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panama-hat palm

(Encyclopedia)panama-hat palm, perennial herb (Carludovica palmata) growing wild from Central America south to Bolivia. Despite its frondlike leaves it is not a true palm. The leaves are used to weave Panama hats, ...

La Guajira

(Encyclopedia)La Guajira lä gwähēˈrä [key], peninsula, c.100 mi (160 km) long, N Colombia, extending into the Caribbean Sea. Punta Gallinas, at the tip, is the northernmost point of South America. On the spars...

Brown, Samuel Robbins

(Encyclopedia)Brown, Samuel Robbins, 1810–80, American missionary and educator, b. East Windsor, Conn. As a missionary (1839–47) to China, he took charge of a school founded by the Morrison Educational Associat...

Tapachula

(Encyclopedia)Tapachula täpächo͞oˈlä [key], city (1990 pop. 138,858) Chiapas state, SE Mexico, at the foot of the Chiapas highlands and near the Guatemala border. It is the commercial center of a coffee-growin...

Bimeler, Joseph Michael

(Encyclopedia)Bimeler, Joseph Michael bīˈmələr [key], 1778–1853, German religious leader, originally called Bäumler. A teacher of the separatists in Württemberg, in 1817 he led a group of them to America. I...

St. John, John Pierce

(Encyclopedia)St. John, John Pierce, 1833–1916, American political reformer, b. Brookville, Ind. He traveled in the West and in South America, fought in the Union army in the Civil War, and after 1869 practiced l...

dogwood

(Encyclopedia)dogwood or cornel kôrˈnəl [key], shrub or tree of the genus Cornus, chiefly of north temperate and tropical mountain regions, characteristically having an inconspicuous flower surrounded by large, ...

Continental Divide

(Encyclopedia)Continental Divide, the “backbone” of a continent. In North America, from N Alaska to New Mexico, it moves along the crest of the Rocky Mts., which separates streams with outlets to the west of th...

Christian Reformed Church

(Encyclopedia)Christian Reformed Church, denomination formed after the secession of a group from the Reformed Church in America in 1857. Colonists from Holland who began settling in Michigan in 1846 generally becam...

Chagas' disease

(Encyclopedia)Chagas' disease, disease of South and Central America caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. It usually affects children and young adults and is transmitted by the feces of infected insects, typica...