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sled

(Encyclopedia)sled, vehicle that moves by sliding. A sledge is typically a heavier, load-carrying sled drawn by a horse or dog, while a sleigh is a partially enclosed horse-drawn vehicle with runners that has seats...

spire

(Encyclopedia)spire, high, tapering structure crowning a tower and having a general pyramidal outline. The simplest spires were the steeply pitched timber roofs capping Romanesque towers and campaniles. In later Ro...

Rosetta

(Encyclopedia)Rosetta räshēdˈ [key], city (1986 pop. 51,789), N Egypt, in the Nile River delta. The city once dominated the region's rice market; rice milling and fish processing are the main industries of moder...

Saint Helens, Mount

(Encyclopedia)Saint Helens, Mount, volcanic peak, 8,363 ft (2,549 m; 9,677 ft/2,950 m before its 1980 eruption) high, SW Wash., historically the most active volcano in the Cascade Range. Dormant since 1857, Mt. St....

Palma

(Encyclopedia)Palma or Palma de Mallorca pälˈmä ᵺā mälyôrˈkä [key], city (1990 pop. 325,120), capital of Majorca island and of Baleares prov., Spain, on the Bay of Palma. It is the chief port and commerci...

Olduvai Gorge

(Encyclopedia)Olduvai Gorge ōlˈdəwāˌ, –vāˌ [key], a feature of the E African Rift Valley in Tanzania. Erosional processes have exposed geological strata in the gorge dating to the lower Pleistocene epoch, ...

Reading, cities, United States

(Encyclopedia)Reading. rĕdˈĭng [key] 1 Town (1990 pop. 22,539), Middlesex co., NE Mass., a suburb of Boston; settled 1639, set off from Lynn and inc. 1644. Printing is the major industry. A 17th-century tavern i...

Vanderbilt, Cornelius

(Encyclopedia)Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 1794–1877, American railroad magnate, b. Staten Island, N.Y. As a boy he ferried freight and passengers from Staten Island to Manhattan, and he soon gained control of most of ...

pastoral

(Encyclopedia)pastoral, literary work in which the shepherd's life is presented in a conventionalized manner. In this convention the purity and simplicity of shepherd life is contrasted with the corruption and arti...

Gropius, Walter

(Encyclopedia)Gropius, Walter välˈtər grōˈpēo͝os [key], 1883–1969, German-American architect, one of the leaders of modern functional architecture. In Germany his Fagus factory buildings (1910–11) at Alf...
 

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