Columbia Encyclopedia

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searchlight

(Encyclopedia)searchlight, device, usually swiveled, using a lens and reflecting surface to direct a powerful beam of light of nearly parallel rays. In 1892 such apparatus was used along the English Channel in coas...

Ch'ien-lung

(Encyclopedia)Ch'ien-lung chyĕnˈ-lo͞ongˈ [key], 1711–99, reign title of the fourth emperor (1735–96) of the Ch'ing dynasty, whose given name was Hung-li. Under his vigorous military policy, China attained i...

glasnost

(Encyclopedia)glasnost gläsˈnōst [key], Soviet cultural and social policy of the late 1980s. Following his ascension to the leadership of the USSR in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev began to promote a policy of openness...

decadents

(Encyclopedia)decadents, in literature, name loosely applied to those 19th-century, fin-de-siècle European authors who sought inspiration, both in their lives and in their writings, in aestheticism and in all the ...

dime novels

(Encyclopedia)dime novels, swift-moving, thrilling novels, mainly about the American Revolution, the frontier period, and the Civil War. The books were first sold in 1860 for 10 cents by the firm of Beadle and Adam...

Fast, Howard

(Encyclopedia)Fast, Howard, 1914–2003, American author, b. New York City. A prolific writer, he is best known for historical novels that mainly concern rebellion against various forms of tyranny. They include Cit...

parliamentary law

(Encyclopedia)parliamentary law, rules under which deliberative bodies conduct their proceedings. In English-speaking countries these are based on the practice of the British Parliament, chiefly in the House of Com...

Smith, Edmund Kirby

(Encyclopedia)Smith, Edmund Kirby, or Edmund Kirby-Smith, 1824–93, American soldier, Confederate general in the Civil War, b. St. Augustine, Fla. A West Point graduate, he was cited for gallantry in the Mexican W...

Sousa, John Philip

(Encyclopedia)Sousa, John Philip so͞oˈzə, –sə [key], 1854–1932, American bandmaster and composer, b. Washington, D.C. He studied violin and harmony in his native city and learned band instruments as an appr...

Camisards

(Encyclopedia)Camisards kămˈĭsärdz, Fr. kämēsärˈ [key], Protestant peasants of the Cévennes region of France who in 1702 rebelled against the persecutions that followed the revocation (1685) of the Edict o...