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Banks, Russell

(Encyclopedia)Banks, Russell, 1940–, American writer, b. Newton, Mass., grad. Univ. of North Carolina (1967). Banks is known for fiction that explores the bleaker aspects of American working-class life with empat...

safety lamp

(Encyclopedia)safety lamp, oil lamp designed for safe use in mines and other places where flammable gases such as firedamp (see damp) may be present. Its invention (c.1816) is usually attributed to Sir Humphry Davy...

Stickley, Gustav

(Encyclopedia)Stickley, Gustav, 1858–1942, American furniture designer, b. Osceola, Wis. Probably the best-known American associated with the arts and crafts movement, Stickley ran a Binghamton, N.Y., chair facto...

Strauss, Robert Schwarz

(Encyclopedia)Strauss, Robert Schwarz, 1918–2014, American lawyer and government official, b. Lockhart, Tex., grad. Univ. of Texas Law School (1941). The quintessential Washington insider and a partner in one of ...

Sinatra, Frank

(Encyclopedia)Sinatra, Frank (Francis Albert Sinatra), 1915–98, American singer and actor, b. Hoboken, N.J. During the late 1930s and early 40s he sang with the Harry James and Tommy Dorsey bands, causing teenage...

Scotland, Free Church of

(Encyclopedia)Scotland, Free Church of, the secessionist Presbyterian church established as a result of the great disruption of 1843 in the Church of Scotland. The cause of the separation lay in the demand of the l...

Prachanda

(Encyclopedia)Prachanda po͞oshˈpä kəmälˈ dəhäl [key], 1954–, Nepalese military and political leader, prime minister of Nepal (2008–9, 2016–17). Born into a Brahmin family, he earned a degree in agricu...

Archipenko, Alexander

(Encyclopedia)Archipenko, Alexander ärkhĭpĕnˈkō [key], 1887–1964, Ukrainian-American sculptor, b. Kiev. He moved to Moscow in 1906 and to Paris in 1908. There he began to adapt cubist technique to sculpture....

Kelvin temperature scale

(Encyclopedia)Kelvin temperature scale, a temperature scale having an absolute zero below which temperatures do not exist. Absolute zero, or 0K, is the temperature at which molecular energy is a minimum, and it c...

Land, Edwin Herbert

(Encyclopedia)Land, Edwin Herbert, 1909–91, American inventor and photographic pioneer. While at Harvard, Land became interested in the properties and manipulation of polarized light. He left Harvard and, in 1932...
 

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