Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Fort Niagara

(Encyclopedia)Fort Niagara, post on the southern shore of Lake Ontario, at the mouth of the Niagara River, NW N.Y. It was strategically located on the water route to the fur lands. French explorer Robert LaSalle er...

Hosack, David

(Encyclopedia)Hosack, David hŏsˈək [key], 1769–1835, American physician, surgeon, and author; for a time he was Samuel Bard's partner (see under Bard, John). He was an authority on the management of yellow fev...

Mansfield, Michael Joseph

(Encyclopedia)Mansfield, Michael Joseph, 1903–2001, U.S. senator (1953–77), b. New York City. After working (1922–31) as a mining engineer, he taught (1933–42) history at Montana State Univ. before serving ...

Lockhart, John Gibson

(Encyclopedia)Lockhart, John Gibson, 1794–1854, Scottish editor, lawyer, literary critic, and biographer; son-in-law and biographer of Sir Walter Scott. A major contributor to Blackwood's Magazine, he also was ed...

Lost Battalion

(Encyclopedia)Lost Battalion, in World War I, popular name given to those American units of the 77th Division—six companies of the 1st and 2d battalions of the 308th Infantry, one company of the 307th Infantry, a...

charleston, dance

(Encyclopedia)charleston, social dance of the United States popular in the mid-1920s. The charleston is characterized by outward heel kicks combined with an up-and-down movement achieved by bending and straightenin...

Boyd, Alan Stephenson

(Encyclopedia)Boyd, Alan Stephenson, 1922–2020, U.S. government official, first secretary of transportation (1967–69), b. Jacksonville, Fla. After serving in the Army Air Forces in World War II, he graduated fr...

Terman, Lewis Madison

(Encyclopedia)Terman, Lewis Madison tûrˈmən [key], 1877–1956, American psychologist, b. Johnson co., Ind., grad. Indiana Univ., 1902, Ph.D. Clark Univ., 1905. He joined the faculty of Stanford in 1910 and was ...

Wain, John

(Encyclopedia)Wain, John, 1925–94, English novelist and critic, b. Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, grad. Oxford (B.A., 1946; M.A., 1950). Originally lumped with England's angry young men after the publication of H...

Wirtz, William Willard

(Encyclopedia)Wirtz, William Willard, 1912–2010, U.S. secretary of labor (1962–69), b. DeKalb, Ill. A professor of law at Northwestern Univ. (1939–42), he served (1943–45) with the War Labor Board and was (...
 

Browse by Subject