Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

sun grebe

(Encyclopedia)sun grebe, common name for a tropical, mainly aquatic bird of the family Heliornithidae. Sun grebes, also called finfoots, are remarkable for their colorful, puffy-toed, webbed feet, which may serve a...

Ward, Douglas Turner

(Encyclopedia) Ward, Douglas Turner, 1930-2021, African-American actor, director, and playwright, b. Burnside, La., as Roosevelt Ward Jr. Ward’s family ...

Hampton University

(Encyclopedia)Hampton University, at Hampton, Va.; coeducational; founded 1868, chartered 1870 as a normal and agricultural school; known as Hampton Institute 1930–84. Founded by Samuel Chapman Armstrong, it was ...

haw

(Encyclopedia)haw, common name for several plants, e.g., the hawthorn and the black haw (see honeysuckle). ...

Wisdom, John Minor

(Encyclopedia)Wisdom, John Minor, 1905–99, American jurist, b. New Orleans; grad. Tulane Univ. Law School, 1929. A Republican, long in private practice, he was named to the federal 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in...

Zonguldak

(Encyclopedia)Zonguldak zôngˌgo͝oldäkˈ [key], city (1990 pop. 120,300), capital of Zonguldak prov., N Turkey, a port on the Black Sea. It is the center of the major coal-producing region of Turkey. ...

Wallace, David Foster

(Encyclopedia)Wallace, David Foster, 1962–2008, American writer, b. Ithaca, N.Y., grad. Amherst College (B.A., 1985), Univ. of Arizona (M.F.A., 1987). He published his comic first novel, The Broom of the System (...

Carrington, Leonora

(Encyclopedia)Carrington, Leonora, 1917–2011, English-born Mexican surrealist painter, novelist, and eccentric, studied art at Ozenfant Academy, London (1935–38). From a wealthy Anglo-Irish family, she traveled...

Sevastopol

(Encyclopedia)Sevastopol sĭvăsˈtəpōlˌ [key], formerly spelled Sebastopol, city (1989 pop. 355,000), on the Crimean peninsula and the Bay of Sevastopol, an inlet of the Black Sea. From 1954 part of Ukraine (th...

runner

(Encyclopedia)runner or stolon, slender, creeping stem capable of taking root where its nodes touch the ground and thereby producing new shoots. The runner itself usually dies at the end of the season, leaving inde...