Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Imperial Valley, fertile region in the Colorado Desert, SE Calif., extending S into NW Mexico. Once part of the Gulf of California, most of the region is below sea level; its lowest point is −232 ft...

(Encyclopedia) foundling hospital, institution for receiving and caring for abandoned children. In Athens and in Rome until the 4th cent., unwanted children were exposed, or left to die, in appointed places. The fir...

(Encyclopedia)  CE5 Kansas kănˈzəs [key], midwestern state occupying the center of the coterminous United States. It is bordered by Missouri (E), Oklahoma (S), Colorado (W), and Nebraska (N). Kansas has b...

(Encyclopedia) trade, traffic in goods. Conducted by gift, barter, or sale, trade is one of the most widespread of all social institutions. The theory of commerce as imposed by the national state has varied from...

(Encyclopedia) Buffalo, city (2020 pop. 278,349), seat of Erie co., W N.Y., on Lake Erie and the Niagara and Buffalo rivers; inc. 1832. With more than 37 mi (60 km) of...

(Encyclopedia) National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America, cooperative agency of 35 Protestant, Orthodox, and Anglican denominations. Formed in 1950, with headquarters in New York Cit...

(Encyclopedia) income tax, assessment levied upon individual or corporate incomes. Although personal incomes were occasionally taxed in medieval Italian cities, the income tax is essentially a modern form of taxatio...

(Encyclopedia)  CE5 Alabama ăləbămˈə [key], state in the SE United States. It is bordered by Tennessee (N), Georgia (E), Florida and the Gulf of Mexico (S), and Mississippi (W). In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Co...

(Encyclopedia) Allen, Hervey, 1889–1949, American novelist and poet, b. Pittsburgh, grad. Univ. of Pittsburgh, 1915. After service in World War I, he taught English in Charleston, S.C., where, in collaboration wit...

(Encyclopedia) housing, in general, living accommodations available for the inhabitants of a community. Throughout the 19th cent., with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, housing as a problem worsened as urban...