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culminate
culminate in astronomy, the maximum height in the sky reached by a celestial body on a given day. At the culminate the body is crossing the observer's celestial meridian and is said to be in upper transit .
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Apollonius of Perga
Apollonius of Perga fl. 247-205 BC, Greek mathematician of the Alexandrian school. He produced a treatise on conic sections that included, as well as his own work, much of the work of his predecessors, among whom was Euclid. Apollonius introduced the terms parabola, hyperbola, and ellipse. In h...
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Camorra
Camorra , Italian secret criminal association in Naples. Of controversial origin, it first came to light in 1830. Its activities spread by intimidation, blackmail, and bribery until Naples was controlled by it. The Camorra appears to have been used by the Bourbon rulers of Naples as a quasi-police n...
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Jotunheimen
Jotunheimen , mountain group, S central Norway; highest of Scandinavia. It culminates in Galdhøpiggen (8,098 ft/2,468 m high) and Glittertinden (8,104 ft/2,470 m). The Jostedalsbreen, a huge glacier, is to the west. Sparsely inhabited, the region is used for summer pasture. In Norse mythology...
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Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang 1844-1912, English scholar and man of letters, b. Scotland. His poetry, much of it written in the forms of ballades, triolets, and rondeaux, appeared in such volumes as his Ballads in Blue China (2 vol., 1880-81). Lang was one of the first to apply anthropological findings to the stud...
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Black Friday
Black Friday Sept. 24, 1869, in U.S. history, day of financial panic. In 1869 a small group of American financial speculators, including Jay Gould and James Fisk , sought the support of federal officials of the Grant administration in a drive to corner the gold market. The attempt failed when go...
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Sir Philip Francis
Sir Philip Francis 1740-1818, British statesman and pamphleteer. He may have been the author known as Junius . He held several minor posts in government offices before being appointed to the council of Bengal in 1773. While in India he conducted a long, bitter feud with Warren Hastings , which cu...
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Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol , 1809-52, Russian short-story writer, novelist, and playwright, sometimes considered the father of Russian realism. Of Ukrainian origin, he first won literary success with fanciful and romantic tales of his native Ukraine in Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka (1831-32). His...
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Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford 1873-1939, English author; grandson of Ford Madox Brown. He changed his name legally from Ford Madox Hueffer in 1919. The author of over 60 works including novels, poems, criticism, travel essays, and reminiscences, Ford also edited the English Review (1908-11) and the Transatlan...
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Benedetto Croce
Benedetto Croce , 1866-1952, Italian philosopher, historian, and critic. He lived mostly in Naples, devoting himself to studying and writing. He founded and edited (1903-44) Critica, a review of literature, history, and philosophy, which in 1944 became Quaderni della critica. Croce was made a se...
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