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Lot
Lot in the Book of Genesis, the son of Abraham's brother Haran. Lot settled in Sodom and received a warning of its destruction. As he fled with his family, his wife, disobeying God's orders, looked back at the city and was turned into a pillar of salt. In biblical ethnography, Lot is considered the...
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automobile racing
automobile racing sport in which specially designed or modified automobiles race on any of various courses. Automobile racing originated in France in 1894 and appeared in the United States the following year. It is now one of the most popular spectator sports in the world. Of many different types o...
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James Cagney
James Cagney 1899-1986, American movie actor, b. New York City. He worked on Broadway as an actor and dancer before appearing in films. He is best remembered as a brash, sadistic, tough guy in such movies as Public Enemy (1931) and The Roaring Twenties (1939). He displayed equal vigor in sympat...
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lots
lots The casting of lots was an ancient method of making a choice, settling a dispute, or determining a course of action. In biblical times lots were cast to determine the will of God (it is believed that the Urim and Thummim, mysterious sacred objects carved on the breastplate of the high priest, ...
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Urim and Thummim
Urim and Thummim , in the Bible, name of sacred instruments used for casting lots . The meaning of the two names is uncertain, as is the nature of the lots. They were in some way connected, however, with the ephod .
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Mary Martin
Mary Martin 1913-90, American musical comedy star, b. Weatherford, Tex. From Martin's first stage appearance in Leave It to Me (1938), she starred in several enormously successful musicals, including One Touch of Venus (1943), South Pacific (1949); Peter Pan (1954), and The Sound of Music ...
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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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Anita Brookner
Anita Brookner 1928-, English writer and art critic. After establishing an academic career at London's Courtauld Institute of Art and becoming the first woman appointed (1968) Slade Professor of Art at Cambridge, she began writing fiction in 1980, producing approximately one book a year of elegantl...
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Giuseppe Giacosa
Giuseppe Giacosa , 1847-1906, Italian dramatic poet. After Una partita a scacchi [a game of chess] (1873) won him his first success, he devoted himself to playwriting. His plays, which deal largely with life in Piedmont and reflect the bourgeois attitudes of his day, are notable for their simplici...
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Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Julien Offray de La Mettrie , 1709-51, French physician and philosopher. On the basis of personal observation he claimed that psychical activity is purely the result of the organic construction of the brain and nervous system and developed this theory in Histoire naturelle de l'âme (1745). T...
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