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Milk, Harvey

(Encyclopedia)Milk, Harvey, 1931–78, U.S. politician and gay-rights activist. When elected (1977) to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, he was the first acknowledged homosexual to win high local office in th...

Davis, Paulina Wright

(Encyclopedia)Davis, Paulina Wright, 1813–76, American lecturer and suffragist, b. Bloomfield, N.Y. Born Paulina Kellogg, she was married in 1833 to a merchant, Francis Wright, who died two years later. In 1849 s...

Paris, Declaration of

(Encyclopedia)Paris, Declaration of, 1856, agreement concerning the rules of maritime warfare, issued at the Congress of Paris. It was the first major attempt to codify the international law of the sea. Conflicting...

Menchú, Rigoberta

(Encyclopedia)Menchú, Rigoberta rēˌgōbĕrˈtä mĕncho͞oˈ [key], 1959–, Guatemalan social reformer. Of Mayan descent, she and her family were caught in Guatemala's bloody civil war. Protesters against human...

Bill of Rights, in British history

(Encyclopedia)Bill of Rights, 1689, in British history, one of the fundamental instruments of constitutional law. It registered in statutory form the outcome of the long 17th-century struggle between the Stuart kin...

Vallandigham, Clement Laird

(Encyclopedia)Vallandigham, Clement Laird vəlănˈdĭghămˌ, –gămˌ [key], 1820–71, American political leader, leader of the Copperheads in the Civil War, b. New Lisbon (now Lisbon), Ohio. He became (1842) a...

Rajapaksa, Gotabaya

(Encyclopedia)Rajapaksa or Rajapakse, Gotabaya, 1949–, Sri Lankan political leader, president of Sri Lanka (2019–). He joined the Sri Lankan army in 1971, fought against Marxist insurrections and against the Ta...

Heschel, Abraham Joshua

(Encyclopedia)Heschel, Abraham Joshua hĕshˈəl [key], 1907–72, American Jewish philosopher and theologian, b. Warsaw, Poland. He succeeded Martin Buber as director of the Central Organization for Jewish Adult E...

Soros, George

(Encyclopedia)Soros, George sôrˈōs [key], 1930–, American stock trader and philanthropist, b. Budapest, Hungary, as George Schwartz. He studied under Sir Karl Popper at the London School of Economics (grad. 19...

natural rights

(Encyclopedia)natural rights, political theory that maintains that an individual enters into society with certain basic rights and that no government can deny these rights. The modern idea of natural rights grew ou...
 

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