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Gretna ... Grimthorpe, Edmund Beckett, 1st Baron

Gretna: city, seat (1884) of Jefferson parish, southeastern Louisiana, U.S. It lies along the west bank of the Mississippi River (there bridged) opposite New Orleans. Founded in the early 1800s as ...
Gretna Green: village in Dumfries and Galloway council area, historic county of Dumfriesshire, Scotland. It lies just north of the River Sark, the dividing line between England and Scotland, and was long ...
Gretry, Andre-Ernest-Modeste: French composer of operas, a leader in the evolution of French opera comique from light popular plays with music into semiserious musical drama.
Grettis saga: (c. 1320), latest and one of the finest of Icelandic family sagas. Its distinction rests on the complex, problematic character of its outlaw hero, Grettir, and on its skillful incorporation ...
Gretzky, Wayne: Canadian ice-hockey player who was considered by many to be the greatest player in the history of the National Hockey League (NHL).
Greuze, Jean-Baptiste: French genre and portrait painter who initiated a mid-18th-century vogue for sentimental and moralizing anecdotes in paintings.
Grevelingen Lake: nontidal saltwater lake, southwestern Netherlands, located between the joined islands of Schouwen and Duiveland to the south and Goeree and Overflakkee to the north. As part of the Delta Project ...
Greville, Fulke, 1st Baron Brooke: English writer who, on his tomb, styled himself "Servant to Q. Eliz., councellor to King James, and friend to Sir Philip Sidney," but who is best remembered as a powerful ...
Grevin, Jacques: French poet and dramatist who is credited with writing the first original French plays to observe the form of classical tragedies and comedies.
Grevy, Jules: French Republican political figure whose term as president (1879-87) confirmed the establishment of the Third Republic (1870-1940) in France.
Grew, Nehemiah: English botanist, physician, and microscopist, who, with the Italian microscopist Marcello Malpighi, is considered to be among the founders of the science of plant anatomy. Grew's first book on plant ...
Grey Cup: trophy awarded annually to the winner of the professional Canadian Football League (CFL) play-offs. The cup was first awarded in 1910 by Earl Grey, governor-general of Canada, to represent the ...
Grey, Charles Grey, 1st Earl, Viscount Howick: British general in the American Revolution who commanded in victories in several battles, notably against the American general Anthony Wayne and at the Battle of Germantown (1777-78).
Grey, Charles Grey, 2nd Earl: British politician, leader of the Whig (liberal) Party, and prime minister (1830-34), who presided over the passage of the Reform Act of 1832, modernizing the franchise and the electoral system.
Grey, Henry George Grey, 3rd Earl: British statesman who, as secretary of state for war and the colonies (1846-52), became the first British minister to pursue a policy of self-government for the colonies, so far as ...
Grey, Lady Jane: titular queen of England for nine days in 1553. Beautiful and intelligent, at the age of 15 she reluctantly allowed herself to be put on the throne by unscrupulous politicians; ...
Grey, Sir Edward, 3rd Baronet: British statesman whose 11 years (1905-16) as British foreign secretary, the longest uninterrupted tenure of that office in history, were marked by the start of World War I, about which ...
Grey, Sir George: British colonial administrator who was called upon to govern in periods of crisis, most notably in New Zealand, South Australia, and the Cape Colony (South Africa).
Grey, Zane: prolific writer whose romantic novels of the American West largely created a new literary genre, the western.
greyhound: fastest of dogs, one of the oldest of breeds, and long symbolic of the aristocracy. Its likeness appears on an Egyptian tomb dating from about 3000 BC. Streamlined and slender ...
Greyhound: (foaled 1932), American harness racehorse (Standardbred), considered by many to have been the greatest trotter that ever raced. A tall (about 66 inches [168 cm]) gray gelding sired by Guy ...
Greyhound Lines, Inc.: American corporation that has provided the major intercity bus transportation in the United States and Canada. Greyhound's headquarters are in Dallas, Texas.
greylag: (species Anser anser), most common Eurasian representative of the so-called gray goose and ancestor of all Occidental domestic geese. It belongs to the subfamily Anserinae, family Anatidae (order Anseriformes). It ...
