Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

camp meeting

(Encyclopedia)camp meeting, outdoor religious meeting, usually held in the summer and lasting for several days. The camp meeting was a prominent institution of the American frontier. It originated under the preachi...

Pontiac's Rebellion

(Encyclopedia)Pontiac's Rebellion, Pontiac's Conspiracy, or Pontiac's War, 1763–66, Native American uprising against the British just after the close of the French and Indian Wars, so called after one of its lea...

Mellon, Paul

(Encyclopedia)Mellon, Paul, 1907–99, American philanthropist and art collector, b. Pittsburgh. The son of Andrew W. Mellon, he attended Yale (B.A., 1929) and Clare College, Cambridge (A.B., 1931). He worked brief...

Kitchen Cabinet

(Encyclopedia)Kitchen Cabinet, in U.S. history, popular name for the group of intimate, unofficial advisers of President Jackson. Early in his administration Jackson abandoned official cabinet meetings and used hea...

Hull, city, England

(Encyclopedia)Hull, officially Kingston upon Hull, city and unitary authority, NE England, on the north shore of the Humber estuary at the influx of the small Hul...

Edinburgh, Prince Philip Mountbatten, duke of

(Encyclopedia)Edinburgh, Prince Philip Mountbatten, duke of ĕdˈĭnbərə [key], 1921–2021, consort ...

Close, Glenn

(Encyclopedia)Close, Glenn, 1947–, American actress, b. Greenwich, Conn. She began her career in the theater, debuting on Broadway in Love for Love (1974), winning an Obie for the off-Broadway The Singular Life o...

Pensacola

(Encyclopedia)Pensacola pĕnsəkōˈlə [key], city (1990 pop. 58,165), seat of Escambia co., extreme NW Fla., on Pensacola Bay; inc. 1822. It is a port of entry with a natural harbor and shipping and fishing indus...

Banat

(Encyclopedia)Banat bäˈnät [key], region extending across W Romania, NE Serbia, and S Hungary. The term banat originally referred to any of several frontier provinces of Hungary and Croatia that were ruled by ba...

spoils system

(Encyclopedia)spoils system, in U.S. history, the practice of giving appointive offices to loyal members of the party in power. The name supposedly derived from a speech by Senator William Learned Marcy in which he...