Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

canzone, in music

(Encyclopedia)canzone or canzona, in music, a type of instrumental music in Italy in the 16th and 17th cent. The term had previously been given to strophic songs for five or six voices; usually the canzone had thre...

Adams, Maude

(Encyclopedia)Adams, Maude, 1872–1953, American actress, b. Salt Lake City, Utah. Her father's name was Kiskadden, but she used her mother's maiden name. She began acting at an early age and became leading lady t...

strychnine

(Encyclopedia)strychnine strĭkˈnĭn [key], bitter alkaloid drug derived from the seeds of a tree, Strychnos nux-vomica, native to Sri Lanka, Australia, and India. It has been used as a rat poison for five centuri...

Vedder, Elihu

(Encyclopedia)Vedder, Elihu, 1836–1923, American painter, illustrator, and author, b. New York City, studied in Paris. From 1867 his permanent residence was Rome. He often used romantic landscape as a setting for...

Russell, Bill

(Encyclopedia)Russell, Bill (William Felton Russell), 1934–, American basketball player, b. Monroe, La. Named an All-American while on the Univ. of San Francisco team, he played on the gold-medal-winning U.S. tea...

Tyne and Wear

(Encyclopedia)Tyne and Wear, former metropolitan county, NE England. Created in the 1974 local government reorganization, the county embraced the Newcastle upon Tyne conurbation and comprised five metropolitan dist...

Basile, Giovanni Battista

(Encyclopedia)Basile, Giovanni Battista jōvänˈnē bät-tēsˈtä bäsēˈlā [key], 1575–1632, Italian writer. Basile held several important official positions, devoting his spare time to the study of folklore...

Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich

(Encyclopedia)Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich yōhänˈ frēˈdrĭkh blo͞oˈmənbäkh [key], 1752–1840, German naturalist and anthropologist. He introduced and developed the science of comparative anatomy in German...

Yashin, Lev Ivanovich

(Encyclopedia)Yashin, Lev Ivanovich, 1929–90, Russian soccer player. A superb goalkeeper, perhaps the best in the history of the game, he was a Soviet sports hero. Yashin spent his playing career (1949–71) with...

Picard, Jean

(Encyclopedia)Picard, Jean, 1620–82, French astronomer, noted for having made the first accurate measurement of a degree of the earth's meridian. The figures he established were of great value to Newton in his ca...