Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Purim po͞oˈrĭm [key] [Heb.,=lots], Jewish festival celebrated on the 14th of Adar, the twelfth month in the Jewish calendar (Feb.–March). During leap years it is celebrated in Adar II. According ...

(Encyclopedia) Banks, Dennis James, 1937–2017, Native American civil-rights activist, b. Leech Lake Reservation, Minn. Of Ojibwa (Chippewa) heritage, he helped found the American Indian Movement (1968) to fight fo...

(Encyclopedia) Puritanism, in the 16th and 17th cent., a movement for reform in the Church of England that had a profound influence on the social, political, ethical, and theological ideas of England and America. ...

(Encyclopedia) universal time (UT), the international time standard common to every place in the world, it nominally reflects the mean solar time along the earth's prime meridian (renumbered to equate to civil time)...

(Encyclopedia) Niles, Hezekiah, 1777–1839, American journalist, b. Jefferis's Ford, Pa. Editor (1805–11) of the Baltimore Evening Post and founder (1811) of Niles' Weekly Register, he was one of the most influen...

(Encyclopedia) Doddridge, Philip, 1702–51, English nonconformist minister and noted hymn writer. His Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul (1745) has been much translated. His many hymns include “Awake, My S...

(Encyclopedia) crescent, emblematic representation of the quarter moon. The crescent and star, ancient Byzantine symbols that became the emblems of Constantinople, were also assumed as the standard of the Ottoman Tu...

(Encyclopedia) Daberath dăbˈērăth [key], in the Bible, town, N ancient Palestine, probably the present-day Dabburiya, Israel, on the slope of Tabor E of Nazareth. ...

(Encyclopedia) Folgore da San Geminiano fôlˈgōrā dä sän jāmēnyäˈnō [key], fl. 1308–16, Italian poet. Mesi, his cycle of sonnets on the seasons and their appropriate pleasures, is interspersed with zestf...

(Encyclopedia) Banning, resort city (2020 pop. 31,193), Riverside co., S Calif., in a fruit-growing area between Mt. San Jacinto and Mt. San Gorgonio; inc. 1913. Consu...