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Encyclopedias since 1768

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Lebanon ... Ledru-Rollin, Alexandre-Auguste

Lebanon: city, Grafton county, western New Hampshire, U.S., on the Mascoma River near its junction with the Connecticut River, just south of Hanover. Founded in 1761 by settlers from Connecticut, the town grew slowly until the arrival (1848) of the railroad ...
Lebanon: city, seat (1849) of Laclede county, south-central Missouri, U.S., in the Ozark Mountains about 50 miles (80 km) northeast of Springfield. Founded about 1849, it was originally called Wyota for the Native Americans who had populated the area, then renamed ...
Lebanon: city, seat of Wilson county, north-central Tennessee, U.S., about 30 miles (50 km) east of Nashville and about 5 miles (10 km) south of the Cumberland River. Established in 1802 on an overland stagecoach route, it was named for the ...
Lebanon: town (township), New London county, east-central Connecticut, U.S. Settled in 1695 and incorporated in 1700, its name was inspired by a nearby cedar forest that suggested the biblical cedars of Lebanon. In colonial times the town was on the most ...
Lebanon: city, seat (1813) of Lebanon county, southeastern Pennsylvania, U.S., in the Lebanon Valley, 23 miles (37 km) east of Harrisburg. Settled by immigrant Germans in the 1720s, it was laid out (c. 1750) by George Steitz and was first called ...
Lebanon: country located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Consisting of a narrow strip of territory approximately 135 miles (215 kilometres) long from north to south and 20 to 55 miles wide from east to west, the country is ...
Lebanon: county, southeastern Pennsylvania, U.S., located midway between the cities of Harrisburg and Reading. It consists of a central plain that rises to low hills in the south and to Blue Mountain in the north. The county is drained by Swatara, ...
Lebanon Mountains: mountain range, extending almost the entire length of Lebanon, paralleling the Mediterranean coast for about 150 mi (240 km), with northern outliers extending into Syria.
Lebedev, Pyotr Nikolayevich: Russian physicist who demonstrated experimentally the minute pressure that light exerts on bodies (1910).
Lebedev, Sergey Vasilyevich: Russian chemist who developed a method for industrial production of synthetic rubber.
Lebesgue integral: way of extending the concept of area inside a curve to include functions that do not have graphs representable pictorially. The graph of a function is defined as the set of all pairs of x- and y-values of the function. ...
Lebesgue, Henri-Leon: French mathematician whose generalization of the Riemann integral revolutionized the field of integration.
Leblanc, Maurice: French author and journalist, known as the creator of Arsene Lupin, French gentleman-thief turned detective, who is featured in more than 60 of Leblanc's crime novels and short stories.
Leblanc, Nicolas: French surgeon and chemist who in 1790 developed the process for making soda ash (sodium carbonate) from common salt (sodium chloride). This process, which bears his name, became one of the most important industrial-chemical processes of the 19th century.
Leboeuf, Edmond: French general who was marshal of the Second Empire and minister of war in the crucial period at the opening of the Franco-German War.
Lebombo Mountains: long, narrow mountain range in South Africa, Swaziland, and Mozambique, southeastern Africa, about 500 miles (800 km) long and consisting of volcanic rocks. The mountains' name is derived from a Zulu word, Ubombo, that means "big nose." The mountains extend ...
Lebon, Philippe: French engineer and chemist, inventor of illuminating gas.
Lebowa: former nonindependent black state that was in northern Transvaal, South Africa. The state was made up of two major and several minor exclaves (detached portions). It was designated by the South African government as the national territory for the northern ...
Lebowakgomo: new town, Northern province, South Africa. It was the capital of the former nonindependent black state of Lebowa. Lebowakgomo lies southeast of Pietersburg. The town, established in 1974 with a population of only 115 inhabitants, was enlarged and developed in ...
Lebrija: city, Seville provincia, Andalusia comunidad autonoma ("autonomous community"), southwestern Spain. It is located south of the city of Seville in the lower basin of the Guadalquivir River. Founded as Nebritza by the Phoenicians, it was called Nebrixa by the Romans, ...
Lebrun, Albert: 14th and last president (1932-40) of France's Third Republic. During the first year of World War II, he sought to preserve French unity in the face of internal political dissension and the German military threat, but he failed to provide ...
Lebrun, Charles-Francois, Duke De Plaisance, Prince De L'empire: French politician who served as third consul from 1799 to 1804, as treasurer of Napoleon's empire from 1804 to 1814, and as governor-general of Holland from 1811 to 1813.
Lebu: capital of Arauco provincia, Bio-Bio region, south-central Chile. It lies on the Pacific coast at the mouth of the Lebu River. Founded in 1739 but destroyed several times by Araucanian Indians, it became the provincial capital in 1875 and now ...
