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Verdi, Giuseppe

(Encyclopedia)Verdi, Giuseppe vârˈdē, Ital. jo͞ozĕpˈpā vĕrˈdē [key], 1813–1901, foremost Italian composer of opera, b. Le Roncole. Verdi, the son of an innkeeper, showed a precocious talent for the orga...

Constable, John

(Encyclopedia)Constable, John, 1776–1837, English painter, b. Suffolk. Constable and Turner were the leading figures in English landscape painting of the 19th cent. Constable became famous for his landscapes of S...

West, Benjamin

(Encyclopedia)West, Benjamin, 1738–1820, American historical painter who worked in England. He was born in Springfield, Pa., in a house that is now a memorial museum at Swarthmore College. After some instruction ...

Brooks, Garth

(Encyclopedia) Brooks, Garth , 1962- , American country singer/songwriter, b. Luba, OK, Oklahoma State Univ. (B.A., 1984). Brooks's mother was a country singer who pe...

aircraft carrier

(Encyclopedia)aircraft carrier, ship designed to carry aircraft and to permit takeoff and landing of planes. The carrier's distinctive features are a upper deck (flight deck) that is flat and sometimes sloped to fu...

Hemingway, Ernest

(Encyclopedia)Hemingway, Ernest, 1899–1961, American novelist and short-story writer, b. Oak Park, Ill. one of the great American writers of the 20th cent. Hemingway's fiction usually focuses on people living ...

Edward VIII

(Encyclopedia)Edward VIII, 1894–1972, king of Great Britain and Ireland (1936), known in later years as the duke of Windsor; eldest son of George V. He attended the naval colleges at Osborne and Dartmouth and Mag...

Cohen, Leonard Norman

(Encyclopedia)Cohen, Leonard Norman, 1934–2016, Canadian songwriter, singer, and poet, b. Montreal, B.A. McGill Univ., 1955. He initially wrote poetry, publishing his first collection, Let Us Compare Mythologies,...

De Lancey

(Encyclopedia)De Lancey də lănˈsē [key], family of political leaders, soldiers, and merchants prominent in colonial New York. Étienne De Lancey or Stephen De Lancey, 1663–1741, b. Caen, France, was among the...

Williamsburg

(Encyclopedia)Williamsburg, historic city (1990 pop. 11,530), seat of James City co., SE Va., on a peninsula between the James and York rivers; settled 1632 as Middle Plantation, laid out and renamed 1699, inc. 172...