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Bombelli, Rafael

(Encyclopedia)Bombelli, Rafael, 1526–1572, Italian mathematician and engineer, b. Bologna. When a marsh reclamation project (c.1550–1560) in the Tuscan Appenines on which he was an engineer was suspended, he pe...

Scarlatti, Alessandro

(Encyclopedia)Scarlatti, Alessandro älĕs-sänˈdrō skärlätˈtē [key], 1660–1725, Italian composer. He may have studied with Carissimi in Rome, where his first opera was produced in 1679. In 1684 he went to ...

Sforza

(Encyclopedia)Sforza sfôrˈtsä [key], Italian family that ruled the duchy of Milan from 1450 to 1535. Rising from peasant origins, the Sforzas became condottieri and used this military position to become rulers i...

Ptolemy XIV

(Encyclopedia)Ptolemy XIV, d. 44 b.c., king of ancient Egypt (47–44 b.c.), the last of the Macedonian dynasty, but for his sister, Cleopatra. He was a child when his brother Ptolemy XIII drowned. Julius Caesar ma...

Perley, Sir George Halsey

(Encyclopedia)Perley, Sir George Halsey, 1857–1938, Canadian statesman, b. Lebanon, N.H. As a child, he moved with his parents to Ottawa. In 1904 he was elected to the Canadian House of Commons as a Conservative,...

Leo I, Byzantine emperor

(Encyclopedia)Leo I, d. 474, Byzantine or East Roman emperor (457–74). Chosen by the senate to succeed Marcian, he sought to counteract the preponderance of Germans in the Roman army by enlisting Isaurians. A nav...

Lilith

(Encyclopedia)Lilith lĭlˈĭth [key], female demon of Jewish mythology, originally probably the Assyrian storm demon Lilitu. In Talmudic tradition many evil attributes were given to this supposedly nocturnal creat...

Megan's law

(Encyclopedia)Megan's law, in the United States, a state or federal statute that requires the notification of public organizations and private citizens when a convicted sex offender has been released from prison an...

Costa, Lorenzo

(Encyclopedia)Costa, Lorenzo lōrĕnˈtsō kōˈstä [key], 1460–1535, Italian painter of the Ferrarese and Bolognese schools. Trained in the manner of such painters as Tura and Cossa, he modified the strident Fe...

Ebner-Eschenbach, Marie, Baronin von

(Encyclopedia)Ebner-Eschenbach, Marie, Baronin von märēˈ bärōˈnĭn fən ābˈnər-ĕshˈənbäkh [key], 1830–1916, Austrian writer. She began writing lyrics and plays with small success, but in middle age a...
 

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