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tornado

(Encyclopedia)tornado, dark, funnel-shaped cloud containing violently rotating air that develops below a heavy cumulonimbus cloud mass and extends toward the earth. The funnel twists about, rises and falls, and whe...

Silurian period

(Encyclopedia)Silurian period sĭlo͝orˈēən, sī– [key] [from the Silures, ancient tribe of S Wales, where the period was first studied; named by the British geologist R. I. Murchison], third period of the Pal...

Albany, cities, United States

(Encyclopedia)Albany 1, 3, 4 ôlˈbənē; 2 ôlˈbĕnˌē, ălbāˈnē [key]. 1 Residential city (2020 pop. 20,271), Alameda co., W Calif., on the eastern shore of San Francisco...

New York City Ballet

(Encyclopedia)New York City Ballet (NYCB), one of the foremost American dance companies of the 20th and 21st cents. It was founded by Lincoln Kirstein and George Balanchine as the Ballet Society in 1946. In 1948 th...

Carolina campaign

(Encyclopedia)Carolina campaign, 1780–81, of the American Revolution. After Sir Henry Clinton had captured Charleston, he returned to New York, leaving a British force under Cornwallis to subordinate the Carolina...

migration of animals

(Encyclopedia)migration of animals, movements of animals in large numbers from one place to another. In modern usage the term is usually restricted to regular, periodic movements of populations away from and back t...

Anthony, Susan Brownell

(Encyclopedia)Anthony, Susan Brownell, 1820–1906, American reformer and leader of the woman-suffrage movement, b. Adams, Mass.; daughter of Daniel Anthony, Quaker abolitionist. From the age of 17, when she was a ...

glacial periods

(Encyclopedia)glacial periods, times during which large portions of the earth's surface were covered with thick glacial ice sheets. In the Pleistocene epoch, in the Carboniferous and Permian periods of the Paleozoi...

arum

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Jack-in-the-pulpit, Arisaema triphyllum, a member of the arum family arum, common name for the Araceae, a plant family mainly composed of species of herbaceous terrestrial and epiphytic plants...

Maria Theresa

(Encyclopedia)Maria Theresa mərēˈə tərāˈzə [key], 1717–80, Austrian archduchess, queen of Bohemia and Hungary (1740–80), consort of Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and dowager empress after the accession (...