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exobiology

(Encyclopedia)exobiology or astrobiology, search for extraterrestrial life within the solar system and throughout the universe. Philosophical speculation that there might be other worlds similar to ours dates back ...

Wilde, Oscar

(Encyclopedia)Wilde, Oscar (Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde), 1854–1900, Irish author and wit, b. Dublin. He is most famous for his sophisticated, brilliantly witty plays, which were the first since the come...

Mitchell, George John

(Encyclopedia)Mitchell, George John, 1933–, U.S. public official, b. Waterville, Maine. An attorney in private and government practice in the 1960s and 1970s, he was a protege of Senator Edmund Muskie. Generally ...

Freedmen's Bureau

(Encyclopedia)Freedmen's Bureau, in U.S. history, a federal agency, formed to aid and protect the newly freed blacks in the South after the Civil War. Established by an act of Mar. 3, 1865, under the name “bureau...

Covenanters

(Encyclopedia)Covenanters kəvənănˈtərz [key], in Scottish history, groups of Presbyterians bound by oath to sustain each other in the defense of their religion. The first formal Covenant was signed in 1557, si...

Waldenses

(Encyclopedia)Waldenses wôldĕnˈsēz [key] or Waldensians, Protestant religious group of medieval origin, called in French Vaudois. They originated in the late 12th cent. as the Poor Men of Lyons, a band organize...

Wolfe, Thomas Clayton

(Encyclopedia)Wolfe, Thomas Clayton, 1900–1938, American novelist, b. Asheville, N.C., grad. Univ. of North Carolina, 1920, M.A. Harvard, 1922. An important 20th-century American novelist, Wolfe wrote four mammot...

XYZ Affair

(Encyclopedia)XYZ Affair, name usually given to an incident (1797–98) in Franco-American diplomatic relations. The United States had in 1778 entered into an alliance with France, but after the outbreak of the Fre...

Erie, Lake

(Encyclopedia)Erie, Lake, 9,940 sq mi (25,745 sq km), 241 mi (388 km) long and from 30 to 57 mi (48–92 km) wide, bordered on the N by S Ont., Canada, on the E by W N.Y., on the S by NW Pa. and N Ohio, and on the ...

beer, alcoholic beverage

(Encyclopedia)beer, alcoholic beverage made by brewing and fermenting cereals, especially malted barley, usually with the addition of hops as a flavoring agent and stabilizer. One of the oldest of alcoholic beverag...