Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Delambre, Jean Baptiste Joseph

(Encyclopedia)Delambre, Jean Baptiste Joseph zhäN bätēstˈ zhôzĕfˈ dəläNˈbrə [key], 1749–1822, French astronomer and mathematician. He was a member of the bureau of longitudes from 1795 and professor at...

Duclos, Jacques

(Encyclopedia)Duclos, Jacques zhäk düklōˈ [key], 1896–1975, French Communist party leader. Early in his career he joined the French Communist party and in 1931 became party secretary and a member of the polit...

Columbia basin project

(Encyclopedia)Columbia basin project, central Wash., a multipurpose development of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation providing irrigation, hydroelectric power, and flood control. Its key unit, the Grand Coulee Dam, pr...

Bio, Julius Maada

(Encyclopedia)Bio, Julius Maada, 1964–, Sierra Leonean political leader. He served in the Sierra Leone armed forces in Liberia (1990–91) as part of a UN peacekeeping force, and then fought in the Sierra Leone c...

Dred Scott Case

(Encyclopedia)Dred Scott Case, argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1856–57. It involved the then bitterly contested issue of the status of slavery in the federal territories. In 1834, Dred Scott, a black slav...

Colorado–Big Thompson project

(Encyclopedia)Colorado–Big Thompson project, constructed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to divert water from the headstreams of the Colorado River to irrigate c.720,000 acres (291,400 hectares) of land in NE C...

fugitive slave laws

(Encyclopedia)fugitive slave laws, in U.S. history, the federal acts of 1793 and 1850 providing for the return between states of escaped black slaves. Similar laws existing in both North and South in colonial days ...

Hofstadter, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Hofstadter, Robert, 1915–90, American physicist, b. New York City, Ph.D. Princeton, 1938. He taught at Princeton from 1938 to 1950 and also worked at the National Bureau of Standards during World Wa...

Gold Butte National Monument

(Encyclopedia)Gold Butte National Monument, 296,937 acres (90,506 hectares), SE Utah, est. 2016 and managed by the Bureau of Land Management. Named for a mining ghost town, the monument embraces a rugged desert lan...

Browse by Subject