Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

white-eye

(Encyclopedia)white-eye, common name for warblerlike, arboreal birds, including 85 species in the family Zosteropidae, and for certain species of ducks. The members of Zosteropidae, with the exception of a few spec...

Johnson, Lyndon Baines

(Encyclopedia)Johnson, Lyndon Baines, 1908–73, 36th President of the United States (1963–69), b. near Stonewall, Tex. Johnson lost the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination to John F. Kennedy, but accepte...

cigar and cigarette

(Encyclopedia)cigar and cigarette, tubular rolls of tobacco designed for smoking. Cigars consist of filler leaves held together by binder leaves and covered with a wrapper leaf, which is rolled spirally around the ...

communications satellite

(Encyclopedia)communications satellite artificial satellite that functions as part of a global radio-communications network. Echo 1, the first communications satellite, launched in 1960, was an instrumented inflat...

Jacobites

(Encyclopedia)Jacobites jăkˈəbītsˌ [key], adherents of the exiled branch of the house of Stuart who sought to restore James II and his descendants to the English and Scottish thrones after the Glorious Revolut...

hawk

(Encyclopedia)hawk, name generally applied to the smaller members of the Accipitridae, a heterogeneous family of diurnal birds of prey, such as the eagle, the kite, and the Old World vulture. Hawks belong to the sa...

Oppenheimer, J. Robert

(Encyclopedia)Oppenheimer, J. Robert ŏpˈənhīˌmər [key], 1904–67, American physicist, b. New York City, grad. Harvard (B.A., 1925), Ph.D. Univ. of Göttingen, 1927. He taught at the Univ. of California and t...

Knights Templars, in medieval history

(Encyclopedia)Knights Templars tĕmˈplərz [key], in medieval history, members of the military and religious order of the Poor Knights of Christ, called the Knights of the Temple of Solomon from their house in Jer...

intelligent design

(Encyclopedia)intelligent design, theory that some complex biological structures and other aspects of nature show evidence of having been designed by an intelligence. Such biological structures are said to have int...

poultry

(Encyclopedia)poultry, domesticated fowl kept primarily for meat and eggs; including birds of the order Galliformes, e.g., the chicken, turkey, guinea fowl, pheasant, quail, and peacock; and natatorial (swimming) b...