Word: encyclopaedia
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...another occasion, Senator William Benton, then a vice president of the University of Chicago, had lunch with Wood to try to persuade him to turn over Sears' Encyclopaedia Britannica (which Sears bought in 1920) to the university as a philanthropic gesture. When Wood didn't say anything, Benton thought his persistence had annoyed the general. After lunch, as he was getting into his car, Wood drew back and said: "All right." (The gift has since earned some $2,000,000 in royalties for the university...
...miles, from England, around the Cape of Good Hope, and up the Persian Gulf to Teheran. But the gift was apparently worth the bother. The Shah was so delighted with it that he gave himself a new title in its honor: "Most Formidable Lord and Master of the Encyclopaedia Britannica...
Actually, by the time the Shah got his set, there were already hundreds of lords & masters of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (including George III and George Washington*), and since then, hundreds of thousands more have been added. Sets have found their way into cottages and castles, to Little America with Admiral Byrd, to Labrador with Sir Wilfred Grenfell, to homes, schools and libraries all over the world. In its 182 years, "EB" has become almost a synonym for knowledge, a roving storehouse of facts that anyone can go to, and that can speak with authority on almost any subject, from...
...gentlemen." To these gentlemen, California was "a large country of the West Indies," a toothache could be cured by "laxatives of manna and cassia dissolved in asses' milk," and tobacco could dry up the brain to "a little black lump." Later, as knowledge grew and changed, the Encyclopaedia Britannica had to grow and change with...
...royalty revenues since 1943) of the University of Chicago. It became such seven years ago, when ex-Adman William Benton, now Democratic Senator from Connecticut, maneuvered its transfer from Sears, Roebuck & Co. ("Do you think it appropriate that a mail-order house should own the encyclopaedia?" he had asked). Benton still heads EB's board of directors, while Chicago's retiring Chancellor Robert M. Hutchins still presides over its board of editors. The top editing job belongs to wiry Editor Walter Yust...