Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Sovetsk

(Encyclopedia)Sovetsk tĭlˈzĭt [key], town (1989 pop. 41,900), NW European Russia, on the Neman River at the mouth of the Tilse. It is a rail junction, a river port, and an industrial and commercial center in an ...

chart

(Encyclopedia)chart, term referring to maps prepared for marine navigation and for air navigation. All charts show, in some convenient scale, geographic features useful to the navigator, as well as indications of d...

spiritism

(Encyclopedia)spiritism or spiritualism, belief that the human personality continues to exist after death and can communicate with the living through the agency of a medium or psychic. The advocates of spiritism ar...

Central American Federation

(Encyclopedia)Central American Federation or Central American Union, political confederation (1825–38) of the republics of Central America—Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Salvador. United under ...

bell, musical instrument

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Bell bell, in music, a percussion instrument consisting of a hollow metal vessel, often cup-shaped with an outward-flaring rim, damped at one end and set into vibration by a blow from a clappe...

Duchamp, Marcel

(Encyclopedia)Duchamp, Marcel märsĕlˈ düshäNˈ [key], 1887–1968, French painter, brother of Raymond Duchamp-Villon and half-brother of Jacques Villon. Duchamp is noted for his cubist-futurist painting Nude D...

hajj

(Encyclopedia)hajj häj [key], the pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, one of the five basic requirements (arkan or “pillars”) of Islam. Its annual observance corresponds to the major holy day id al-adha, itself...

Christo

(Encyclopedia)Christo krĭsˈtō [key], 1935–2020, Bulgarian-American artist, b. Gabrovo as Christo Vladimirov Javacheff, studied Sofia, Vienna, and Paris. His early experiments in assemblage led to his trademark...

fair

(Encyclopedia)fair, market exhibition at which producers, traders, and consumers meet either to barter or to buy and sell goods and services. Before the development of transportation and marketing, fairs furnished ...

hemp

(Encyclopedia)hemp, common name for a tall annual herb (Cannabis sativa) of the family Cannabinaceae, native to Asia but now widespread because of its formerly large-scale cultivation for the bast fiber (also calle...