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Davy, Sir Humphry

(Encyclopedia)Davy, Sir Humphry, 1778–1829, English chemist and physicist. The son of a woodcarver, he received his early education at Truro and was apprenticed (1795) to a surgeon-apothecary at Penzance. While d...

Lockerbie

(Encyclopedia)Lockerbie lŏkˈərbē [key], village (1991 pop. 3,892), Dumfries and Galloway, S Scotland, site of a 1988 airplane crash. On Dec. 21, 1988, a New York–bound Pan Am Boeing 747 exploded in flight as ...

Manchurian Incident

(Encyclopedia)Manchurian Incident or Mukden Incident, 1931, confrontation that gave Japan the impetus to set up a puppet government in Manchuria. After the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5), Japan replaced Russia as th...

Nagasaki

(Encyclopedia)Nagasaki nägˌäsäˈkē [key], city (1990 pop. 444,599), capital of Nagasaki prefecture, W Kyushu, Japan, on Nagasaki Bay. It is one of Japan's leading ports. Shipbuilding is the chief industry; mac...

Aznar López, José María

(Encyclopedia)Aznar López, José María hōzāˈ märēˈə äsˈnär lōˈpās [key], 1953–, Spanish politician, prime minister of Spain (1996–2004), b. Madrid. Originally a lawyer and tax inspector, he joine...

Oklahoma City

(Encyclopedia)Oklahoma City (1990 pop. 444,719), state capital, and seat of Oklahoma co., central Okla., on the North Canadian River; inc. 1890. The state's largest city, it is an important livestock market, a whol...

Lamb, Willis Eugene, Jr.

(Encyclopedia)Lamb, Willis Eugene, Jr., 1913–2008, American physicist, b. Los Angeles, Ph.D. Univ. of California, Berkeley, 1938. Lamb was a professor at Columbia (1938–51), Stanford (1951–56), Oxford (1956�...

Freon

(Encyclopedia)Freon frēˈŏn [key] [trade name], any one of a special class of chemical compounds that are used as refrigerants, aerosol propellants, and solvents. These compounds are haloalkanes, i.e., halogen de...

Andrée, Salomon August

(Encyclopedia)Andrée, Salomon August säˈlo͞omôn ouˈgəst ändrāˈ [key], 1854–97, Swedish polar explorer, grad. Royal Inst. of Technology, Stockholm. An aeronautical engineer and head of the Swedish patent...

ammonium group

(Encyclopedia)ammonium group, in chemistry, a positively charged nitrogen atom joined by single bonds to four other atoms or groups. The simplest ammonium group, NH4+, is formed by protonation of ammonia, NH3, e.g....