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Blount, William

(Encyclopedia)Blount, William, 1749–1800, American political leader, b. near Windsor, N.C. He served in the American Revolution and later became a legislator in North Carolina, a member of the Continental Congres...

bestiary

(Encyclopedia)bestiary bĕsˈchēĕrˌē [key], a type of medieval book that was widely popular, particularly from the 12th to 14th cent. The bestiary presumed to describe the animals of the world and to show what ...

Calvert, Cecilius, 2d Baron Baltimore

(Encyclopedia)Calvert, Cecilius, 2d Baron Baltimore sĭsĭlˈēəs [key], c.1605–75, first proprietor of the colony of Maryland. He received the province in 1632 as a grant from the king, in place of his father, ...

Updike, John

(Encyclopedia)Updike, John, 1932–2009, American author, one of the nation's most distinguished 20th-century men of letters, b. Shillington, Pa., grad. Harvard, 1954. In his many novels and stories, written in a w...

Domesday Book

(Encyclopedia)Domesday Book do͞omzˈdā [key], record of a general census of England made (1085–86) by order of William I (William the Conqueror). The survey ascertained the economic resources of most of the cou...

Constant, Benjamin

(Encyclopedia)Constant, Benjamin (Henri Benjamin Constant de Rebecque) äNrēˈ bäNzhämăNˈ kôNstäNˈ də rəbĕkˈ [key], 1767–1830, French-Swiss political writer and novelist, b. Lausanne. His affair (1794...

Moseley, Henry Gwyn Jeffreys

(Encyclopedia)Moseley, Henry Gwyn Jeffreys mōzˈlē [key], 1887–1915, English physicist, grad. Trinity College, Oxford, 1910. He began his research under Ernest Rutherford while serving as lecturer at the Univ. ...

mimicry

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Mimicry in butterflies mimicry, in biology, the advantageous resemblance of one species to another, often unrelated, species or to a feature of its own environment. (When the latter results fr...

body-marking

(Encyclopedia)body-marking, painting, tattooing, or scarification (cutting or burning) of the body for ritual, esthetic, medicinal, magic, or religious purposes. Evidence from prehistoric burials, rock carvings, an...

Richardson, Samuel

(Encyclopedia)Richardson, Samuel, 1689–1761, English novelist, b. Derbyshire. When he was 50 and a prosperous printer, Richardson was asked to compose a guide to letter writing. The idea of introducing a central ...