Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Weld, Theodore Dwight, 1803–95, American abolitionist, b. Hampton, Conn. In 1825 his family moved to upstate New York, and he entered Hamilton College. While in college he became a disciple of the e...

(Encyclopedia) Wilde, Oscar (Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde), 1854–1900, Irish author and wit, b. Dublin. He is most famous for his sophisticated, brilliantly witty plays, which were the first since the come...

(Encyclopedia) MacArthur, Douglas, 1880–1964, American general, b. Little Rock, Ark.; son of Arthur MacArthur. At the beginning (1950) of the Korean War he was appointed commander of UN military forces in South ...

(Encyclopedia) Fenian movement fēˈnēən [key] or Fenians, secret revolutionary society organized c.1858 in Ireland and the United States to achieve Irish independence from England by force. It was known variously...

(Encyclopedia) folktale, general term for any of numerous varieties of traditional narrative. The telling of stories appears to be a cultural universal, common to pre-industrial, ancient, and more modern and develop...

(Encyclopedia) Hardy, Thomas, 1840–1928, English novelist and poet, b. near Dorchester, one of the great English writers of the 19th cent. The son of a stonemason, he derived a love of music from his father and a ...

(Encyclopedia) Toronto tərŏnˈtō [key], city (1998 est pop. 2,400,000), provincial capital, S Ont., Canada, on Lake Ontario. Toronto is the largest city in Canada and since the 1970s has been one of the fastest-c...

(Encyclopedia) Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel ...

(Encyclopedia) Fuller, Margaret, 1810–50, American writer, lecturer, and public intellectual, b. Cambridgeport (now part of Cambridge), Mass. She was one of the most influential personalities in the American liter...

(Encyclopedia) Blaine, James Gillespie, 1830–93, American politician, b. West Brownsville, Pa. As Secretary of State, Blaine was particularly energetic in fostering closer relations with the Latin American natio...