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table tennis

(Encyclopedia)table tennis, game played, usually indoors, by two or four players; it is more or less a miniature form of lawn tennis. It is also called Ping-Pong, after the trade name that a manufacturer adopted (c...

casino

(Encyclopedia)casino or cassino both: kəsēˈnō [key]. 1 Card game played with a full deck by two to four players. Its origins are obscure though it probably traces back to the Italian game of Scopa. It is a very...

observatory, orbiting

(Encyclopedia)observatory, orbiting, research satellite designed to study solar radiation, electromagnetic radiation from distant stars, the earth's atmosphere, or the like. Because the atmosphere and other aspects...

Pelotas

(Encyclopedia)Pelotas pəlôˈtəsh [key], city (1991 pop. 291,100), Rio Grande do Sul state, S Brazil, an inland port on the São Gonçalo canal. It is a major export point for the stock-raising region of S Rio Gr...

Pan-American games

(Encyclopedia)Pan-American games, amateur athletic competition among representatives of countries in the Western Hemisphere. The competition, held every four years, follows the organization and eligibility rules of...

Mahan, Dennis Hart

(Encyclopedia)Mahan, Dennis Hart, 1802–71, American soldier and educator, b. New York City; father of Alfred Thayer Mahan. He graduated (1824) from West Point, and from that year until 1871, except for four years...

Freycinet, Charles de

(Encyclopedia)Freycinet, Charles de shärl də frāsēnāˈ [key], 1828–1923, French statesman. A mining engineer, he helped Léon Gambetta organize resistance to the Germans during the Franco-Prussian War (1870�...

homelessness

(Encyclopedia)homelessness, the condition of not having a permanent place to live, widely perceived as a societal problem only beginning in the 1980s. Figures for the number of homeless people in the United States ...

shuffleboard

(Encyclopedia)shuffleboard, sport in which players use cue sticks to push disks onto a scoring diagram at either end of a concrete or terrazzo court. The court is 52 ft (15.85 m) long and 6 ft (1.83 m) wide. The ba...

foreign aid

(Encyclopedia)foreign aid, economic, military, technical, and financial assistance given on an international, and usually intergovernmental level. U.S. foreign aid programs have included at least three different ob...