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unemployment insurance

(Encyclopedia)unemployment insurance, insurance against loss of wages during the time that an able-bodied worker is involuntarily unemployed. The goal of such insurance is to provide a minimal livelihood to unemplo...

Francis, French prince, duke of Alençon and Anjou

(Encyclopedia)Francis, 1554–84, French prince, duke of Alençon and Anjou; youngest son of King Henry II of France and Catherine de' Medici. Although ill-shapen, pockmarked, and endowed with a curiously formed no...

Hepburn, Audrey

(Encyclopedia)Hepburn, Audrey, 1929–93, British film actress, b. Brussels as Audrey Kathleen Ruston. The daughter of an English banker and a Dutch baroness, she and her mother lived in the Netherlands during the ...

Dumouriez, Charles François

(Encyclopedia)Dumouriez, Charles François shärl fräNswäˈ dümo͞o-rēāˈ [key], 1739–1823, French general in the French Revolutionary Wars. After fighting in the Seven Years War, he was employed by King Lou...

Gueux

(Encyclopedia)Gueux gö [key] [Fr.,=beggars], 16th-century Dutch revolutionary party. In 1566 more than 2,000 Dutch and Flemish nobles and burghers (both Protestants and Roman Catholics) signed a document—the so-...

Pérez, Antonio

(Encyclopedia)Pérez, Antonio äntôˈnyō pāˈrĕth [key], b. 1534 or 1539, d. 1611, Spanish politician. Ambitious and unscrupulous, he became secretary to King Philip II and was, with the princesa de Éboli, a c...

Cateau-Cambrésis, Treaty of

(Encyclopedia)Cateau-Cambrésis, Treaty of kätōˈ-käNbrāzēˈ [key], 1559, concluded at Le Cateau, France, by representatives of Henry II of France, Philip II of Spain, and Elizabeth I of England. It put an end...

Rhine

(Encyclopedia)Rhine rīn [key], Du. Rijn, Fr. Rhin, Ger. Rhein, Lat. Rhenus, principal river of Europe, c.820 mi (1,320 km) long. It rises in the Swiss Alps and flows generally north, passing through or bordering o...

European Space Agency

(Encyclopedia)European Space Agency (ESA), multinational agency dedicated to the promotion, for exclusively peaceful purposes, of cooperation among European states in space research and technology. Member states in...

Dutch Wars

(Encyclopedia)Dutch Wars, series of conflicts between the English and Dutch during the mid to late 17th cent. The wars had their roots in the Anglo-Dutch commercial rivalry, although the last of the three wars was ...