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Vietnam Veterans Memorial

(Encyclopedia)Vietnam Veterans Memorial, war memorial in Washington, D.C., built 1982. Designed by the American sculptor and architect Maya Ying Lin, it is a sloping, V-shaped, 493-ft (150-m) wall of highly polishe...

Villars, Claude Louis Hector, duc de

(Encyclopedia)Villars, Claude Louis Hector, duc de klōd lwē ĕktôrˈ dük də vēlärˈ [key], 1653–1734, marshal of France, the last of the great generals of Louis XIV. He fought in the Dutch War (1672–78) ...

French and Indian Wars

(Encyclopedia)French and Indian Wars, 1689–1763, the name given by American historians to the North American colonial wars between Great Britain and France in the late 17th and the 18th cent. They were really cam...

Svoboda, Ludvík

(Encyclopedia)Svoboda, Ludvík lo͝odˈvĕk svôˈbôdä [key], 1895–1979, Czechoslovak general and political leader. Svoboda served in the Czech Legion in World War I and became an officer (1922) in the army of ...

Spinola, Ambrogio

(Encyclopedia)Spinola, Ambrogio ämbrôˈjō spēˈnōlä [key], 1569–1630, Spanish general, b. Italy, of a noble Genoese family. In 1602, Spinola entered Spanish service in the Netherlands. He took (1604) Ostend...

Stilwell, Joseph Warren

(Encyclopedia)Stilwell, Joseph Warren, 1883–1946, American general, b. Palatka, Fla. Commissioned in the army in 1904, he fought in World War I and later served for 13 years in China. In Feb., 1942, during World ...

Cummings, E. E.

(Encyclopedia)Cummings, E. E. (Edward Estlin Cummings), 1894–1962, American poet, b. Cambridge, Mass., grad. Harvard, 1915. His poetry, noted for its eccentricities of typography (notably the lack of capitalizati...

Decius Mus, Publius

(Encyclopedia)Decius Mus, Publius mŭs [key], name of three Romans, father, son, and grandson, who, according to legend, sacrificed themselves for their country. As a tribune, the father fought (343 b.c.) in the wa...

Copperheads

(Encyclopedia)Copperheads, in the American Civil War, a reproachful term for those Northerners sympathetic to the South, mostly Democrats outspoken in their opposition to the Lincoln administration. They were espec...

Oman, Sir Charles William Chadwick

(Encyclopedia)Oman, Sir Charles William Chadwick ōˈmən [key], 1860–1946, British historian, b. India, educated at Oxford under William Stubbs. He was a foremost military historian; his most notable works are A...