Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Evangelical and Reformed Church

(Encyclopedia)Evangelical and Reformed Church, Protestant denomination formed by the merger (1934) of the Reformed Church in the United States and the Evangelical Synod of North America. Both of these bodies had or...

Triassic period

(Encyclopedia)Triassic period trīăsˈĭk [key], first period of the Mesozoic era of geologic time (see Geologic Timescale, tablegeologic timescale, table) from 205 to 250 million years ago. Throughout the Triassi...

Zululand

(Encyclopedia)Zululand zo͞oˈlo͞olăndˌ [key], historic region and home of the Zulus, c.10,000 sq mi (25,900 sq km), NE KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Zululand is bordered by the Indian Ocean on the east, by Mozam...

Fraser, river, Canada

(Encyclopedia)Fraser, chief river of British Columbia, Canada, c.850 mi (1,370 km) long. It rises in the Rocky Mts., at Yellowhead Pass, near the British Columbia–Alta. line and flows northwest through the Rocky ...

Norwegian language

(Encyclopedia)Norwegian language, member of the North Germanic, or Scandinavian, group of the Germanic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. It is spoken by about 4 million people in Norway and anothe...

Diaspora

(Encyclopedia)Diaspora dīăsˈpərə [key] [Gr.,=dispersion], term used today to denote the Jewish communities living outside the Holy Land. It was originally used to designate the dispersal of the Jews at the tim...

Middle Kingdom

(Encyclopedia)Middle Kingdom or Middle Country, Mandarin Zhongguo, Chinese name for China. It dates from c.1000 b.c., when it designated the Chou empire situated on the North China Plain. The Chou people, unaware o...

Ade, George

(Encyclopedia)Ade, George, 1866–1944, American humorist and dramatist, b. Kentland, Ind., grad. Purdue Univ., 1887. His newspaper sketches and books attracted attention for their racy and slangy idiom and for the...

Gosford, Archibald Acheson, 2d earl of

(Encyclopedia)Gosford, Archibald Acheson, 2d earl of gŏzˈfərd [key], 1776–1849, governor in chief of British North America (1835–37). He served in the British House of Commons and, after succeeding (1807) to...

exploration

(Encyclopedia)exploration, travel to a part of the earth that is relatively unknown to the traveler's culture, historically often motivated by a desire for colonization, conquest, or trade. See also space explorati...