Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) WAC (Women's Army Corps), U.S. army organization created (1942) during World War II to enlist women as auxiliaries for noncombatant duty in the U.S. army. Before 1943 it was known as the Women's Auxil...

(Encyclopedia) Williams, William Sherley, 1787–1849, American trader and trapper, known as Old Bill Williams, b. Rutherford co., N.C. Much of his early life was spent in Missouri, where he was a traveling preacher...

(Encyclopedia) Tannenbaum, Frank, 1893–1969, American historian, b. Austria. He received his Ph.D. from the Brookings School of Economics in 1927. After an early career as a labor leader, journalist, and economic ...

(Encyclopedia) Buckner, Simon Bolivar, 1823–1914, Confederate general, b. Hart co., Ky., grad. West Point, 1844. In 1860, Buckner, a Louisville businessman, secured passage of a bill creating a large Kentucky mili...

(Encyclopedia) Gideon v. Wainwright, case decided in 1963 by the U.S. Supreme Court. Clarence Earl Gideon was convicted of a felony in a Florida court. He had defended himself after being denied a request for free c...

(Encyclopedia) Grey, Charles Grey, 2d Earl, 1764–1845, British statesman. Elected to Parliament in 1786, he was one of those appointed to manage the impeachment of Warren Hastings. From 1792 he was a leader of the...

(Encyclopedia) Carleton, Guy, 1st Baron Dorchester, 1724–1808, governor of Quebec and British commander during the American Revolution. He began his service in America in 1758 and distinguished himself in the Fren...

(Encyclopedia) natural rights, political theory that maintains that an individual enters into society with certain basic rights and that no government can deny these rights. The modern idea of natural rights grew ou...

(Encyclopedia) Freedmen's Bureau, in U.S. history, a federal agency, formed to aid and protect the newly freed blacks in the South after the Civil War. Established by an act of Mar. 3, 1865, under the name “bureau...

(Encyclopedia) loon, common name for migratory aquatic birds found in fresh- and saltwater in the colder parts of the Northern Hemisphere. Its strange, laughing call carries for great distances. Like the grebes, loo...