Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

168 results found

Bradley, Tom

(Encyclopedia)Bradley, Tom (Thomas Bradley), 1917–98, African-American politician, b. Calvert, Tex. A sharecropper's son who became (1940) a Los Angeles police officer, he earned (1956) a law degree from Southwes...

tom-tom

(Encyclopedia)tom-tom, name popularly applied to high-pitched hand drums, usually barrel-shaped and having either one or two drumheads of skin. They are tunable to specific pitches. Supposedly of Native American or...

Tom

(Encyclopedia)Tom tôm [key], river, c.525 mi (840 km) long, rising in the Alatau range, S Siberian Russia. It flows N through the Kuznetsk Basin past Novokuznetsk, Kemerovo, and Tomsk into the Ob River. It is navi...

Bradley, Bill

(Encyclopedia)Bradley, Bill (William Warren Bradley), 1943–, American athlete and politician, b. Crystal City, Mo. He first gained wide attention as an All-America basketball player at Princeton. Graduating in 19...

Bradley, James

(Encyclopedia)Bradley, James, 1693–1762, English astronomer. His discovery of the aberration of light, announced in 1728, provided an important line of evidence for the motion of the earth around the sun. In 1742...

Landry, Tom

(Encyclopedia)Landry, Tom (Thomas Wade Landry), 1924–2000, American football coach, b. Mission, Tex., B.S., Univ. of Texas, 1949, M.S. Univ. of Houston, 1952. He served in the U.S. Army Air Corps (1942–45), and...

Ford, Tom

(Encyclopedia)Ford, Tom (Thomas Carlyle Ford), 1961–, American fashion designer and film director, b. Austin, Tex. After designing for Kathy Hardwick (1986–88) and Perry Ellis (1988–90), he moved to Milan and...

Black Tom

(Encyclopedia)Black Tom, part of Jersey City, N.J., also called Black Tom Island. In July, 1916, German saboteurs demolished U.S. munitions stores there; in Jan., 1917, they destroyed the Kingsland, N.J., munitions...

Taylor, Tom

(Encyclopedia)Taylor, Tom, 1817–80, English dramatist and editor. His most famous play is Our American Cousin (1858), performed at Ford's Theater in Washington, D. C., when Lincoln was assassinated. Of his more t...

Clancy, Tom

(Encyclopedia)Clancy, Tom (Thomas Leo Clancy, Jr.), 1947–2013, American popular novelist, b. Baltimore, grad. Loyola Univ. Maryland (B.A., 1969). While working as an insurance agent he wrote The Hunt for Red Octo...