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Thomson, Sir Charles Wyville

(Encyclopedia)Thomson, Sir Charles Wyville, 1830–82, Scottish naturalist, noted as a marine biologist and deep-sea explorer. He participated in three deep-sea dredging expeditions (1868–70) and obtained evidenc...

Sherrington, Sir Charles Scott

(Encyclopedia)Sherrington, Sir Charles Scott, 1857–1952, English neurophysiologist, educated at Cambridge. He was professor of physiology at the universities of Liverpool and London and at Oxford. He contributed ...

Big Ben

(Encyclopedia)Big Ben, the bell in the Parliament tower (Westminster Palace), London, England. It was named for Sir Benjamin Hall, commissioner of works when the bell was installed in 1856. The name is often used t...

Hood, John Bell

(Encyclopedia)Hood, John Bell, 1831–79, Confederate general in the American Civil War, b. Owingsville, Ky. He resigned from the army (Apr., 1861) and entered the Confederate service 1862. He fought in the Peninsu...

Bell, Cool Papa

(Encyclopedia)Bell, Cool Papa (James Thomas Bell), 1903–91, African-American baseball player, b. Starkville, Miss. A centerfielder and switch hitter as well as one of the fastest baserunners in history, he played...

Bell, John Joy

(Encyclopedia)Bell, John Joy, 1871–1934, Scottish author. He wrote a number of humorous stories and plays, frequently in dialect, of life in Glasgow, but is best remembered for his story Wee Macgreegor (1902). ...

bell, musical instrument

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Bell bell, in music, a percussion instrument consisting of a hollow metal vessel, often cup-shaped with an outward-flaring rim, damped at one end and set into vibration by a blow from a clappe...

Bell, Alexander Graham

(Encyclopedia)Bell, Alexander Graham, 1847–1922, American scientist, inventor of the telephone, b. Edinburgh, Scotland, educated at the Univ. of Edinburgh and University College, London; son of Alexander Melville...

Bell, Alexander Melville

(Encyclopedia)Bell, Alexander Melville, 1819–1905, Scottish-American educator, b. Edinburgh. Bell worked out a physiological or visible alphabet, with symbols that were intended to represent every sound of the hu...

Townes, Charles Hard

(Encyclopedia)Townes, Charles Hard, 1915–2015, American physicist and educator, b. Greenville, S.C. He was educated at Furman Univ., Duke, and the California Institute of Technology (Ph.D., 1939), was on the tech...