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National Rifle Association of America

(Encyclopedia)National Rifle Association of America (NRA), group founded (1871) to promote shooting, hunting, firearm safety, and wildlife conservation. The NRA has more than 3 million members. The association spon...

Taylor, Frederick Winslow

(Encyclopedia)Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 1856–1915, American industrial engineer, b. Germantown, Pa., grad. Stevens Institute of Technology, 1883. He was called the father of scientific management. His management...

Sharp, Granville

(Encyclopedia)Sharp, Granville, 1735–1813, English reformer, scholar, and abolitionist. In 1772 he won a case establishing the principle that any slave would become free upon reaching British land. Sharp continue...

Adam and Eve, Life of

(Encyclopedia)Adam and Eve, Life of, early Jewish work included in the collection known as the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. It was probably written in Hebrew between 100 b.c. and a.d. 100. Based on the Old Testame...

Cooke, Jay

(Encyclopedia)Cooke, Jay, 1821–1905, American financier, b. Sandusky, Ohio. He founded Jay Cooke & Company, which marketed the huge Civil War loans of the federal government. He later turned to railroad bonds...

Corelli, Marie

(Encyclopedia)Corelli, Marie məkīˈ [key], 1855–1924, English novelist. Her popular, highly moralistic books, written in flamboyant, pretentious prose, include A Romance of Two Worlds (1886), Thelma (1887), Bar...

Craddock, Charles Egbert

(Encyclopedia)Craddock, Charles Egbert, pseud. of Mary Noailles Murfree nō-īˈ [key], 1850–1922, American novelist, b. near Murfreesboro, Tenn. She wrote her best works about the mountain people of Tennessee, m...

Christian Endeavor

(Encyclopedia)Christian Endeavor, association in evangelical Protestant Churches for strengthening spiritual life and promoting Christian activities among its members. The first Young People's Society of Christian ...

Clarkson, Thomas

(Encyclopedia)Clarkson, Thomas, 1760–1846, English abolitionist. He devoted most of his life to agitation against slavery, and the voluminous information that he gathered on the slave trade helped to influence Pa...

Goldie, Sir George

(Encyclopedia)Goldie, Sir George (George Goldie Taubman), 1846–1925, British colonial administrator, b. Isle of Man. Goldie entered the Niger River trade in the 1870s, and his company soon dominated trade on the ...

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