Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) daylight saving time (DST), time observed when clocks and other timepieces are set ahead so that the sun will rise and set later in the day as measured by civil time. The amount of daylight on a given...

(Encyclopedia) Peirce, Charles Sanders pûrs [key], 1839–1914, American philosopher and polymath, b. Cambridge, Mass., grad. Harvard, 1859; son of Benjamin Peirce. Except for occasional lectures he renounced the r...

(Encyclopedia) Cobbett, William kŏbˈĭt [key], 1763?–1835, British journalist and reformer. The son of a farm laborer, he ran away from home at 14 and later joined the British army. He resigned in order to expos...

(Encyclopedia) Dickinson, John, 1732–1808, American patriot and statesman, b. Talbot co., Md. After studying law in Philadelphia and in London at the Middle Temple, he developed a highly successful practice in Phi...

(Encyclopedia) Dred Scott Case, argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1856–57. It involved the then bitterly contested issue of the status of slavery in the federal territories. In 1834, Dred Scott, a black slav...

(Encyclopedia) Burlington. 1 City (2020 pop. 23,982), seat of Des Moines co., SE Iowa, on four hills overlooking the Mississippi (spanned there by rail and highway ...

(Encyclopedia) Garrison, William Lloyd, 1805–79, American abolitionist, b. Newburyport, Mass. He supplemented his limited schooling with newspaper work and in 1829 went to Baltimore to aid Benjamin Lundy in publis...

(Encyclopedia) Philadelphia, city (2020 pop. 1,603,797), coextensive with Philadelphia co., SE Pa., on the Delaware River c.100 mi (160 km) upstream at the influx of t...

(Encyclopedia) conservatism, in politics, the desire to maintain, or conserve, the existing order. Conservatives value the wisdom of the past and are generally opposed to widespread reform. Modern political conserva...

(Encyclopedia) Copley, John Singleton kŏpˈlē [key], 1738–1815, American portrait painter, b. Boston. Copley is considered the greatest of the American old masters. He studied with his stepfather, Peter Pelham, ...