Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Amherst College

(Encyclopedia)Amherst College, at Amherst, Mass.; founded 1821 as a college for men, coeducational since 1975. A liberal arts institution, Amherst maintains a cooperative program with Smith College, Mount Holyoke C...

Tangier, island, United States

(Encyclopedia)Tangier, island, E Va., in S Chesapeake Bay. Capt. John Smith first visited the island in 1608, and in 1620 settlers arrived from Cornwall, England. Isolated from the mainland, the people of Tangier d...

Eliot, George

(Encyclopedia)Eliot, George, pseud. of Mary Ann or Marian Evans, 1819–80, English novelist, b. Arbury, Warwickshire. One of the great English novelists, she was reared in a strict atmosphere of evangelical Protes...

Davidson, Jo

(Encyclopedia)Davidson, Jo, 1883–1952, American sculptor, b. New York City. He studied at the Art Students League and the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. He is known especially for his portrait busts, which display...

Four Freedoms

(Encyclopedia)Four Freedoms. In his message to Congress proposing lend-lease legislation (Jan. 6, 1941), President Franklin Delano Roosevelt stated that Four Freedoms should prevail everywhere in the world—freedo...

Harrison, Pat

(Encyclopedia)Harrison, Pat (Byron Patton Harrison), 1881–1941, U.S. Congressman, b. Crystal Springs, Miss. A lawyer, he served as a Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives (1911–19) and in the U.S. Senat...

Nash, John Henry

(Encyclopedia)Nash, John Henry, 1871–1947, American printer and bibliophile, b. Woodbridge, Canada. After learning the printer's trade, he emigrated to the United States in 1894. He eventually became professor of...

Fredericksburg, battle of

(Encyclopedia)Fredericksburg, battle of, in the Civil War, fought Dec. 13, 1862, at Fredericksburg, Va. In Nov., 1862, the Union general Ambrose Burnside moved his three “grand divisions” under W. B. Franklin, ...

country music

(Encyclopedia)country music, American popular music form originating in the Southern and Western United States. Country music is directly descended from the folk songs, ballads, and popular songs of the English, Sc...

Hewlett, William Redington

(Encyclopedia)Hewlett, William Redington hyo͞oˈlĭt [key], 1913–2001, American engineer and business executive, b. Ann Arbor, Mich., grad. Stanford (B.S. 1934, Engineer 1939), Massachusetts Institute of Technol...