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O'Brien, William Smith

(Encyclopedia)O'Brien, William Smith, 1803–64, Irish revolutionary. He entered Parliament from Ireland in 1828 and worked for Catholic Emancipation, Irish poor relief, and state support of the Irish Catholic cler...

lie detector

(Encyclopedia)lie detector, instrument designed to record bodily changes resulting from the telling of a lie. Cesare Lombroso, in 1895, was the first to utilize such an instrument, but it was not until 1914 and 191...

Lewis, John Robert

(Encyclopedia)Lewis, John Robert, 1940–2020, African-American politician and civil-rights leader, b. near Troy, Ala., B.A. American Baptist Theological Seminary, 19...

Kunstler, William Moses

(Encyclopedia)Kunstler, William Moses, 1919–95, American lawyer, b. New York City, grad. Yale (1941), Columbia law school (1948). Flamboyant and often brilliant, Kunstler defended the unpopular and unfailingly su...

Preah Vihear

(Encyclopedia)Preah Vihear prä wēˈhän [key], Hindu temple dedicated to Shiva, N central Cambodia near the Thai border. Situated on the edge of a plateau overlooking the N Cambodian plain, the temple was begun i...

cabildo

(Encyclopedia)cabildo käbēlˈdō [key], autonomous municipal council, the lowest administrative unit in the Spanish government. The institution was especially influential in Spanish America, where it was set up i...

Bo Xilai

(Encyclopedia)Bo Xilai, 1949–, Chinese political leader. The son of Bo Yibo, a Communist revolutionary leader, he joined the Communist party in 1980. Bo studied history at Peking Univ. and earned (1982) a master'...

vendetta

(Encyclopedia)vendetta vĕndĕtˈə [key] [Ital.,=vengeance], feud between members of two kinship groups to avenge a wrong done to a relative. Although the term originated in Corsica, the custom has also been pract...

riot, rout, and unlawful assembly

(Encyclopedia)riot, rout, and unlawful assembly, in law, varying degrees of concerted disturbance of the peace. At common law, an unlawful assembly is a gathering of at least three persons whose conduct causes obse...

Iran-contra affair

(Encyclopedia)Iran-contra affair, in U.S. history, secret arrangement in the 1980s to provide funds to the Nicaraguan contra rebels from profits gained by selling arms to Iran. The Iran-contra affair was the produc...