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inquest

(Encyclopedia)inquest, in law, a body of men appointed by law to inquire into certain matters. The term also refers to the inquiry itself as well as to the findings of the inquiry. The most usual form of inquest to...

Kalam, A. P. J. Abdul

(Encyclopedia)Kalam, A. P. J. Abdul (Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam), 1921–2015, Indian scientist and political leader, studied St. Joseph's College, Tiruchirappalli (grad. 1954), Madras Institute of Technol...

Doubleday, Abner

(Encyclopedia)Doubleday, Abner, 1819–93, once credited as originator of baseball and Union general in the American Civil War, b. Saratoga co., N.Y., grad. West Point, 1842. The A. G. Mills commission (1905–8) i...

Contreras

(Encyclopedia)Contreras kōntrāˈräs [key], village, central Mexico, near Mexico City, site of an important battle (Aug. 19–20, 1847) of the Mexican War. Gen. Winfield Scott, continuing his advance after the ba...

Cockburn, Sir Alexander James Edmund

(Encyclopedia)Cockburn, Sir Alexander James Edmund, 1802–80, British jurist. He was called to the bar in 1829, and a volume of reports on election cases (1832) brought him into national prominence as a trial lawy...

Eyadèma, Gnassingbé

(Encyclopedia)Eyadèma, Gnassingbé nyäsēmˈbā āyädāˈmə [key], 1937–2005, president of Togo (1967–2005). His original given name was Étienne, which he africanized in 1974. He served in the French army ...

Pleven

(Encyclopedia)Pleven plĕvˈnə [key], city (1993 pop. 130,354), N Bulgaria. A commercial center for a fertile agricultural region, it has food-processing industries and manufactures cotton textiles, cement, and wo...

Prem Tinsulanonda

(Encyclopedia)Prem Tinsulanonda, 1920–2019, Thai military and political leader. After serving in the Thai army, where he rose to become commander in chief (1978), he entered politics. He served in the Thai senate...

Patrick, Deval Laurdine

(Encyclopedia)Patrick, Deval Laurdine, 1956–, African-American politician and government official, b. Chicago, grad. Harvard 1978, Harvard Law School 1982. A lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund from 1983 to ...

Tindal, Matthew

(Encyclopedia)Tindal, Matthew tĭnˈdəl [key], c.1655–1733, English deist. For a short time in the reign of James II he was a Roman Catholic, but in 1688 he returned to the Church of England. The first of his pu...