Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Rogers, Woodes

(Encyclopedia)Rogers, Woodes, 1679?–1732, British privateer and colonial administrator. A romantic figure, Rogers plundered (1708–9) Spanish commerce in the Pacific and rescued Alexander Selkirk from the Juan F...

Canterbury

(Encyclopedia)Canterbury, city and district, Kent, SE England, on the Stour River. Tourism, services, and retail are the city's main industries. There is also some li...

Pessoa, Fernando

(Encyclopedia)Pessoa, Fernando (Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa) pĕsˈwä [key], 1888–1935, Portuguese poet, b. Lisbon. He moved to Durban, South Africa, as a child, becoming bilingual (Portuguese, English); i...

Gozzoli, Benozzo

(Encyclopedia)Gozzoli, Benozzo bānôtˈtsō gôtˈtsōlē [key], 1420–97, Florentine painter, whose real name was Benozzo di Lese. He was apprenticed to Fra Angelico, first in Florence and later in Rome. Becomin...

Foster, Hannah Webster

(Encyclopedia)Foster, Hannah Webster, 1759–1840, American novelist, b. Boston. She was one of the earliest American novelists and her epistolary novel, The Coquette (1797), was one of the first of its kind in Ame...

van Loon, Hendrik Willem

(Encyclopedia)van Loon, Hendrik Willem văn lōn [key], 1882–1944, American author and journalist, b. Rotterdam, Netherlands. He emigrated to the United States in 1903 and studied at Harvard and Cornell (B.A., 19...

Tortuga

(Encyclopedia)Tortuga tōrto͞oˈgä [key] [Span.,=turtle], island, c.70 sq mi (180 sq km), off N Haiti. It was a notorious rendezvous of pirates in the 17th cent. It is called Île de la Tortue by the Haitians. ...

Sigtuna

(Encyclopedia)Sigtuna sĭgˈtüˌnä [key], town (1990 pop. 4,918), Stockholm co., E Sweden, on Lake Skarven, near Stockholm. Founded c.1000, it was one of Sweden's earliest towns, its first capital, and a center o...

Arion

(Encyclopedia)Arion ərĭˈən [key], Greek poet, inventor of the dithyramb. He is said to have lived at Periander's court in Corinth in the late 7th cent. b.c. A legend repeated by Herodotus tells how, having been...

Sebastiano del Piombo

(Encyclopedia)Sebastiano del Piombo sābästyäˈnō dĕl pyômˈbō [key], c.1485–1547, Italian painter of the Venetian school, whose real name was Sebastiano Luciani. Although he was trained by Giovanni Bellini...