Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Pentagon Papers, government study of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. Commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara in June, 1967, the 47-volume, top secret study covered the period from ...

(Encyclopedia) United States Naval Observatory, a federal astronomical observatory, located in Washington, D. C. It evolved from the Navy's oldest scientific institution, the Depot of Charts and Instruments, founded...

(Encyclopedia) Drabble, Margaret, 1939–, English novelist, b. Sheffield, Yorkshire; sister of A. S. Byatt. Drabble's rigorous and unsentimentally realistic vision of an England split between traditional values and...

(Encyclopedia) clinic, name for an institution providing medical diagnosis and treatment for ambulatory patients. The forerunner of the modern clinic was the dispensary, which dispensed free drugs and served only th...

(Encyclopedia) bedbug, any of the small, blood-sucking bugs of the family Cimicidae, which includes about 30 species distributed throughout the world. Bedbugs are flat-bodied, oval, reddish brown, and about 1⁄4 in...

(Encyclopedia) Urartu o͞orärˈto͞o [key], ancient kingdom of Armenia and N Mesopotamia, centered about Lake Van in present-day E Turkey. It was the biblical Ararat. Urartu flourished from the 13th cent. to the 7t...

(Encyclopedia) Richardson, Samuel, 1689–1761, English novelist, b. Derbyshire. When he was 50 and a prosperous printer, Richardson was asked to compose a guide to letter writing. The idea of introducing a central ...

(Encyclopedia) Rothschild, Nathan Meyer, 1777–1836, British banker, b. Frankfurt, Germany; of the famous Rothschild family. He went to England in 1797, was naturalized in 1804, and opened a business house in Londo...

(Encyclopedia) poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac, woody vines and trailing or erect shrubs of the family Anacardiaceae (sumac family), native to North America. They are sometimes considered as several specie...

(Encyclopedia) Gary, Romain rōmăNˈ gĕrēˈ [key], 1914–80, French novelist, b. Vilna (now Vilnius), of Russian parentage, as Romain Kacew. In France after 1928, he fought in World War II and later entered the ...