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circus
circus [Lat.,=ring, circle], historically, the arena associated with the horse and chariot races and athletic contests known in ancient Rome as the Circensian games. The Roman circus was a round or oval structure with tiers of seats for spectators, enclosing a space in which the races, games, and g...
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P. T. Barnum
P. T. Barnum (Phineas Taylor Barnum) , 1810-91, American showman, b. Bethel, Conn. As a youth Barnum worked at diverse sales jobs and managed a boardinghouse. He made his first sensation in 1835 when he bought and exhibited Joice Heth, a slave who claimed she was 161 years old (she was about 80) a...
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body snatching
body snatching the stealing of corpses from graves and morgues. Before cadavers were legally available for dissection and study by medical students, traffic in stolen bodies was profitable. Those who engaged in the illicit practice were sometimes called resurrectionists; they were active from about...
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Wovoka
Wovoka , c.1858-1932, Paiute , prophet of a messianic religion sometimes called the Ghost Dance religion. Also known as Jack Wilson, he was influenced by his father (a mystic) as well as by the Christian family for whom he worked and the Shaker religion. Wovoka claimed that during an eclipse of...
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Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass , c.1817-1895, American abolitionist, b. near Easton, Md. The son of a black slave, Harriet Bailey, and an unknown white father, he took the name of Douglass (from Scott's hero in The Lady of the Lake ) after his second, and successful, attempt to escape from slavery in 1838. At ...
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James Hutton
James Hutton 1726-97, Scottish geologist, chemist, and naturalist. He was initially attracted to chemistry; he entered the legal profession at the Univ. of Edinburgh; turned to medicine, as it closely resembled chemistry; and then became a farmer to allow him to study rocks and be able to pursue hi...
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Lusitania
Lusitania liner under British registration, sunk off the Irish coast by a German submarine on May 7, 1915. In the sinking, 1,198 persons lost their lives, 128 of whom were U.S. citizens. A warning to Americans against taking passage on British vessels, signed by the Imperial German Embassy, appeare...
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Michael Robert Milken
Michael Robert Milken , 1946-, American financial executive, b. Van Nuys, Calif. Nicknamed the "junk bond king," he was an executive at Drexel Burnham Lambert, Inc., where he transformed corporate takeovers and financing by the use of high-yield junk bonds . At the height of his success in the ...
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Scythia
Scythia , ancient region of Eurasia, extending from the Danube on the west to the borders of China on the east. The Scythians flourished from the 8th to the 4th cent. BC They spoke an Indo-Iranian language but had no system of writing. They were nomadic conquerors and skilled horsemen. They seem t...
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juvenile delinquency
juvenile delinquency legal term for behavior of children and adolescents that in adults would be judged criminal under law. In the United States, definitions and age limits of juveniles vary, the maximum age being set at 14 years in some states and as high as 21 years in others. The 16- to 20-year ...
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