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Harding, Chester

(Encyclopedia)Harding, Chester, 1792–1866, American portrait painter, b. Conway, Mass. He worked as an itinerant portrait painter long enough to enable him to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Design. Later he...

Mason, Lowell

(Encyclopedia)Mason, Lowell, 1792–1872, American composer and music educator, b. Medfield, Mass. While working as a bank clerk in Savannah, Ga., he helped compile an anthology that was published as The Boston Han...

Sheppard, Jack

(Encyclopedia)Sheppard, Jack, 1702–24, English criminal. Raised in a workhouse, he ran away with Bess Lyon, known as Edgeworth Bess, who, with another girl known as Poll Maggott, incited him to a short but specta...

Hackney

(Encyclopedia)Hackney, inner borough of Greater London, SE England, on the Lea River. Clothing manufacture (in Hackney) and printing and furniture making (in Shoredit...

Hardin, John

(Encyclopedia)Hardin, John, 1753–92, Native American fighter, b. Fauquier co., Va. He served in Lord Dunmore's War (1774) and was a noted member of Daniel Morgan's riflemen during the Revolution. His services at ...

Heckman, James Joseph

(Encyclopedia)Heckman, James Joseph, 1944– American economist, b. Chicago, Ill., Ph.D. Princeton, 1971. He has taught at the Univ. of Chicago since 1973. Heckman shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Scienc...

Kirkwood gaps

(Encyclopedia)Kirkwood gaps, regions in the asteroid belt within which few asteroids are found. Astronomer Daniel Kirkwood first observed (1886) that few asteroids had an orbital period close to 1⁄2, 1⁄3, or 2�...

Smith, Hamilton Othanel

(Encyclopedia)Smith, Hamilton Othanel, 1931–, American biologist, b. New York City, M.D. Johns Hopkins, 1956. A professor at the Univ. of Michigan and Johns Hopkins, Smith worked with Daniel Nathans and Werner Ar...

Webster

(Encyclopedia)Webster, town (1990 pop. 16,196), Worcester co., S Mass., near the Conn. line; settled c.1713, set off from Dudley and Oxford and inc. 1832. The chief manufactures are clothing, lenses, fabrics, and t...

Selkirk, Alexander

(Encyclopedia)Selkirk, Alexander sĕlˈkərk [key], 1676–1721, Scottish sailor whose adventures suggested to Daniel Defoe the story of Robinson Crusoe (1719). In 1704, as a sailing master, Selkirk quarreled with ...