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Catholic Emancipation

(Encyclopedia)Catholic Emancipation, term applied to the process by which Roman Catholics in the British Isles were relieved in the late 18th and early 19th cent. of civil disabilities. They had been under oppressi...

morphine

(Encyclopedia)morphine, principal derivative of opium, which is the juice in the unripe seed pods of the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum. It was first isolated from opium in 1803 by the German pharmacist F. W. A. S...

Ferdinand I, Spanish king of Castile and León

(Encyclopedia)Ferdinand I or Ferdinand the Great, d. 1065, Spanish king of Castile (1035–65) and León (1037–65). He inherited Castile from his father, Sancho III of Navarre, conquered León, and took parts of ...

Hume, Joseph

(Encyclopedia)Hume, Joseph, 1777–1855, English politician and reformer. Although a Tory in early life, he sat in Parliament from 1818 to 1855 (with only one interruption) as an indefatigable Radical. Hume was a l...

Mariotte, Edme

(Encyclopedia)Mariotte, Edme ĕdˈmə märyôtˈ [key], 1620?–1684, French physicist. His De la nature de l'air (1676) includes a statement of Boyle's law (see gas laws), which he discovered independently and whi...

tournament

(Encyclopedia)tournament or tourney, in the Middle Ages, public contest between armed horsemen in simulation of real battle. In this military game, which flourished from the 12th to the 16th cent., combatants were ...

Gemistus Pletho, Georgius

(Encyclopedia)Gemistus Pletho, Georgius jôrˈjəs jĭmĭsˈtəs plēˈthō [key], c.1355–1452, Byzantine scholar and philosopher, b. Constantinople. He represented the Orthodox Eastern Church at the Council of F...

Compromise of 1850

(Encyclopedia)Compromise of 1850. The annexation of Texas to the United States and the gain of new territory by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the close of the Mexican War (1848) aggravated the hostility betwee...

induction, in logic

(Encyclopedia)induction, in logic, a form of argument in which the premises give grounds for the conclusion but do not necessitate it. Induction is contrasted with deduction, in which true premises do necessitate t...

Protectorate, in English history

(Encyclopedia)Protectorate, in English history, name given to the English government from 1653 to 1659. Following the English civil war and the execution of Charles I, England was declared (1649) a commonwealth und...