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bankruptcy
bankruptcy in law, settlement of the liabilities of a person or organization wholly or partially unable to meet financial obligations. The purposes are to distribute, through a court-appointed receiver, the bankrupt's assets equitably among creditors and, in most instances, to discharge the debtor ...
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J. Edgar Hoover
J. Edgar Hoover (John Edgar Hoover), 1895-1972, American administrator, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), b. Washington, D.C. Shortly after he was admitted to the bar, he entered (1917) the Dept. of Justice and served (1919-21) as special assistant to Attorney General A. Mitc...
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Melvil Dewey
Melvil Dewey 1851-1931, American library pioneer, originator of the Dewey decimal system, b. Adams Center, N.Y., grad. Amherst (B.A., 1874; M.A., 1877). A man of originality and of enormous energy, Dewey played an important role in the early days of library organization in the United States. He bec...
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airline industry
airline industry the business of transporting paying passengers and freight by air along regularly scheduled routes, typically by airplanes but also by helicopter.
Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin set up the first commercial airline in 1912, using a form of the dirigible to transport more than 34...
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optical character recognition
optical character recognition (OCR), method for the machine-reading of typeset, typed, and, in some cases, hand-printed letters, numbers, and symbols using optical sensing and a computer. The light reflected by a printed text, for example, is recorded as patterns of light and dark areas by an arr...
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Mafia
Mafia , name given to a number of organized groups of Sicilian brigands in the 19th and 20th cent. Unlike the Camorra in Naples, the Mafia had no hierarchic organization; each group operated on its own. The Mafia originated in feudal times, when lords hired brigands to guard their estates in excha...
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environmentalism
environmentalism movement to protect the quality and continuity of life through conservation of natural resources , prevention of pollution , and control of land use . The philosophical foundations for environmentalism in the United States were established by Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerso...
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Taft-Hartley Labor Act
Taft-Hartley Labor Act 1947, passed by the U.S. Congress, officially known as the Labor-Management Relations Act. Sponsored by Senator Robert Alphonso Taft and Representative Fred Allan Hartley, the act qualified or amended much of the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act of 1935, the federal law ...
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Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss , 1904-96, American public official, b. Baltimore. After serving (1929-30) as secretary to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes , Hiss practiced law in Boston and New York City. He then was attached to the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (1933-35) and to the Dept. of Justice (1935-36). H...
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Karl Baedeker
Karl Baedeker , 1801-59, German publisher, founder of the Baedeker guidebooks. His printing establishment was at Koblenz, but his son Fritz, who continued the business, moved it to Leipzig. Printed in several languages, the guidebooks provided valuable historical information and ran into many editio...
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