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political action committee
political action committee (PAC), U.S. organization formed by a corporation, labor union, or association to raise money for political activity. Funds can be gathered by voluntary contributions from members, employees, or shareholders. Political action committees were first organized in the 1940s. T...
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pension
pension periodic payments to one who has retired from work because of age or disability. Pensions, originally thought of as charity, are now viewed as an essential part of the social responsibility of employers or of the state. In the Roman Empire there was a well-established pension system to care...
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Pacific scandal
Pacific scandal 1873, a major event in Canadian political history. Charges were made in Parliament that the Conservative administration of Sir John A. Macdonald had accepted campaign funds from Sir Hugh Allan in return for a promise to award Allan's syndicate the contract to build the Canadian ...
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Ryunosuke Akutagawa
Ryunosuke Akutagawa , pseud. of Chōkōdō Shujin , 1892-1927, Japanese author. One of Japan's finest short-story writers, he derived many of his tales from historical Japanese sources, but told them with psychological insights in an individualistic style. "Rashomon" (1915) and "...
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Herman Max Gluckman
Herman Max Gluckman , 1911-75, British anthropologist, b. Johannesburg, South Africa, grad. Univ. of Witwatersrand (B.A., 1930) and Oxford (Ph.D., 1936). From 1947 to 1971 he was professor of social anthropology at the Univ. of Manchester; thereafter he was research professor there. His major contri...
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zygote
zygote In sexual reproduction, a cell formed by fusion of a male and a female gamete. It contains a diploid (two sets) number of chromosomes, half contributed by the sperm, half by the ovum. Through successive cell divisions, the zygote will develop into an embryo....
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Peter's pence
Peter's pence in the Roman Catholic Church, the annual voluntary laymen's contribution to the support of the pope. Formerly Peter's pence was a yearly tax of a penny levied by the Holy See on every household in England and elsewhere. The name derives from the fact that the Holy See is called the se...
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Hausa
Hausa or Haussa , black African ethnic group, numbering about 23 million, chiefly in N Nigeria and S Niger. The Hausa are almost exclusively Muslim and practice agriculture. Their widespread trading activities have contributed to making their language a lingua franca in much of W Africa. In earl...
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Dummer, Jeremiah
Dummer, Jeremiah (c.1679–1739),colonial agent for Massachusetts and Connecticut, wrote a closely reasoned Defence of the New England Charters (1721) to answer the Parliamentary attacks of the time. He was instrumental in persuading Elihu Yale to contribute to the college then named for him....
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Nicholas Grimald
Nicholas Grimald , 1519?-1562?, English poet. He contributed 40 poems to the first edition (1557) of Tottel's miscellany, of which "A Funeral Song upon the Decease of Annes, His Mother" is the most noteworthy. His other works include two Latin dramas and translations of Vergil and Cicero.
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