Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Amnesty International (AI,) human-rights organization founded in 1961 by Englishman Peter Benenson; it campaigns internationally against the detention of prisoners of conscience, for the fair trial of...

(Encyclopedia) Fallows, Samuel, 1835–1922, American clergyman, bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church, b. England, grad. Univ. of Wisconsin, 1859. He served with the Union army in the Civil War and afterward held...

(Encyclopedia) Lloyd's, London insurance underwriting corporation of many separate syndicates; often called Lloyd's of London. Founded in the late 17th cent. by a group of merchants, shipowners, and insurance broker...

(Encyclopedia) Middleton, Thomas, 1580–1627, English dramatist, b. London, grad. Queen's College, Oxford, 1598. His early plays were chiefly written in collaboration with Dekker, Drayton, and others. Between 1604 ...

(Encyclopedia) MacLeish, Archibald məklēshˈ [key], 1892–1982, American poet and public official, b. Glencoe, Ill., grad. Yale, 1915, LL.B Harvard, 1919. He practiced law for only three years and during the 1920...

(Encyclopedia) La Fontaine, Jean de zhäN də [key], 1621–95, French poet, whose celebrated fables place him among the masters of world literature. He was born at Château-Thierry to a bourgeois family. A restless...

(Encyclopedia) Mason, George, 1725–92, American political leader, b. Fairfax co., Va. He was one of the most affluent of the colonial Virginia planters. In his triple capacity as trustee of Alexandria (1754–79),...

(Encyclopedia) Moore, George, 1852–1933, English author, b. Ireland. As a young man he lived in Paris, studying at various art schools. Inspired by Zola, Flaubert, Turgenev, and the 19th-century French realists, M...

(Encyclopedia) unidentified flying object or UFO, an object or light reportedly seen in the sky whose appearance, trajectory, and general dynamic and luminescent behavior do not readily suggest a logical, convention...

(Encyclopedia) Carter Family, group of singers that specialized in traditional music of the Southern Appalachian Mountains; it consisted of A(lvin) P(leasant) Carter, 1891–1960, b. Maces Spring, Va.; his wife, Sar...