Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

477 results found

Hauser, Kaspar

(Encyclopedia)Hauser, Kaspar käsˈpär houˈzər [key], 1812?–1833, mysterious German foundling. He appeared in Nuremberg in 1828 in a state of semi-idiocy, producing dubious documents and giving an incoherent a...

Mohole, Project

(Encyclopedia)Mohole, Project, program proposed in 1957 to drill a hole down to the boundary between the crust and the mantle, known as the Mohorovičić discontinuity at about 4 to 43 mi (7 to 70 km) below the ear...

piculet

(Encyclopedia)piculet pĭkˈyələt [key], common name for a small bird of the family Picidae, which includes the woodpecker and the wryneck. Like the true woodpeckers, piculets are large-headed and have long, stic...

Avestan

(Encyclopedia)Avestan əvĕsˈtən [key], language belonging to the Iranian group of the Indo-Iranian subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. One of the earliest forms of the Iranian languages to surviv...

Pascagoula

(Encyclopedia)Pascagoula păskəgo͞oˈlə [key], city (1990 pop. 25,899), seat of Jackson co., extreme SE Miss. A port of entry on Mississippi Sound at the mouth of the Pascagoula River, it is a resort and a fishi...

bronchoscope

(Encyclopedia)bronchoscope brŏngˈkəskōpˌ [key], long, tubular instrument with a light at the tip that is inserted through the windpipe and bronchial tubes to examine these structures. By passing other instrume...

Biddle, Francis Beverley

(Encyclopedia)Biddle, Francis Beverley, 1886–1968, U.S. Attorney General (1941–45), b. Paris, France, of American parents. Secretary to Associate Justice O. W. Holmes (1912), he became a successful corporation ...

Stone Mountain Memorial

(Encyclopedia)Stone Mountain Memorial, memorial to the Confederacy, consisting of the equestrian figures of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis carved on the northern face of Stone Mt., a granite ...

Adams, Herbert Baxter

(Encyclopedia)Adams, Herbert Baxter, 1850–1901, American historian, b. Shutesbury, near Amherst, Mass. In 1876, the year he received his doctorate at Heidelberg, he became one of the original faculty of Johns Hop...

Browse by Subject