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Saint Martin de Porres
Saint Martin de Porres , 1579-1639, Peruvian Dominican lay brother, b. Lima. He was the son of a Spanish soldier and a black freedwoman from Panama. Apprenticed to a barber-surgeon, he later joined a monastery as a tertiary, or lay brother, in Lima and devoted himself wholly to the sick and unfortun...
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William Beckford
William Beckford 1760-1844, English author. A wealthy dilettante, Beckford had a great desire to ascend to the nobility. Unfortunately his erratic and strange behavior often worked against his ambitions. About 1796 he built in Wiltshire an extravagant Gothic castle, Fonthill Abbey, where he lived i...
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Thomas Hood
Thomas Hood 1799-1845, English poet. He was an editor of various prominent magazines and periodicals. The greater proportion of his work was written in a humorous vein, and he was celebrated for his use of figurative language, especially puns. However, it is in his serious poems, notably "The Son...
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Alesso Baldovinetti
Alesso Baldovinetti , c.1425-1499, Italian painter and decorative artist of the early Florentine Renaissance. He was probably trained in the workshops of Domenico Veneziano and Andrea del Castagno, whose influence is evident in his early works. These paintings include an altarpiece for the Medici vi...
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histamine
histamine , organic compound derived in the body from the amino acid histidine by the removal of a carboxyl group (COOH). Although found in many plant and animal tissues, histamine is specifically important in human physiology because it is one of the chemicals released from certain cells (particu...
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Ichabod
Ichabod [Heb.,=inglorious], in the Bible, son of Phinehas and grandson of the High Priest Eli. He was born at the hour of the Ark's capture by the Philistines and was named to commemorate the unfortunate event.
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Deciduous Plants
Deciduous Plants
A perennial plant that seasonally loses its leaves (and/or stems) is deciduous. This loss is typically related to water stress; for example, green portions of the plant are shed during the dry season. Dry does not have to mean no (or low) precipitation . It simply means that littl...
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Philibert Delorme
Philibert Delorme , c.1510-1570, French architect. Delorme was one of the greatest architects of the Renaissance in France, but unfortunately most of his work has been destroyed. Having traveled in Italy from 1533 to 1536, he introduced into France a form of classicism that endured until the mid-18t...
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Thomas Nashe
Thomas Nashe , 1567-1601, English satirist. Very little is known of his life. Although his first publications appeared in 1589, it was not until Pierce Penniless His Supplication to the Devil (1592), a bitter satire on contemporary society, that his natural and vigorous style was fully developed. ...
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buoy
buoy , float anchored in navigable waters to mark channels and indicate dangers to navigation (isolated rocks, mine fields, cables, and the like). The shape, color, number, and marking of the buoy are all significant, but unfortunately there are two competing systems of color coding which have been ...
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