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Black, Greene Vardiman

(Encyclopedia)Black, Greene Vardiman, 1836–1915, American dentist, b. Scott co., Ill. Professor at Chicago College of Dental Surgery (now part of Loyola Univ.) from 1883 to 1889 and professor (from 1891) and dean...

Gobi

(Encyclopedia)Gobi gōˈbē [key], Mandarin Yintai shamo, great stony desert of N central Asia, c.500,000 sq mi (1,295,000 sq km), extending c.1,000 mi (1,610 km) from east to west across SE Mongolia and N China fr...

Vygotsky, Lev Semyonovich

(Encyclopedia)Vygotsky, Lev Semyonovich, 1896–1934, Russian psychologist. His most productive years were at the Institute of Psychology in Moscow (1924–34), where he expanded his ideas on cognitive development,...

Precambrian

(Encyclopedia)Precambrian, name of a major division of geologic time (see Geologic Timescale, tablegeologic timescale, table), from c.5 billion to 570 million years ago. It is now usually divided into the Archean a...

Cannae

(Encyclopedia)Cannae kănˈē [key], ancient village, Apulia, SE Italy, scene in 216 b.c. of Hannibal's crushing defeat of the Romans. Hannibal's troops assumed a crescent-shaped formation to meet the Roman troops,...

Lewis, Sir George Cornewall

(Encyclopedia)Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, 1806–63, English statesman and man of letters. Entering Parliament as a Liberal in 1847, he served as chancellor of exchequer (1855–58), home secretary (1859–61), an...

infantry

(Encyclopedia)infantry, body of soldiers who fight in an army on foot and are equipped with hand-carried weapons, in contradistinction originally to cavalry and other branches of an army. Infantry has often been di...

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