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guitar

(Encyclopedia)guitar, musical instrument related to the lute, modern guitars normally having six strings that are plucked with the fingers or strummed with a pick. Earlier versions had pairs of strings like the lut...

Juan Carlos I

(Encyclopedia)Juan Carlos I hwän kärˈlōs [key], 1938–, king of Spain (1975–2014), b. Rome. The grandson of Alfonso XIII, he was educated in Switzerland and in Spain. Placed by his father, Don Juan de Borbó...

California, University of

(Encyclopedia)California, University of, at ten campuses, main campus at Berkeley; land-grant and state supported; coeducational; chartered 1868, opened 1869 when it took over the College of California (est. 1853 a...

Pelosi, Nancy Patricia

(Encyclopedia)Pelosi, Nancy Patricia pəlōˈsē [key], 1940–, U.S. congresswoman, Speaker of the U.S. House of ...

Pinzón, Martín Alonso

(Encyclopedia)Pinzón, Martín Alonso märtēnˈ älōnˈsō pēnthōnˈ [key] d.1493, Spanish navigator. The commander of the Pinta on Columbus's first voyage to the New World in 1492, he was already an experience...

Walker, William

(Encyclopedia)Walker, William, 1824–60, American filibuster in Nicaragua, b. Nashville, Tenn. Walker, a qualified doctor, a lawyer, and a journalist by the time he was 24, sought a more adventurous career. After ...

Weinberger, Caspar Willard

(Encyclopedia)Weinberger, Caspar Willard wīnˈbûrgər [key], 1917–2006, U.S. government official, U.S. secretary of defense (1981–87), b. San Francisco, grad. Harvard (1938), Harvard Law School (1941). After ...

Spanish civil war

(Encyclopedia)Spanish civil war, 1936–39, conflict in which the conservative and traditionalist forces in Spain rose against and finally overthrew the second Spanish republic. For Germany and Italy the Span...

Arendt, Hannah

(Encyclopedia)Arendt, Hannah hänˈä ärˈənt [key], 1906–75, German-American political theorist, b. Hanover, Germany, B.A. Königsberg, 1924, Ph.D. Heidelberg, 1928. In 1925 she met Martin Heidegger, who great...

Lieberson, Peter

(Encyclopedia)Lieberson, Peter. 1946–2011, American composer, b. New York City. Lieberson studied composition at Columbia, where his teachers included modernists Milton Babbitt and Charles Wuorinen. While in scho...