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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...

Owl and the Nightingale, The

(Encyclopedia)Owl and the Nightingale, The, Middle English poem written probably by Nicholas de Guildford of Dorsetshire about the beginning of the 13th cent. Written in 2,000 lines of octosyllabic couplets, it des...

vertical takeoff and landing aircraft

(Encyclopedia)vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (VTOL), craft capable of rising and descending vertically from and to the ground, thus requiring no runway. While a balloon or an airship has obvious VTOL capabil...

Vienna, city and province, Austria

(Encyclopedia)Vienna vēĕnˈə [key], Ger. Wien, city and province (1991 pop. 1,539,848), 160 sq mi (414 sq km), capital and largest city of Austria and administrative seat of Lower Austria, NE Austria, on the Dan...

Belt, Great, and Little Belt

(Encyclopedia)Belt, Great, and Little Belt, straits: see Store Bælt and Lille Bælt, straits, Denmark. ...

Fort Sill

(Encyclopedia)Fort Sill, U.S. military reservation, Comanche co., SW Okla., 4 mi (6.4 km) N of Lawton; est. 1869 by Gen. Philip Sheridan. A 95,000-acre (38,445-hectare) field artillery and missile base, it is the h...

Carboniferous period

(Encyclopedia)Carboniferous period kärbənĭfˈərəs [key], fifth period of the Paleozoic era of geologic time (see Geologic Timescale, tablegeologic timescale, table), from 350 to 290 million years ago. The pl...

mouse

(Encyclopedia)mouse, name applied to numerous species of small rodents, often having soft gray or brown fur, long hairless tails, and large ears. The chief distinction between these animals and the variety of roden...

National Radio Astronomy Observatory

(Encyclopedia)National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), federal observatory for radio astronomy, founded in 1956 and operated under contract with the National Science Foundation by Associated Universities, Inc.,...

Alfvén, Hannes Olof Gösta

(Encyclopedia)Alfvén, Hannes Olof Gösta, 1908–95, Swedish physicist, Ph.D. Univ. of Uppsala, 1934. He was a lecturer at Uppsala from 1934 to 1937 and a researcher at the Nobel Institute of Physics from 1937 to ...