Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Maidu

(Encyclopedia)Maidu mīˈdo͞o [key], Native North Americans belonging to the Penutian linguistic stock (see Native American languages). In the early 19th cent. they were located on the eastern tributaries of the S...

Yellow Book

(Encyclopedia)Yellow Book, English illustrated quarterly published (1894–97) in book form in London. Henry Harland was literary editor, and Aubrey Beardsley, whose exotic and provocative drawings brought immediat...

Webster, John

(Encyclopedia)Webster, John, 1580?–1634, English dramatist, b. London. Although little is known of his life, there is evidence that he worked for Philip Henslowe, collaborating with such playwrights as Dekker and...

Bragg, Sir William Henry

(Encyclopedia)Bragg, Sir William Henry, 1862–1942, English physicist, educated at King William's College, Isle of Man, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He served on the faculties of the Univ. of Adelaide in Austra...

Agassiz, Elizabeth Cabot Cary

(Encyclopedia)Agassiz, Elizabeth Cabot Cary ăgˈəsē [key], 1822–1907, American author and educator, b. Boston. In 1850 she married Louis Agassiz, and together they established the pioneering Agassiz School for...

Spillane, Mickey

(Encyclopedia)Spillane, Mickey (Frank Morrison Spillane), 1918–2006, American mystery writer, b. Brooklyn, N.Y. After contributing stories to comic books and pulp magazines, Spillane wrote his first novel, I, the...

Podhoretz, Norman

(Encyclopedia)Podhoretz, Norman pŏdhôrˈəts [key], 1930–, American editor and essayist, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., studied Columbia (B.A., 1950), Cambridge. As editor in chief (1960–95) of Commentary, he turned the ...

Ballinger, Richard Achilles

(Encyclopedia)Ballinger, Richard Achilles bălˈĭnjər [key], 1858–1922, U.S. Secretary of the Interior (1909–11), b. Boonesboro (now in Boone), Iowa. He was mayor of Seattle (1904–6) and commissioner of the...

Washington, Booker Taliaferro

(Encyclopedia)Washington, Booker Taliaferro, 1856–1915, American educator, b. Franklin co., Va. Washington was born into slavery; his mother was a mulatto slave on a plantation, his father a white man whom he nev...

suicide

(Encyclopedia)suicide [Lat.,=self-killing], the deliberate taking of one's own life. Suicide may be compulsory, prescribed by custom or enjoined by the authorities, usually as an alternative to death at the hands o...