Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

256 results found

Makeba, Miriam

(Encyclopedia)Makeba, Miriam məkāˈbə [key], 1932–2008, South African singer. She became the first black South African to achieve international fame and she played a fundamental role in introducing African mus...

Mead, Margaret

(Encyclopedia)Mead, Margaret, 1901–78, American anthropologist, b. Philadelphia, grad. Barnard, 1923, Ph.D. Columbia, 1929. In 1926 she became assistant curator, in 1942 associate curator, and from 1964 to 1969 s...

head-hunting

(Encyclopedia)head-hunting, practice of taking and preserving the head of a slain enemy. It has occurred throughout the world from ancient times into the 20th cent. In Europe, it flourished in the Balkans until the...

Earhart, Amelia

(Encyclopedia)Earhart, Amelia ârˈhärt [key], 1897–1937, American aviator, b. Atchison, Kans. She was the first woman to cross the Atlantic by airplane (1928) and the first woman to make a solo flight across th...

Bakassi

(Encyclopedia)Bakassi bäkäˈsē [key], peninsula, c.400 sq mi (1,000 sq km), E Cameroon, on the Cameroon-Nigeria border, at the SE end of the Gulf of Guinea. The swampy peninsula and associated small islands are ...

plebiscite

(Encyclopedia)plebiscite plĕbˈĭsīt [key] [Lat.,=popular decree], vote of the people on a question submitted to them, as in a referendum. The term, however, has acquired the more specific meaning of a popular vo...

thylacine

(Encyclopedia)thylacine thīˈləsīnˌ [key] or Tasmanian wolf, carnivorous marsupial, or pouched mammal, of New Guinea, Australia, and Tasmania, presumed extinct since 1936. The thylacine is often cited as an exa...

Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries

(Encyclopedia)Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), multinational organization (est. 1960, formally constituted 1961) that coordinates petroleum policies and economic aid among oil-producing nations...

bowerbird

(Encyclopedia)bowerbird, common name for any of several species of birds of the family Ptilonorhynchidae, native to Australia and New Guinea, which build, for courtship display, a bower of sticks or grasses. Usuall...

Sichuan

(Encyclopedia)Sichuan or Szechwan sŭˈchwänˈ [key] [four rivers], province (2010 pop. 80,418,200), c.220,000 sq mi (569,800 sq km), SW China. The capital is Chengdu. A naturally isolated region surrounded by mou...