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Auguste Laurent
Auguste Laurent , 1808-53, French organic chemist. He devised a systematic nomenclature for organic chemistry. His studies on naphthalene and its chlorination products led him to propose a nucleus theory that foreshadowed modern structural chemistry; he proposed that the structural grouping of atoms...
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Rages
Rages or Rhagae , ancient and medieval city of Persia, located on the site of modern-day Ray, N Iran, a suburb of Tehran. Rages is mentioned in the Avesta and in the inscriptions at Behistun. Because it controlled the NE Persian trade route, it was occupied by the Parthians and the Arabs. It flo...
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Songhai
Songhai or Songhay , largest of the former empires in the western Sudan region of N Africa. The state was founded (c.700) by Berbers on the Middle Niger, in what is now central Mali. The rulers accepted Islam c.1000. Its power was much increased by Sonni Ali (1464-92), who occupied Timbuktu in 1...
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Robert Stone
Robert Stone 1937-, American novelist, b. Brooklyn, N.Y. He was briefly (1971) a correspondent in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) during the Vietnam War . His experiences there helped form the basis for his best-known novel, Dog Soldiers (1974, National Book Award), which was filmed as Who'll Sto...
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Antoine Pevsner
Antoine Pevsner , 1886-1962, Russian sculptor and painter. He was influenced by cubism while in Paris in 1911 and 1913. During World War I he was in Norway with his brother Naum Gabo . They returned to Moscow after the Russian Revolution. Pevsner taught at the Moscow academy and associated with ava...
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Ascension
Ascension , island (1998 pop. 712), 34 sq mi (88 sq km), in the S Atlantic, NW of St. Helena and belonging to the British St. Helena colony. Georgetown is the main settlement. Ascension is volcanic and rocky with little vegetation, but it supports considerable livestock (rabbits, wild goats, and par...
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Grozny
Grozny or Groznyy , city (2006 est. pop. 230,000), capital of Chechnya , SE European Russia, in the northern foothills of the Greater Caucasus. It is the center of Chechnya's oil fields, linked by pipelines to Makhachkala on the Caspian Sea, to Tuapse on the Black Sea, and to Horlivka in Ukrain...
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Shropshire
Shropshire , county (1991 pop. 401,600), 1,348 sq mi (3,491 sq km), W England. It is also sometimes called Salop. The county seat is Shrewsbury . The terrain to the north and east of the Severn, Shropshire's principal river, is level; toward the Welsh border and the south the land is hilly. The cou...
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Bardesanes
Bardesanes , 154?-222?, Christian philosopher and poet of Syria, missionary among the Armenians. Conflicting traditions report him both as defender of the faith against various Gnostic sects and as a heretic and founder of Bardesanism.
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Taillefer
Taillefer , fl. 1066, Norman warrior and trouvère. According to medieval chronicles and evidence in the Bayeux Tapestry, he led the Norman army at Hastings into battle, singing of Roland at Roncesvalles; he was killed in the conflict.
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