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Cline, Patsy

(Encyclopedia)Cline, Patsy, 1932–63, American country singer, b. Winchester, Va., as Virginia Patterson Hensley. She began singing locally while still in her teens and signed her first recording contract in 1953,...

cline

(Encyclopedia)cline, in biology, any gradual change in a particular characteristic of a population of organisms from one end of the geographical range of the population to the other. Gradients of characteristics us...

Nelson, Willie

(Encyclopedia)Nelson, Willie, 1933–, American country singer, guitarist, and songwriter, b. Abbott, Tex. Nelson began playing professionally at 10 and joined a western swing band as a teenager. In the 1960s he mo...

Grand Ole Opry

(Encyclopedia)Grand Ole Opry, weekly American radio program featuring live country and western music. The nation's oldest continuous radio sho...

Wiggin, Kate Douglas (Smith)

(Encyclopedia)Wiggin, Kate Douglas (Smith), 1856–1923, American author and educator, b. Philadelphia. In San Francisco she organized the first free kindergartens on the Pacific coast (1878) and with her sister es...

complementarity principle

(Encyclopedia)complementarity principle, physical principle enunciated by Niels Bohr in 1928 stating that certain physical concepts are complementary. If two concepts are complementary, an experiment that clearly i...

Prescott, William Hickling

(Encyclopedia)Prescott, William Hickling, 1796–1859, American historian, b. Salem, Mass. He entered his father's law office, but was compelled by a serious eye injury to abandon law. He received medical attention...

Great Basin

(Encyclopedia)Great Basin, semiarid, N section of the Basin and Range province, the intermontane plateau region of W United States and N Mexico. Lying mostly in Nevada and extending into California, Oregon, Idaho, ...

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