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Fire Island

(Encyclopedia)Fire Island, barrier beach, 32 mi (52 km) long, off the south shore of Long Island, SE N.Y., separating Great South Bay from the Atlantic Ocean. Robert Moses State Park is at its west end. Once access...

Francken

(Encyclopedia)Francken frängk [key], family of Flemish painters in the 16th and 17th cent. Prominent members were Hieronymus Francken, c.1540–1610, student of Frans Floris, who worked mainly in Antwerp in a clas...

Hebrews, book of the New Testament

(Encyclopedia)Hebrews, an anonymous New Testament homily with closing greetings normally associated with the letter genre, written before c.a.d. 96. It is addressed to Jewish Christians who were being pressured to ...

Unification Church

(Encyclopedia)Unification Church, church founded (1954) in South Korea by Sun Myung Moon; officially the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification for World Christianity. Moon moved to the United States in 1971. ...

Adrogué

(Encyclopedia)Adrogué älmēränˈtā [key], city, Buenos Aires prov., E Argentina. It was settled in 1873 by families fleeing a yellow fever epidemic in the city of Buenos Aires. It w...

Wanamaker, John

(Encyclopedia)Wanamaker, John wŏnˈəmāˌkər [key], 1838–1922, American merchant, b. Philadelphia. He went into the men's clothing business in Philadelphia with Nathan Brown, his brother-in-law, in 1861. The f...

bighorn, in zoology

(Encyclopedia)bighorn or Rocky Mountain sheep, wild sheep, Ovis canadensis, of W North America, formerly plentiful in mountains from SW Canada to N Mexico. Indiscriminate hunting, disease, and scarcity of food enor...

bear, in zoology

(Encyclopedia)bear, large mammal of the family Ursidae in the order Carnivora, found almost exclusively in the Northern Hemisphere. Bears have large heads, bulky bodies, massive hindquarters, short, powerful limbs,...

catechu

(Encyclopedia)catechu kătˈəcho͞o [key] or cutch, extract from the heartwood of Acacia catechu, a leguminous tree of the pulse family, native to India and Myanmar. Catechu is a fast brown dye used for various sh...

water moccasin

(Encyclopedia)water moccasin or cottonmouth, highly venomous snake, Ancistrodon piscivorus, of the swamps and bayous of the S United States. Like the closely related copperhead, it is a pit viper and has a heat-sen...