Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) industrial union, labor union composed of all the workers in a given industry, regardless of skill, craft, or occupation (as opposed to the craft union, in which all members are of one skill, such as ...

(Encyclopedia) Formula One (F1), type of racecar used in Grand Prix automobile racing. Capable of speeds exceeding 230 mph (370 kph), the technologically sophisticated F1 cars are low-slung, open-wheeled, single-sea...

(Encyclopedia) spinning, the drawing out, twisting, and winding of fibers into a continuous thread or yarn. From antiquity until the Industrial Revolution, spinning was a household industry. The roughly carded fiber...

(Encyclopedia) Missouri, river, c.2,565 mi (4,130 km) long (including its Jefferson-Beaverhead-Red Rock headstream), the longest river of the United States and the principal tributary of the Mississippi River. The l...

(Encyclopedia) science fiction, literary genre in which a background of science or pseudoscience is an integral part of the story. Although science fiction is a form of fantastic literature, many of the events recou...

(Encyclopedia) Nez Percé nĕz pûrs, nā pĕrsāˈ [key] [Fr.,=pierced nose], Native North Americans whose language belongs to the Sahaptin-Chinook branch of the Penutian linguistic stock (see Native American langu...

(Encyclopedia) Morris, Gouverneur gəvərnērˈ, –no͝orˈ [key], 1752–1816, American political leader and diplomat, b. Morrisania, N.Y. (now part of the Bronx); a grandson of Lewis Morris (1671–1746), he was ...

(Encyclopedia) Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt Du Bois) dəboisˈ [key], 1868–1963, American civil-rights leader and author, b. Great Barrington, Mass., grad. Harvard (B.A., 1890; M.A., 1891; Ph.D., 18...

(Encyclopedia) blood groups, differentiation of blood by type, classified according to immunological (antigenic) properties, which are determined by specific substances on the surface of red blood cells. Blood group...

(Encyclopedia) Welsh literature, literary writings in the Welsh language. In the 20th cent. attempts at language purification, interest in Welsh mythology, and a turning away from earlier Welsh puritanism accompan...