Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) bunting, common name for small, plump birds of the family Fringillidae (finch family). Among the American buntings are the indigo bunting, in which the summer plumage of the male reflects sunlight as ...

(Encyclopedia) jasper, opaque, impure cryptocrystalline quartz, usually red, but also yellow, green, and grayish blue. It is used as a gem. Ribbon jasper has the colors in stripes. ...

(Encyclopedia) Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at Cambridge; coeducational; chartered 1861, opened 1865 in Boston, moved 1916. It has long been recognized as an outstanding technological institute and its Slo...

(Encyclopedia) Dodge, Grenville Mellen, 1831–1916, Union general in the Civil War and railroad builder, b. Danvers, Mass. Before the war Dodge, a civil engineer, did railroad work in the West. After he distinguish...

(Encyclopedia) Finley, Robert fĭnˈlē [key], 1772–1817, American clergyman, a founder of the American Colonization Society, b. Princeton, N.J. In 1787 he graduated from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton),...

(Encyclopedia) Kurile Lake, crater lake, 29 sq mi (76 sq km), 130 mi (209 km) SSW of Petropavlovsk, Russia, near the tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula. Located in a rugged volcanic region and lying some 330 ft (100 m) ...

(Encyclopedia) Vostok, Lake väˈstôk [key], c.3,900 sq mi (10,000 sq km), c.155 mi (250 km) long and 30 mi (50 km) at its greatest width, in East Antartica beneath the remote Vostok research station. One of the la...

(Encyclopedia) Sagunto sägo͞onˈtō [key], Latin Saguntum, town (1990 pop. 58,135), Valencia prov., E Spain, on the Palencia River, in Valencia. A seaport on the Mediterranean, it is an important metallurgical cen...

(Encyclopedia) Greenwich grĕnˈĭch [key], residential town (2020 pop. 63,518), Fairfield co., SW Conn., on ...

(Encyclopedia) radial velocity, in astronomy, the speed with which a star moves toward or away from the sun. It is determined from the red or blue shift in the star's spectrum. ...