Greylock, Mount: highest point (3,491 feet [1,064 metres]) in Massachusetts, U.S. It lies 5 miles (8 km) south-southwest of North Adams, in the Berkshire Hills. Visitors may ascend via road or the ...
Greymouth: town and port, West Coast local government region, western South Island, New Zealand. Established in 1863 as a government depot at the mouth of the Grey River, on the north ...
Grhya-sutra: any of the Hindu religious manuals detailing the domestic (grhya) religious ceremonies performed by the householder over his own fire. They make up, together with the Srauta-sutras (which deal with ...
gribble: any of the approximately 20 species of wood-boring, marine crustaceans constituting the genus Limnoria, in the order Isopoda. They feed on algae, driftwood, and the submerged wood of docks and ...
Gribeauval, Jean-Baptiste Vaquette de: French military officer and engineer whose developments of French artillery contributed to the brilliant military successes of Napoleon in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Griboyedov, Aleksandr Sergeyevich: Russian playwright whose comedy Gore ot uma (Wit Works Woe) is one of the finest in Russian literature.
grid: in an electron tube, an electrode that has one or more openings for controlling electrons or ions as they pass through it. Unmodified, the term applies to a control grid, ...
Grieg, Edvard: composer who was a founder of the Norwegian nationalist school of music.
Grieg, Nordahl: lyric poet, dramatist, and novelist; a socially committed writer whose resistance to the Germans during the occupation of Norway and subsequent death in World War II made him a hero ...
Grier, Robert C: associate justice of the United States Supreme Court (1846-70).
Grierson, John: founder of the British documentary-film movement and its leader for almost 40 years. He was one of the first to see the potential of motion pictures to shape people's attitudes ...
Grierson, Sir George Abraham: Irish linguistic language scholar and civil servant who conducted the Linguistic Survey of India (1898-1928), obtaining information on 364 languages and dialects.
Griesbach, Johann Jakob: rationalist Protestant German theologian, the earliest biblical critic to subject the Gospels to systematic literary analysis.
Griffenfeld, Peder Schumacher, Count af: Danish statesman of the 17th century.
Griffes, Charles: first native U.S. composer to write Impressionist music.
Griffey, Ken, Jr.: American professional baseball player who was one of the dominant power hitters of the 1990s and ranked among the best defensive outfielders of all time.
griffin: composite mythological creature with a lion's body (winged or wingless) and a bird's head, usually that of an eagle. The griffin was a favourite decorative motif in the ancient Middle ...
Griffin, Donald Redfield: American biophysicist and animal behaviourist known for his research in animal navigation, acoustic orientation, and sensory biophysics. He is credited with founding cognitive ethology, a field that studies thought processes ...
Griffin, Johnny: black American jazz tenor saxophonist noted for his fluency in the hard-bop idiom.
Griffin, Walter Burley: American architect, landscape designer, and city planner whose most ambitious work is the Australian capital, Canberra.
Griffing, Josephine Sophia White: American reformer and a strong presence in the women's rights movement in the mid-19th-century. She also campaigned vigorously and effectively for Abolition and later for aid to former slaves.
Griffith: town, south-central New South Wales, southeastern Australia, in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area. Surveyed in 1916 and designed by the U.S. architect Walter Burley Griffin, it was proclaimed a town in ...
Griffith Joyner, Florence: American sprinter who set world records in the 100 metres (10.49 seconds) and 200 metres (21.34 seconds) that have stood since 1988.
Griffith, Arthur: journalist and Irish nationalist, principal founder of the powerful Sinn Fein ("We Ourselves") movement, vice president of the Irish Republic from January 21, 1919, and its president from January 10, ...
Griffith, D W: pioneer U.S. motion-picture director, credited with developing many of the basic techniques of filmmaking, in such films as The Birth of a Nation (1915), Intolerance (1916), Broken Blossoms (1919), Way ...
Griffith, Emile: professional American boxer who won world championships on five occasions, an achievement surpassed only by Sugar Ray Robinson's total of six.
Griffith, Sir Richard John, 1st Baronet: Irish geologist and civil engineer who has sometimes been called the "father of Irish geology."
