Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

393 results found

polo

(Encyclopedia)polo, indoor or outdoor ball and goal game played on horseback. Some historians claim that polo originated in Persia in the 6th cent.; it spread to Turkey, India, and Tibet and, with some modificati...

Lasorda, Tommy

(Encyclopedia)Lasorda, Tommy, 1927-2021, American baseball pitcher and manager, b. Norristown, Pa., as Thomas Charles Lasorda. Lasorda first pitched for the farm tea...

Salt Lake City

(Encyclopedia)Salt Lake City, city (1990 pop. 159,936), alt. c.4,330 ft (1,320 m), state capital and seat of Salt Lake co., N central Utah, on the Jordan River and near the Great Salt Lake, at the foot of the Wasat...

softball

(Encyclopedia)softball, variant of baseball played with a larger ball on a smaller field. Invented (1888) in Chicago as an indoor game, it was at various times called indoor baseball, mush ball, playground ball, ki...

Atlanta

(Encyclopedia)Atlanta ətlănˈtə, ăt– [key], city (2020 pop. 498,715), state capital and seat of Fulton co., NW Ga., on the Chattahoochee R. and Peachtree Creek, near the Appalachi...

shooting

(Encyclopedia)shooting, firing with rifle, shotgun, pistol, or revolver at stationary or moving targets. The term shooting is also used in Great Britain to mean small-game hunting. In the 19th cent. the sport of ri...

electronic game

(Encyclopedia)electronic game, device or computer program that provides entertainment by challenging a person's eye-hand coordination or mental abilities. Made possible by the development of the microprocessor, ele...

era

(Encyclopedia)era, period of historic time. In geology, it is the name applied to large divisions of geological process, e.g., Paleozoic era (see geology). In chronology an era is a period reckoned from a fixed poi...

Bach, Thomas

(Encyclopedia)Bach, Thomas, 1953–, German sports executive, b. Würzberg. A lawyer and businessman, he won a gold medal in team fencing representing West Germany in the 1976 Montreal Olympics. Bach served as pres...

Havelange, João

(Encyclopedia)Havelange, João (Jean-Marie Faustin Godefroid de Havelange), 1916–2016, Brazilian business and sports executive, b. Rio de Janeiro. An Olympic swimmer (1936) and water polo player (1952), he was a ...