Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

475 results found

election

(Encyclopedia)election, choosing a candidate for office in an organization by the vote of those enfranchised to cast a ballot. In the United States, Canada, Mexico, Great Britain, and many other nations, usuall...

Saint Petersburg, city, Russia

(Encyclopedia)Saint Petersburg, formerly Leningrad, Rus. Sankt-Peterburg, city (1990 est. pop. 5,036,000), capital of the Leningrad region (although not administratively part of it) and the administrative center of...

Germanic languages

(Encyclopedia)Germanic languages, subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages, spoken by about 470 million people in many parts of the world, but chiefly in Europe and the Western Hemisphere. All the modern ...

glass

(Encyclopedia)glass, hard substance, usually brittle and transparent, composed chiefly of silicates and an alkali fused at high temperature. Glass has become invaluable in modern architecture, illumination, elect...

Holocaust

(Encyclopedia)Holocaust hŏlˈəkôstˌ, hōˈlə– [key], name given to the period of persecution and extermination of European Jews by Nazi Germany. Romani (Gypsies), homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, the disabl...

housing

(Encyclopedia)housing, in general, living accommodations available for the inhabitants of a community. Throughout the 19th cent., with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, housing as a problem worsened as urban...

Dutch Wars

(Encyclopedia)Dutch Wars, series of conflicts between the English and Dutch during the mid to late 17th cent. The wars had their roots in the Anglo-Dutch commercial rivalry, although the last of the three wars was ...

Sites of the Modern Olympic Games (table)

(Encyclopedia)Sites of the Modern Olympic Games Summer Games Winter Games ...

Napoleon I

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Napoleonic Europe (1812) Napoleon I nəpōˈlēən, Fr. näpôlāōNˈ [key], 1769–1821, emperor of the French, b. Ajaccio, Corsica, known as “the Little Corporal.” The Napoleonic...

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

(Encyclopedia)Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich lĕnˈĭn, Rus. vlədyēˈmĭr ĭlyēchˈ lyĕˈnĭn [key], 1870–1924, Russian revolutionary, the founder of Bolshevism and the major force behind the Revolution of Oct., 1917...