Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

194 results found

Bernadette, Saint

(Encyclopedia)Bernadette, Saint bûrnədĕtˈ [key], 1844–79, French peasant girl who reported seeing the Virgin Mary in apparitions at a grotto near Lourdes, her home, in 1858. She was born Marie Bernarde Soubir...

Goldwater, Barry Morris

(Encyclopedia)Goldwater, Barry Morris, 1909–98, U.S. senator (1953–65, 1969–87), b. Phoenix, Ariz. He studied at the Univ. of Arizona, but left in 1929 to enter his family's department-store business. After n...

Montluçon

(Encyclopedia)Montluçon môNlüsôNˈ [key], town (1990 pop. 46,660), Allier dept., central France, on the Cher River. Industry developed in the 19th cent. because of nearby coal fields in Commentry and iron-ore d...

seafloor spreading

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Schematic model of the oceanic crust, showing seafloor spreading seafloor spreading, theory of lithospheric evolution that holds that the ocean floors are spreading outward from vast underwate...

MacIntyre, Alasdair C.

(Encyclopedia)MacIntyre, Alasdair C. ălˈəstər măkˈĭntīrˌ [key], 1929–, American philosopher. He teaches at the Univ. of Notre Dame in Indiana. His major contributions have come in ethics. In his highly i...

Laon

(Encyclopedia)Laon läN [key], commercial town (1990 pop. 28,670), capital of Aisne dept., N France. It has forges, a printing plant, and factories that make heating equipment and metal goods. Situated on a rocky h...

Tallien, Thérésa Cabarrus

(Encyclopedia)Tallien, Thérésa Cabarrus tälyăNˈ [key], 1773–1835, French political figure, of Spanish parentage. The divorced wife of a marquis de Fontenay, she became intimate with the revolutionary Jean L...

Barrett, Amy Coney

(Encyclopedia)Barrett, Amy Coney, 1972–, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (2020–), b. New Orleans, grad. Univ. of Notre Dame Law School (1997). She clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a...

Vidal, Gore

(Encyclopedia)Vidal, Gore (Eugene Luther Gore Vidal, Jr.), 1925–2012, American writer, b. West Point, N.Y. He grew up in Washington, D.C., where a formative influence was his witty and scholarly grandfather, Sena...

Coypel

(Encyclopedia)Coypel kwäpĕlˈ [key], family of French painters. Noël Coypel, 1628–1707, director of the Académie de France à Rome and later of the Académie royale de péinture et de sculpture in Paris, was ...