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Weirton

(Encyclopedia)Weirton, city (1990 pop. 22,124), Brooke and Hancock counties, NW W.Va., in the industrial Northern Panhandle, on the Ohio River; settled 1790s, inc. 1947. Its industries include coal mining and the m...

McGuinness, Martin

(Encyclopedia)McGuinness, Martin (James Martin Pacelli McGuinness), 1950–2017, Northern Irish political leader, b. Derry. He joined the Irish Republican Army (IRA) as a young man and was active in both its regula...

Hercules cluster

(Encyclopedia)Hercules cluster, giant globular star cluster in the northern constellation Hercules; cataloged as M13 or NGC 6205. The cluster is just visible to the naked eye and is the best example of a globular c...

Hamites

(Encyclopedia)Hamites, African people of caucasoid descent who occupy the Horn of Africa (chiefly Somalia and Ethiopia), the western Sahara, and parts of Algeria and Tunisia. They are believed to be the original se...

taiga

(Encyclopedia)taiga tīˈgə [key], northern coniferous-forest belt of Eurasia, bordered on the north by the treeless tundra and on the south by the steppe. This vast belt, comprising about one third of the forest ...

Tolentino

(Encyclopedia)Tolentino tōlāntēˈnō [key], town (1991 pop. 18,346), in the Marche, central Italy, on the Chienti River. In 1797, Pope Pius VI signed at Tolentino a humiliating treaty with Napoleon Bonaparte, un...

Vetch, Samuel

(Encyclopedia)Vetch, Samuel, 1668–1732, British soldier and colonial administrator, b. Scotland. He settled in Albany, N.Y., in 1699 and became a trader with the Native Americans. Author of a plan to capture Fren...

Fitzpatrick, Benjamin

(Encyclopedia)Fitzpatrick, Benjamin, 1802–69, governor of Alabama (1841–45), b. Greene co., Ga. As a youth, he moved to Alabama (then still part of Mississippi Territory), where after two terms as governor, he ...

Bache Peninsula

(Encyclopedia)Bache Peninsula bāch [key], on E Ellesmere Island, in N Nunavut Territory, Canada. U.S. explorer Robert Peary proved this area to be a peninsula when he explored (1898) the region. From 1926 to 1933 ...

Back, Sir George

(Encyclopedia)Back, Sir George, 1796–1878, British explorer in N Canada. He accompanied Sir John Franklin on arctic expeditions in 1818, 1819–22, and 1824–27. On an expedition (1833–35) to search for the mi...