Lecce: city, capital of Lecce provincia, Puglia (Apulia) regione, southeastern Italy. It lies on the Salentina peninsula, or "heel" of Italy, east of Taranto. Possibly built on the site of the ancient Roman town of Lupiae, Lecce was contested by the ...
Lecco: town, capital of Lecco provincia, Lombardia (Lombardy) regione, northern Italy. It lies at the southern end of the eastern arm of Lake Como, at the outflow of the Adda River. Earlier the seat of a marquessate, Lecco was granted to ...
lechatelierite: a natural silica glass (silicon dioxide, SiO₂) that has the same chemical composition as coesite, cristobalite, keatite, quartz, and tridymite but has a different crystal structure. Two varieties are included: meteoritic silica glass, produced when terrestrial silica is fused in ...
Lechon, Jan: poet, editor, diplomat, and political propagandist, considered one of the foremost Polish poets of his generation.
lechwe: antelope species of the genus Kobus (q.v.).
lecithin: any of a group of phospholipids (phosphoglycerides) that are important in cell structure and metabolism. Lecithins are composed of phosphoric acid, cholines, esters of glycerol, and two fatty acids; the chain length, position, and degree of unsaturation of these fatty ...
Lecky, William Edward Hartpole: Irish historian of rationalism and European morals whose study of Georgian England became a classic.
Leclair, Jean-Marie, The Elder: French violinist and composer who established the classical French violin school that supplanted the earlier Italian school.
Leclanche, Georges: French engineer who in about 1866 invented the battery that bears his name. In slightly modified form, the Leclanche battery, now called a dry cell, is produced in great quantities and is widely used in devices such as flashlights and ...
Leclerc, Charles: French general, brother-in-law of Napoleon, who attempted to suppress the Haitian revolt led by the former slave Toussaint-Louverture.
Leclerc, Jacques-Philippe: French general and war hero who achieved fame as the liberator of Paris.
Leclerc, Jean: encyclopaedist and biblical scholar who espoused advanced principles of exegesis (interpretation) and theological method.
LeClercq, Tanaquil: versatile American ballet dancer, remembered largely for her work in association with George Balanchine, to whom she was married from 1952 to 1969.
Lecocq, Charles: one of the principal French composers of operettas after Offenbach, especially known for his La Fille de Madame Angot.
Lecompton Constitution: (1857), instrument framed in Lecompton, Kan., by Southern pro-slavery advocates of Kansas statehood. It contained clauses protecting slaveholding and a bill of rights excluding free blacks, and it added to the frictions leading up to the U.S. Civil War. Though ...
Leconte de Lisle, Charles-Marie-Rene: poet, leader of the Parnassians, who from 1865 to 1895 was acknowledged as the foremost French poet apart from the aging Victor Hugo.
Lecoq de Boisbaudran, Paul-Emile: French chemist who developed improved spectroscopic techniques for chemical analysis and discovered the elements gallium (1875), samarium (1880), and dysprosium (1886).
Lecouvreur, Adrienne: leading French actress whose life inspired a tragic drama a century after her death.
lectionary: in Christianity, a book containing portions of the Bible appointed to be read on particular days of the year. The word is also used for the list of such Scripture lessons. The early Christians adopted the Jewish custom of reading ...
lectisternium: (from Latin lectum sternere, "to spread a couch"), ancient Greek and Roman rite in which a meal was offered to gods and goddesses whose representations were laid upon a couch positioned in the open street. On the first occasion of ...
lector: in Christianity, a person chosen or set apart to read Holy Scripture in the church services. In the Eastern Orthodox churches lector is one of the minor orders in preparation for the priesthood. Although formerly a minor order in the ...
Led Zeppelin: British rock band that was extremely popular in the 1970s. Although their musical style was diverse, they came to be well known for their influence on the development of heavy metal. The members were Jimmy Page (b. Jan. 9, 1944, ...
Leda: in Greek legend, usually believed to be the daughter of Thestius, king of Aetolia, and wife of Tyndareus, king of Lacedaemon. Some ancient writers thought she was the mother by Tyndareus of Clytemnestra, wife of King Agamemnon, and of Castor, ...
Ledebour, Georg: German socialist politician who was radicalized by the outbreak of war in 1914 and became a leader of the Berlin communist uprising of January 1919.
Lederberg, Joshua: American geneticist, pioneer in the field of bacterial genetics, who shared the 1958 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (with George W. Beadle and Edward L. Tatum) for discovering the mechanisms of genetic recombination in bacteria.
Lederman, Leon Max: American physicist who, along with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1988 for their joint research on neutrinos.
Ledoux, Claude-Nicolas: French architect who developed an eclectic and visionary architecture linked with nascent pre-Revolutionary social ideals.
Ledru-Rollin, Alexandre-Auguste: French lawyer whose radical political activity earned him a prominent position in the French Second Republic; he helped bring about universal male suffrage in France.