Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Constantine, Learie

(Encyclopedia)Constantine, Learie kŏnˈstăntīnˌ [key], 1902–71, West Indian cricket player and the first black man to sit in the British House of Lords, b. Trinidad. The son of a sugar plantation foreman, he ...

Malabar Coast

(Encyclopedia)Malabar Coast mălˈəbär [key], SW coast of India stretching c.525 mi (845 km) from Goa to the southern tip of the peninsula at Kanniyakumri (Cape Comorin), primarily in Kerala state and the norther...

Mackenzie

(Encyclopedia)Mackenzie, river, c.1,120 mi (1,800 km) long, issuing from Great Slave Lake, Northwest Territories, Canada, and flowing generally NW to the Arctic Ocean through a great delta. Between Great Slave Lake...

Ascension, island

(Encyclopedia)Ascension əsĕnˈchən [key], island, 34 sq mi (88 sq km), in the S Atlantic, NW of Saint Helena and belonging to the British St. Helena overseas territory. Georgetown i...

San Juan Boundary Dispute

(Encyclopedia)San Juan Boundary Dispute, controversy between the United States and Great Britain over the U.S.–British Columbia boundary. It is sometimes called the Northwest Boundary Dispute. The difficulty aros...

Hull, William

(Encyclopedia)Hull, William, 1753–1825, American general, b. Derby, Conn. He served brilliantly in the American Revolution and became in 1805 governor of the newly created Michigan Territory. As the War of 1812 b...

Cochise

(Encyclopedia)Cochise kōchēsˈ, kōchēˈsā [key], c.1815–1874, chief of the Chiricahua group of Apache in Arizona. He was friendly with the whites until 1861, when some of his relatives were hanged by U.S. so...

Lumbee

(Encyclopedia)Lumbee, descendants of Native Americans whose language belonged to the Algonquian branch of the Algonquian-Wakashan linguistic stock (see Native American languages). The ancestors of the Lumbee occupi...

Weddell Sea

(Encyclopedia)Weddell Sea wĕdˈəl [key], arm of the Atlantic Ocean, W Antarctica, SE of South America, bordered by the Antarctic Peninsula and Coats Land. The vast Ronne and Filchner ice shelves are at the head o...

Freetown

(Encyclopedia)Freetown, city (1995 est. pop. 519,500), capital of Sierra Leone, W Sierra Leone, a port on the Atlantic Ocean. Located on the Sierra Leone peninsula, Freetown is the nation's administrative, communic...