation Front (FSLN). The group, named for Augusto Cesar Sandino, a former insurgent leader, was formed in 196...