Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

child labor

(Encyclopedia)child labor, use of the young as workers in factories, farms, mines, and other facilities, especially in work that is physically hazardous or morally, socially, or mentally harmful, involves a form of...

Greely, Adolphus Washington

(Encyclopedia)Greely, Adolphus Washington, 1844–1935, American army officer and arctic explorer, b. Newburyport, Mass. Entering the Union army at 17, he emerged a brevet major of volunteers at the end of the Civi...

Bowman, Isaiah

(Encyclopedia)Bowman, Isaiah bōˈmən [key], 1878–1950, American geographer, b. Waterloo, Ont., B.S. Harvard, 1905, Ph.D. Yale, 1909. He taught geography at Yale (1905–15) and was director (1915–35) of the A...

water skiing

(Encyclopedia)water skiing, sport of riding on skis along the water's surface while being towed by a motorboat. It probably originated on the French Riviera in the early 1920s, and was known in the United States by...

Rusk, Dean

(Encyclopedia)Rusk, Dean (David Dean Rusk), 1909–94, U.S. secretary of state (1961–69), b. Cherokee co., Ga. After teaching (1934–40) and serving in World War II, he entered (1946) the Dept. of State. In 1950...

Thein Sein

(Encyclopedia)Thein Sein tān sān [key], 1945–, Burmese general and political leader. A graduate of the Defense Services Academy, he commanded an infantry battalion and later served under strongman Than Shwe whe...

Barroso, José Manuel Durão

(Encyclopedia)Barroso, José Manuel Durão zho͞ozĕˈ mänwĕlˈ do͞orouNˈ bärōˈzo͞o [key], 1956–, Portuguese politician, b. Lisbon. A leftist activist while in law school, he became a Social Democrat in 1...

soviet

(Encyclopedia)soviet, primary unit in the political organization of the former USSR. The term is the Russian word for council. The first soviets were revolutionary committees organized by Russian socialists in the ...

Curtis, Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar

(Encyclopedia)Curtis, Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar, 1850–1933, American publisher and philanthropist, b. Portland, Maine. He started his first periodical, The People's Ledger, in Boston in 1872. Later, in Philadelphi...

Bruce, Lenny

(Encyclopedia)Bruce, Lenny, 1925–66, American comedian, b. Long Island, N.Y., as Leonard Alfred Schneider. Possessed of a cynical, surreal, and intensely comic view of the world, Bruce brutally satirized such sen...

Browse by Subject