Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Tangier, island, United States

(Encyclopedia)Tangier, island, E Va., in S Chesapeake Bay. Capt. John Smith first visited the island in 1608, and in 1620 settlers arrived from Cornwall, England. Isolated from the mainland, the people of Tangier d...

Hampshire College

(Encyclopedia)Hampshire College, at Amherst, Mass.; coeducational; opened 1970. The emphasis of the academic program is on the individual needs of the students. Hampshire participates in a cooperative arrangement w...

Ladysmith

(Encyclopedia)Ladysmith, town, part and seat of Emnambithi-Ladysmith local municipality, KwaZulu-Natal prov., E South Africa. The town has railroad yards and food-processing, textile, and tire factories. It is the ...

Winter, Sir Gregory Paul

(Encyclopedia)Winter, Sir Gregory Paul, 1951–, British biochemist, Ph.D. Cambridge, 1976. He has spent most of his career as a researcher at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, where since ...

Ashley, William Henry

(Encyclopedia)Ashley, William Henry, c.1778–1838, American fur trader and politician, b. Virginia. In 1820 he was elected lieutenant governor of Missouri. He sent fur-trading expeditions up the Missouri River to ...

Davis, John William

(Encyclopedia)Davis, John William, 1873–1955, American lawyer and public official, b. Clarksburg, W.Va. Admitted (1895) to the bar, he taught (1896–97) at Washington and Lee Univ. and later practiced (1897–19...

McAdoo, William Gibbs

(Encyclopedia)McAdoo, William Gibbs măkˈədo͞o [key], 1863–1941, American political leader, U.S. secretary of the treasury (1913–18), b. near Marietta, Ga. The son of a prominent Georgia jurist, McAdoo becam...

Geneva, city, United States

(Encyclopedia)Geneva, city (2020 pop. 12,812), Ontario co., W central N.Y., in the Finger Lakes region; inc. as a city 1897. Located in a farm area, Geneva's manufact...

Dobell, Sydney Thompson

(Encyclopedia)Dobell, Sydney Thompson dōbĕlˈ [key], 1824–74, English poet. He is best known for the melodramatic, extravagantly emotional poem Balder (1853). In 1855 he published jointly with Alexander Smith (...

Van Dyck, Cornelius Van Alen

(Encyclopedia)Van Dyck, Cornelius Van Alen, 1818–95, American missionary, b. Kinderhook, N.Y. In 1840 he went to Syria as a medical missionary. In 1846 he was ordained in the Congregational ministry. Besides bein...

Browse by Subject