Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Curtis, Benjamin Robbins, 1809–74, American jurist, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1851–57), b. Watertown, Mass. After studying law at Harvard, he practiced at Northfield, Mass., and...

(Encyclopedia) Porteous, John pôrˈtēəs [key], d. 1736, British soldier. He was captain of the Edinburgh town guard at the execution (1736) of Andrew Wilson, a smuggler. When the crowd, which was sympathetic to W...

(Encyclopedia) Browning, Orville Hickman, 1806–81, U.S. Secretary of the Interior (1866–69), b. Harrison co., Ky. One of the organizers of the Republican party in Illinois, Browning helped secure his friend Linc...

(Encyclopedia) Snell, George Davis, 1903–96, American immunologist, b. Bradford, Mass., Ph.D. Harvard, 1930. He was associated with the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine from 1935 to 1973. His identification...

(Encyclopedia) Wise, Henry Alexander, 1806–76, American political leader and Confederate general in the Civil War, b. Accomac, Va. A lawyer, he was successively a Jackson Democrat, a Whig, and a Tyler Democrat in ...

(Encyclopedia) Virginia Military Institute (VMI), at Lexington; state supported; chartered and opened 1839 as the first state military college in the United States. Although one of the leading U.S. military institut...

(Encyclopedia) Front Royal, city (2020 pop. 15,382), seat of Warren co., N Va., at the junction of South and North forks of Shenandoah River, inc. 1788. Furniture, lum...

(Encyclopedia) airport or airfield, place for landing and departure of aircraft, usually with facilities for housing and maintaining planes and for receiving and discharging passengers and cargo. There are about 16,...

(Encyclopedia) Wood or à Wood, Anthony, 1632–95, English antiquary. His painstaking researches into the history of Oxford resulted in two great works, The History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford (in L...

(Encyclopedia) Roelas or Ruelas, Juan de las hwän dā läs rōāˈläs, ro͞oāˈläs [key], c.1558–1625, Spanish painter of the school of Seville. He is sometimes called the Spanish Tintoretto; there are stylist...