Avalon, Frankie

A wunderkind trumpet player, Avalon was already an experienced performer when, as a Philadelphia teenager, he joined Rocco and the Saints (whose drummer was future pop star Bobby Rydell). Guided by manager

Gadsden Purchase

(signed Dec. 30, 1853, Mexico City; revised treaty ratified April 25, 1854), transaction that followed the conquest of much of northern Mexico by the United States in 1848. It assigned to the United States nearly 30,000 additional square miles (78,000 square kilometres) of northern Mexican territory, now southern Arizona and southern New Mexico. Prompted by advocates of a southern transcontinental

Theatre, Western, Great Britain

World War II had left British theatre in a precarious state. In London's West End, about a fifth of the theatres were destroyed or damaged by bombing. Furthermore, production costs multiplied, an entertainment tax of 10 percent of gross receipts was imposed by the government, and theatre managements—many of them controlled by a monopoly known as The Group—tended to choose

Aureate

A writing style that is affected, pompous, and heavily ornamental, that uses rhetorical flourishes excessively, and that often employs interlarded foreign words and phrases. The style is usually associated with the 15th-century French, English, and Scottish writers. The word is from the Middle English aureat, “golden” or “splendid,” and was probably coined on the basis

Anderson, Marian

Anderson displayed vocal talent as a child, but her family could not afford to pay for formal training. From the age of six, she was tutored in the choir of the Union Baptist Church, where she sang parts written for bass, alto, tenor, and soprano voices. Members of the