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London, Jack

(Encyclopedia)London, Jack (John Griffith London), 1876–1916, American author, b. San Francisco. The illegitimate son of William Chaney, an astrologer, and Flora Wellman, a seamstress and medium, he had a poverty...

Maastricht

(Encyclopedia)Maastricht mäsˈtrĭkhtˌ [key], city (1994 pop. 118,102), capital of Limburg prov., SE Netherlands, on the Maas (Meuse) River and on the Albert Canal system. It is an important rail and river transp...

National Archives

(Encyclopedia)National Archives, official depository for records of the U.S. federal government, established in 1934 by an act of Congress. Although displeasure concerning the method of keeping national records was...

le Carré, John

(Encyclopedia)le Carré, John lə kärāˈ [key], pseud. of David John Moore Cornwell, 1931–2020, English novelist. He was a tutor at Eton College (1956–58), and subsequently worked for the British foreign serv...

Ray, Satyajit

(Encyclopedia)Ray, Satyajit sätyäˈjĭt rī, rā [key], 1921–92, Indian film director, b. Calcutta (now Kolkata). His subtle, austere, and delicately lyrical films made him one of the outstanding filmmakers of ...

Thomas, Norman Mattoon

(Encyclopedia)Thomas, Norman Mattoon, 1884–1968, American socialist leader, b. Marion, Ohio; grad. Princeton (1905), Union Theological Seminary (1911). He served as pastor of several Presbyterian churches and did...

premenstrual syndrome

(Encyclopedia)premenstrual syndrome (PMS), any of various symptoms experienced by women of childbearing age in the days immediately preceding menstruation. It is most common in women in their twenties and thirties....

Hume, David

(Encyclopedia)Hume, David hyo͞om [key], 1711–76, Scottish philosopher and historian. Educated at Edinburgh, he lived (1734–37) in France, where he finished his first philosophical work, A Treatise of Human Nat...

pentameter

(Encyclopedia)pentameter pĕntămˈətər [key] [Gr.,=measure of five], in prosody, a line to be scanned in five feet (see versification). The third line of Thomas Nashe's “Spring” is in pentameter: “Cold dot...

philosophy of science

(Encyclopedia)philosophy of science, branch of philosophy that emerged as an autonomous discipline in the 19th cent., especially through the work of Auguste Comte, J. S. Mill, and William Whewell. Several of the is...