Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

James II, king of England, Scotland, and Ireland

(Encyclopedia)James II, 1633–1701, king of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1685–88); second son of Charles I, brother and successor of Charles II. James made an effort to restore himself by landing in Irel...

Wittelsbach

(Encyclopedia)Wittelsbach vĭˈtəlsbäkh [key], German dynasty that ruled Bavaria from 1180 until 1918. The family takes its name from the ancestral castle of Wittelsbach in Upper Bavaria. In 1180 Holy Roman Emper...

Henry VIII, king of England

(Encyclopedia)Henry VIII, 1491–1547, king of England (1509–47), second son and successor of Henry VII. Henry was a supreme egotist. He advanced personal desires under the guise of public policy or moral rig...

Barrie, J. M.

(Encyclopedia)Barrie, J. M. (Sir James Matthew Barrie) bârˈē [key], 1860–1937, Scottish playwright and novelist. He is best remembered for his play Peter Pan (1904), a supernatural fantasy about a boy who refu...

Corinthians

(Encyclopedia)Corinthians kərĭnˈthēənz [key], two letters of the New Testament. They were written to the church at Corinth by Paul whose stay in Corinth is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. First Corinthia...

Code Napoléon

(Encyclopedia)Code Napoléon sēvēlˈ [key], first modern legal code of France, promulgated by Napoleon I in 1804. The work of J. J. Cambacérès and a commission of four appointed by Napoleon I in 1800 was import...

Ono, Yoko

(Encyclopedia) Ono, Yoko, 1933- , Japanese-American conceptual artist, songwriter, and recording artist, b. Tokyo, Japan. Ono’s father was a banker and her mother ...

Owen, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Owen, Robert, 1771–1858, British social reformer and socialist, pioneer in the cooperative movement. The son of a saddler, he had little formal education but was a zealous reader. At the age of 10 h...

Pankhurst, Emmeline Goulden

(Encyclopedia)Pankhurst, Emmeline Goulden ĕmˈəlīnˌ, –lēnˌ, go͞olˈdən, păngkˈhûrst [key], 1858–1928, British woman suffragist. Disappointed in the disinterest in women's suffrage shown by the Libera...

baby boom

(Encyclopedia)baby boom, a period in which the birthrate is significantly higher than in other periods, especially the post–World War II period in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In the Uni...