Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Greely, Adolphus Washington

(Encyclopedia)Greely, Adolphus Washington, 1844–1935, American army officer and arctic explorer, b. Newburyport, Mass. Entering the Union army at 17, he emerged a brevet major of volunteers at the end of the Civi...

Preston, Lewis Thompson

(Encyclopedia)Preston, Lewis Thompson, 1926–95, American financial executive, b. New York City. After serving as a U.S. Marine during World War II and graduating from Harvard (1951), he joined J. P. Morgan. He be...

Marsh, Charles Wesley

(Encyclopedia)Marsh, Charles Wesley, 1834–1918, American inventor and editor, b. Ontario. In 1849 his family moved to De Kalb co., Ill. Assisted by his brother William, he designed a hand-binding harvester and ob...

dodo, extinct bird

(Encyclopedia)dodo, a flightless forest-dwelling bird of Mauritius, extinct since the late 17th cent. The dodo was closely related to the Rodrigues solitaire, extinct flightless giant found on another island in the...

Yushan

(Encyclopedia)Yushan, Yu Shan, or Mount Morrison, 13,113 ft (3,997 m) high, S Taiwan; highest peak on the island. It was first ascended in 1896 by a Japanese expedition. ...

Shirley, Sir Anthony

(Encyclopedia)Shirley or Sherley, Sir Anthony, 1565–1636?, English adventurer. He fought in the Netherlands (1586) under the earl of Leicester and in France (1591) under the earl of Essex, who became his patron. ...

French, Daniel Chester

(Encyclopedia)French, Daniel Chester, 1850–1931, American sculptor, b. Exeter, N.H., studied in Florence and in Boston with William Rimmer. After executing his first large work, The Minute Man (1875), he received...

Lepsius, Karl Richard

(Encyclopedia)Lepsius, Karl Richard rĭkhˈärt lĕpˈsēo͝os [key], 1810–84, German Egyptologist and philologist. He made an expedition (1842–45) to the Nile valley and Sudan and as a result of his excavation...

Eaton, John Henry

(Encyclopedia)Eaton, John Henry, 1790–1856, U.S. Senator (1818–29) and Secretary of War (1829–31), b. Halifax co., N.C. After being admitted to the bar, he practiced in Franklin, Tenn., and married Myra Lewis...

Humboldt Glacier

(Encyclopedia)Humboldt Glacier, NW Greenland. The largest known glacier of the Northern Hemisphere, it debouches into Kane Basin along a front c.60 mi (100 km) wide and 300 ft (91 m) high. U.S. explorer Elisha K. K...
 

Browse by Subject