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McGill University

(Encyclopedia)McGill University, at Montreal, Que., Canada; coeducational; chartered 1821, opened 1829. It was named for James McGill, who left a bequest to establish it. Its real development dates from 1855 when J...

Pococke, Edward

(Encyclopedia)Pococke, Edward pōˈkŏk [key], 1604–91, English Orientalist, b. Oxford. Ordained a priest in 1629, he resided at Aleppo in Syria as a chaplain, where he collected valuable manuscripts and studied ...

British Museum

(Encyclopedia)British Museum, the national repository in London for treasures in science and art. Located in the Bloomsbury section of the city, it has departments of antiquities, prints and drawings, coins and med...

War of 1812

(Encyclopedia)War of 1812, armed conflict between the United States and Great Britain, 1812–15. It followed a period of great stress between the two nations as a result of the treatment of neutral countries by bo...

United Mine Workers of America

(Encyclopedia)United Mine Workers of America (UMW), international labor union formed (1890) by the amalgamation of the National Progressive Union (organized 1888) and the mine locals under the Knights of Labor. It ...

Warburg, Aby

(Encyclopedia)Warburg, Aby (Abraham Moritz Warburg), 1866–1929, German historian of art and culture, b. Hamburg, studied art history in Bonn, Munich, Florence, and Strasbourg, where he received a doctorate with a...

Beijing University

(Encyclopedia)Beijing University or Peking University, at Beijing, China; founded as Metropolitan Univ. 1898, renamed Peking Univ. 1911, absorbed nontechnical departments of Tsinghua Univ. and merged with and moved...

Lynch, Thomas

(Encyclopedia)Lynch, Thomas, 1749–79, political figure in the American Revolution, signer of the Declaration of Independence, known as Thomas Lynch, Jr., b. Prince George Parish, S.C., studied Cambridge and law a...

Latter-day Saints, Church of Jesus Christ of

(Encyclopedia)Latter-day Saints, Church of Jesus Christ of, name of the church founded (1830) at Fayette, N.Y., by Joseph Smith. The headquarters are in Salt Lake City, Utah. Its members, now numbering about 5.7 mi...