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Carlyle, Jane Baillie Welsh

(Encyclopedia)Carlyle, Jane Baillie Welsh, 1801–66, English woman of letters; wife of Thomas Carlyle, whom she married in 1826. She possessed a genius for letter writing, manifest in the volumes of her published ...

Mitford, Nancy

(Encyclopedia)Mitford, Nancy, 1904–73, English novelist and biographer, b. London. She managed a London bookshop during World War II and moved to Paris in 1945. Mitford and her five celebrated and politically div...

Knossos

(Encyclopedia)Knossos or Cnossus both: nŏsˈəs [key], ancient city of Crete, on the north coast, near modern Iráklion. The site was occupied long before 3000 b.c., and it was the center of an important Bronze Ag...

Saxe, Maurice, comte de

(Encyclopedia)Saxe, Maurice, comte de mōrēsˈ kôNt də säks [key], 1696–1750, marshal of France, one of the greatest generals of his age. He was the illegitimate son of Augustus II of Poland and Saxony and Co...

Sennacherib

(Encyclopedia)Sennacherib sĕnăkˈərĭb [key] or Senherib, d. 681 b.c., king of Assyria (705–681 b.c.). The son of Sargon, Sennacherib spent most of his reign fighting to maintain the empire established by his ...

Dewey, George

(Encyclopedia)Dewey, George do͞oˈē, dyo͞oˈ– [key], 1837–1917, American admiral, hero of the battle of Manila, b. Montpelier, Vt., grad. Annapolis, 1858. He saw active duty in the Civil War and rose in the ...

direct action

(Encyclopedia)direct action, theory and methods used by certain labor groups to fight employers, capitalist institutions, and the state by direct economic action, without using intermediate organizations. Political...

programmed instruction

(Encyclopedia)programmed instruction, method of presenting new subject matter to students in a graded sequence of controlled steps. Students work through the programmed material by themselves at their own speed and...

Frankfurter, Felix

(Encyclopedia)Frankfurter, Felix, 1882–1965, American jurist, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1939–62), b. Vienna, Austria. He emigrated to the United States as a boy and later received (1906) his ...

Houdini, Harry

(Encyclopedia)Houdini, Harry ho͞odēˈnē [key], 1874–1926, American magician and writer, b. Budapest, Hungary, as Erik Weisz, later modified to Ehrich Weiss; his stage name honors the French magician Houdin. By...