Griffiths, John Willis: American naval architect who created the first extreme clipper ship, the Rainbow, which was designed to engage in the China trade. The Rainbow was launched in 1845 and began a ...
Grignard reagent: any of numerous organic derivatives of magnesium (Mg) commonly represented by the general formula RMgX (in which R is a hydrocarbon radical: CH₃, C₂H₅, C₆H₅, etc.; and X is a ...
Grignard, Victor: French chemist and corecipient, with Paul Sabatier, of the 1912 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his development of the Grignard reaction. This work in organomagnesium compounds opened a broad area ...
Grigny, Nicolas de: French organist and composer, member of a family of musicians in Reims.
Grigorovich, Yuri Nikolayevich: Russian dancer and choreographer who was artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet from 1964 to 1995.
Grigoryev, Apollon Aleksandrovich: Russian literary critic and poet remembered for his theory of organic criticism, in which he argued that the aim of art and literature, rather than being to describe society, should ...
Grigson, Geoffrey: English editor, poet, and literary critic who became known in the 1930s primarily as the founder-editor of the influential periodical New Verse (1933-39) and afterward as the editor and author ...
Grijalba, Juan de: Spanish explorer, nephew of the conquistador Diego Velazquez; he was one of the first to explore the eastern coast of Mexico.
Grijalva River: river in southeastern Mexico. Its headstreams, the largest of which is the Cuilco, rise in the Sierra Madre of Guatemala and the Sierra de Soconusco of Mexico. The Grijalva flows ...
Grillparzer, Franz: Austrian dramatist who wrote tragedies that were belatedly recognized as the greatest works of the Austrian stage.
Grimald, Nicholas: English scholar and poet, best known as a contributor to Songes and Sonettes (1557), known as Tottel's Miscellany, an anthology of contemporary poetry he may have edited.
Grimaldi Family: one of the major families of Genoa, prominent in Guelf (pro-papal) politics and supporters of the Angevin kings of Naples. The Grimaldis became lords of Monaco in the 15th century.
Grimaldi, Joseph: English clown and pantomimist.
Grimke, Angelina Weld: African-American poet and playwright, an important forerunner of the Harlem Renaissance.
Grimke, Sarah; and Grimke, Angelina: American antislavery crusaders and women's rights advocates.
Grimm's law: description of the regular correspondences in Indo-European languages formulated by Jacob Grimm in his Deutsche Grammatik (1819-37; "Germanic Grammar"); it pointed out prominent correlations between the Germanic and other Indo-European ...
Grimm, Friedrich Melchior, Freiherr von: (baron of) critic of German descent who played an important part in the spread of 18th-century French culture throughout Europe.
Grimm, Hans: German writer whose works were popular expressions of Pan-Germanism and helped to prepare the climate of opinion in Germany that embraced the nationalist and expansionist policies of Adolf Hitler.
Grimm, Jacob Ludwig Carl and Wilhelm Carl: German brothers famous for their classic collections of folk songs and folktales, especially for Kinder- und Hausmarchen (1812-22; generally known as Grimm's Fairy Tales), which led to the birth of ...
Grimmelshausen, Hans Jacob Christoph von: German novelist, whose Simplicissimus series is one of the masterworks of his country's literature. Satiric and partially autobiographical, it is a matchless social picture of the often ...
Grimoald: Carolingian mayor of the palace of Austrasia.
Grimond, Jo: leader of the British Liberal Party during its resurgence after World War II.
Grimsby: town and seaport, unitary authority of North East Lincolnshire, historic county of Lincolnshire, England. Although it was important as a medieval market town near a small harbour on the River ...
Grimsey: (Icelandic: "Grims Island"), island in the Greenland Sea, 50 miles (80 km) north of the town of Akureyri on the northern coast of Iceland. The island, 3 miles (5 km) ...
Grimshaw, Beatrice: Irish-born writer and traveler whose many books deal with her travels and adventures in the South Seas.
Grimthorpe, Edmund Beckett, 1st Baron: also called (until 1874) Edmund Beckett Denison, or (1874-86) Sir Edmund Beckett, 5th Baronet English lawyer and horologist notorious in his day for his disputatious demeanour but now better remembered ...