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West Midlands

(Encyclopedia)West Midlands, former metropolitan county, central England. Created in the 1974 local government reorganization, the county embraced the Birmingham conurbation and comprised seven metropolitan distric...

London School of Economics and Political Science

(Encyclopedia)London School of Economics and Political Science, at London, England; founded 1895, recognized as a school of the Univ. of London (see London, Univ. of) in 1900. It publishes many periodicals, includi...

Richardson, Ernest Cushing

(Encyclopedia)Richardson, Ernest Cushing, 1860–1939, American librarian and bibliographer, b. Woburn, Mass. He was assistant librarian at Amherst (1879–80), librarian and professor of bibliology at Hartford The...

Jesuit Relations

(Encyclopedia)Jesuit Relations, annual reports and narratives written by French Jesuit missionaries at their stations in New France (America) between 1632 and 1673. They are invaluable as historical sources for Fre...

Congregationalism

(Encyclopedia)Congregationalism, type of Protestant church organization in which each congregation, or local church, has free control of its own affairs. The underlying principle is that each local congregation has...

Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud

(Encyclopedia)Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud mämo͞odˈ ämädēnĕzhädˈ [key], 1956–, Iranian politician. From a humble background, he supported the Islamic revolution (1979) while working toward his civil engineering ...

warlord

(Encyclopedia)warlord, in modern Chinese history, autonomous regional military commander. In the political chaos following the death (1916) of republican China's first president and commander in chief, Yüan Shih-k...

affirmative action

(Encyclopedia)affirmative action, in the United States, programs to overcome the effects of past societal discrimination by allocating jobs and resources to members of specific groups, such as minorities and women....

Wright brothers

(Encyclopedia)Wright brothers, American airplane inventors and aviation pioneers. Orville Wright 1871–1948, was born in Dayton, Ohio, and Wilbur Wright, 1867–1912, near New Castle, Ind. Their interest in aviati...

autonomy

(Encyclopedia)autonomy ôtŏnˈəmē [key] [Gr.,=self-rule], in a political sense, limited self-government, short of independence, of a political state or, more frequently, of a subdivision. The term is also used f...