Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

World Trade Organization

(Encyclopedia)World Trade Organization (WTO), international organization established in 1995 as a result of the final round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) negotiations, called the Uruguay Roun...

postal service

(Encyclopedia)postal service, arrangements made by a government for the transmission of letters, packages, and periodicals, and for related services. Early courier systems for government use were organized in the P...

Fried, Alfred Hermann

(Encyclopedia)Fried, Alfred Hermann älˈfrāt hĕrˈmän frēt [key], 1864–1921, Austrian pacifist. He moved to Berlin, where he was a bookseller and a writer. Influenced by Bertha von Suttner, he devoted himsel...

Cremer, Sir William Randal

(Encyclopedia)Cremer, Sir William Randal krēˈmər [key], 1828–1908, English pacifist. At first active in trade unionism, he gradually expanded his work and interests, becoming one of the most active advocates o...

Emancipation, Edict of

(Encyclopedia)Emancipation, Edict of, 1861, the mechanism by which Czar Alexander II freed all Russian serfs (one third of the total population). All personal serfdom was abolished, and the peasants were to receive...

Park Ridge

(Encyclopedia)Park Ridge, city (1990 pop. 36,175), Cook co., NE Ill., a suburb adjacent to Chicago, on the Des Plaines River; inc. 1873. It is chiefly residential. Several national and international corporations ha...

sports

(Encyclopedia)sports, athletic games or tests of skill undertaken primarily for the diversion of those who take part or those who observe them. The range is great; usually, however, the term is restricted to any pl...

SOS

(Encyclopedia)SOS, code letters of the international distress signal. The signal is expressed in International Morse code as … — — — ……———… (three dots, three dashes, three dots). This c...

Bustamante, Antonio Sánchez de

(Encyclopedia)Bustamante, Antonio Sánchez de də bo͞ostämänˈtā [key], 1865–1951, Cuban authority on international law, author of the Bustamante Code. A delegate to the Paris Peace Conference (1919), he was...

Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora

(Encyclopedia)Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), international agreement that aims to ensure that trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threate...