Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Sand to Snow National Monument, 154,000 acres (62,000 hectares) in the San Bernadino Mountains, S Calif. It rises from the Sonoran Desert floor to Mount San Gorgonio (11,503 ft/3,506 m), the highest p...

(Encyclopedia) escarpment or scarp, long cliff, bluff, or steep slope, caused usually by geologic faulting (see fault) or by erosion of tilted rock layers. An example of a fault scarp is the north face of the San Ja...

(Encyclopedia) Garcetti, Eric Michael, 1971–, American politician, b. Los Angeles, grad. Columbia (B.A., 1993; M.A., 1993), stud. Oxford and London School of Economics. The son of Los Angeles district attorney Gil...

(Encyclopedia) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, scientific research centers run by the Univ. of California, located in Berkeley, Calif., and Livermore, Calif., respec...

(Encyclopedia) Kearny, Stephen Watts kärˈnē [key], 1794–1848, American general in the Mexican War, b. Newark, N.J. At the beginning of the Mexican War he was made commander of the Army of the West with the rank...

(Encyclopedia) Athabascan both: –păsˈ– [key], group of related Native American languages forming a branch of the Nadene linguistic family or stock. In the preconquest period, Athabascan was a large and extensi...

(Encyclopedia) Earhart, Amelia ârˈhärt [key], 1897–1937, American aviator, b. Atchison, Kans. She was the first woman to cross the Atlantic by airplane (1928) and the first woman to make a solo flight across th...

(Encyclopedia) hooks, bell, 1952–2021, American author, poet, social critic, and Black feminist, b. Hopkinsville, Ky., as Gloria Jean Watkins, Stanford Univ. (B.A., ...

(Encyclopedia) Cotton Belt, former agricultural region of the SE United States where cotton was the main cash crop throughout the 19th and much of the 20th cent. Located on the Atlantic and Gulf coastal plains and o...

(Encyclopedia) cowrie or cowry both: kouˈrē [key], common name applied to marine gastropods belonging to the family Cypraeidae, a well-developed family of marine snails found in the tropics. Cowries are abundant i...