Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Paine, Thomas, 1737–1809, Anglo-American political theorist and writer, b. Thetford, Norfolk, England. The son of a working-class Quaker, he became an excise officer and was dismissed from the servi...

(Encyclopedia) Pan-Africanism, general term for various movements in Africa that have as their common goal the unity of Africans and the elimination of colonialism and white supremacy from the continent. However, on...

(Encyclopedia) Homo erectus hōˈmō ērĕkˈtəs [key], extinct hominin living between 1.6 million and 250,000 years ago, possibly as late as c.110,000 years ago. Homo erectus is thought to have evolved in Africa f...

(Encyclopedia) fingerprint, an impression of the underside of the end of a finger or thumb, used for identification because the arrangement of ridges in any fingerprint is thought to be unique and permanent with eac...

(Encyclopedia) Rodney, Walter, 1942–1980, Scholar and revolutionary, b. Georgetown, British Guiana. Ph.D. School of African and Oriental Studies, 1966. A Pan-African...

(Encyclopedia) taxation, system used by governments to obtain money from people and organizations. The revenue collected is used by the government to support itself and to provide public services. Aside from being r...

(Encyclopedia) García Márquez, Gabriel gäbrēĕlˈ gärsēˈä märˈkās [key], 1927–2014, Colombian novelist, short-story writer, and journalist, b. Aracataca. Widely considered one of the great Latin America...

(Encyclopedia) Farragut, David Glasgow fărˈəgət [key], 1801–70, American admiral, b. near Knoxville, Tenn. Appointed a midshipman in 1810, he first served on the frigate Essex, commanded by David Porter, his s...

(Encyclopedia) Younger, Cole (Thomas Coleman Younger), 1844–1916, American outlaw, b. Jackson co., Mo. After the Civil War he joined the outlaw band of Jesse James, with whom he had served as a Confederate guerril...

(Encyclopedia) Lowell, Robert (Robert Traill Spence Lowell 4th), 1917–77, American poet and translator, widely considered the preeminent American poet of the mid-20th cent., b. Boston, grad. Kenyon College (B.A., ...