Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Hundred Years War, 1337–1453, conflict between England and France. The Hundred Years War inflicted untold misery on France. Farmlands were laid waste, the population was decimated by war, famine, ...

(Encyclopedia) fire fighting, the use of strategy, personnel, and apparatus to extinguish, to confine, or to escape from fire. Ancient Rome is known to have had a fire department consisting by the 1st cent. of app...

(Encyclopedia)  CE5 Video transmission and reception of color and black-and-white television: The camera lens focuses collected light rays into mirrors, which separate the image into its three primary color compon...

(Encyclopedia) railroad or railway, form of transportation most commonly consisting of steel rails, called tracks, on which trains of freight cars, passenger cars, and other rolling stock are drawn by one locomotive...

(Encyclopedia) space probe, space vehicle carrying sophisticated instrumentation but no crew, designed to explore various aspects of the solar system (see space exploration). Unlike an artificial satellite, which is...

(Encyclopedia) Amazon, Port. Amazonas ämäzōˈnəs [key], world's second longest river, c.3,900 mi (6,280 km) long, formed by the junction in N Peru's Andes Mts. of two major headstreams, the Ucayali and the short...

(Encyclopedia)  CE5 A. The earthworm, Lumbricus terrestris, representative of the phylum Annelida. B. Internal anatomy of an earthworm. Annelida ənĕlˈĭdə [key] [Lat., anellus=a ring], phylum of soft-bodied, ...

(Encyclopedia) Panama Canal, waterway across the Isthmus of Panama, connecting the Atlantic (by way of the Caribbean Sea) and Pacific oceans, built by the United States (1904–14, on territory leased from the repub...

(Encyclopedia) piracy, robbery committed or attempted on the high seas. It is distinguished from privateering in that the pirate holds no commission from and receives the protection of no nation but usually attacks ...

(Encyclopedia)  CE5 Comoros, the kŏmˈərōs [key], officially Union of the Comoros (2020 est. pop. 869,601), 838 sq mi ...