Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Somme, Battles of the, two engagements fought during World War I near the Somme River, N France. The first battle (July–Nov., 1916) was an Allied offensive. The British, commanded by Field Marshal S...

(Encyclopedia) Holocaust hŏlˈəkôstˌ, hōˈlə– [key], name given to the period of persecution and extermination of European Jews by Nazi Germany. Romani (Gypsies), homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, the disabl...

(Encyclopedia) art deco är môdĕrnˈ, ärt [key], term that designates a style of design that originated in French luxury goods shortly before World War I and became ubiquitously and internationally popular during...

(Encyclopedia) Isherwood, Christopher ishˈərwo͝od [key], 1904–86, British-American author. After the appearance of his first novel, All the Conspirators (1928), Isherwood went to Germany. The four years he spen...

(Encyclopedia) privateering, former usage of war permitting privately owned and operated war vessels (privateers) under commission of a belligerent government to capture enemy shipping. Private ownership distinguish...

(Encyclopedia) Schliemann, Heinrich hīnˈrĭkh shlēˈmän [key], 1822–90, German archaeologist, discoverer of the ruins of Troy. He accumulated a fortune in the indigo trade and as a military contractor and reti...

(Encyclopedia) semantics [Gr.,=significant] in general, the study of the relationship between words and meanings. The empirical study of word meanings and sentence meanings in existing languages is a branch of lingu...

(Encyclopedia) Lincoln, Abraham lĭngˈkən [key], 1809–65, 16th President of the United States (1861–65). As time passed Lincoln became more and more the object of adulation; a full-blown “Lincoln legend”...

(Encyclopedia) Led Zeppelin, English pop music group formed in 1968 by guitarist Jimmy Page (1944–), singer Robert Plant (1948–), bassist John Paul Jones (1946–), and drummer John “Bonzo” Bonham (1948–80...

(Encyclopedia) Mbeki, Govan 1910–2001, anti-apartheid activist, politician, and writer. Mbeki was an influential leader of the African National Congress, the ...