Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Charles Augustus

(Encyclopedia)Charles Augustus, 1757–1828, duke and, after 1815, grand duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach; friend and patron of Goethe, Schiller, and Herder. Though his duchy was small, he was important in German polit...

Safra

(Encyclopedia)Safra, family of Brazilian bankers with Sephardic Jewish roots. They began as merchant bankers in Syria and Lebanon, financing caravans throughout the Middle East. The Safras are also noted philanthro...

Old Red Sandstone

(Encyclopedia)Old Red Sandstone, series of red and brown sandstones, conglomerates, and shales deposited in Wales and Scotland and in England near the Welsh and Scottish borders in the Devonian period of geologic t...

Montebello, village, Canada

(Encyclopedia)Montebello mŏntĭbĕlˈō [key], village (1991 pop. 1,022), SW Que., Canada, on the Ottawa River NE of Ottawa. It is a summer resort in a lumbering and farming area. The political leader Louis Joseph...

Foyt, A. J.

(Encyclopedia)Foyt, A. J. (Anthony Joseph Foyt, Jr.), 1935–, American auto-racing driver, b. Houston. Foyt was the first person to win the Indianapolis 500 race four times (1961, 1964, 1967, 1977). He also won th...

Alma

(Encyclopedia)Alma älmäˈ, ălˈmə [key], city, S central Que., Canada, on the Saguenay River. In 1954 its name was shortened from St. Joseph d'Alma. There are granite quarries in th...

Elkhart

(Encyclopedia)Elkhart, city (2020 pop. 53,923), Elkhart co., N Ind., at the confluence of the Elkhart and St. Joseph rivers; settled 1824, inc. 1877. The city's statu...

Kimhi

(Encyclopedia)Kimhi kĭmˈkhē [key], family of Jewish scholars and grammarians in Spain and France. Joseph ben Isaac Kimhi, c.1105–c.1170, besides writing a Bible commentary, making numerous translations, and wr...

Hooker, Sir William Jackson

(Encyclopedia)Hooker, Sir William Jackson, 1785–1865, English botanist. A leading authority of his time on ferns, he formed a famous herbarium and built up the Glasgow Garden and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew....

Bavarian Succession, War of the

(Encyclopedia)Bavarian Succession, War of the, between Austria and Prussia, 1778–79. With the extinction of the Bavarian line of the house of Wittelsbach on the death of Elector Maximilian Joseph in 1777, the duc...

Browse by Subject