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Lane, Franklin Knight

(Encyclopedia)Lane, Franklin Knight, 1864–1921, U.S. Secretary of the Interior (1913–20), b. near Charlottetown, P.E.I., Canada. Raised in California, he later studied law and practiced in San Francisco, where ...

Matthiessen, F. O.

(Encyclopedia)Matthiessen, F. O. (Francis Otto Matthiessen) măthˈĭsĕn [key], 1902–50, American critic, b. Pasadena, Calif., grad. Yale Univ., 1923, B.Litt., Oxford, 1925, Ph.D., Harvard, 1927. A Rhodes schola...

Tewodros II

(Encyclopedia)Tewodros II or Theodore II, 1818–68, emperor of Ethiopia (1855–68), originally named Kasa or Lij Kasa. He was a commoner and a bold and clever warrior. He seized control of his native province, Ka...

Connecticut Wits

(Encyclopedia)Connecticut Wits or Hartford Wits, an informal association of Yale students and rectors formed in the late 18th cent. At first they were devoted to the modernization of the Yale curriculum and declari...

governor, in government

(Encyclopedia)governor, chief executive of a dependent or component unit in a political system. In the United States, a governor is the chief executive of each state and is elected by the people of the state. In th...

transuranium elements

(Encyclopedia)transuranium elements, in chemistry, radioactive elements with atomic numbers greater than that of uranium (at. no. 92). All the transuranium elements of the actinide series were discovered as synthet...

Longworth, Alice Lee Roosevelt

(Encyclopedia)Longworth, Alice Lee Roosevelt, 1884–1980, American socialite, b. New York City. The only child of Theodore Roosevelt and his first wife, Alice Hathaway Lee, she was a teenager when her father assum...

Lease, Mary Elizabeth

(Encyclopedia)Lease, Mary Elizabeth, 1853–1933, American agrarian reformer and temperance advocate, b. Ridgeway, Pa. The daughter of an Irish political refugee, she first gained recognition for a series of lectur...

Cockran, William Bourke

(Encyclopedia)Cockran, William Bourke kŏkˈrən [key], 1854–1923, American political leader, b. Co. Sligo, Ireland. He emigrated to New York City at the age of 17 and in 1876 was admitted to the bar. At first op...

Godefroy

(Encyclopedia)Godefroy gôdfrwäˈ [key], family of French scholars. Denis Godefroy, 1549–1622, was a Calvinist who fled (c.1580) to Geneva and later became a professor of law at Strasbourg and Heidelberg. He com...