Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) boat people, term used to describe the Indochinese refugees who fled Communist rule after the Vietnam War (1975) in small boats and the many ethnic Chinese who left Vietnam similarly after China's inv...

(Encyclopedia) strawberry, any plant of the genus Fragaria of the family Rosaceae (rose family), low herbaceous perennials with edible red fruits, native to temperate and mountainous tropical regions. The European e...

(Encyclopedia) Washita wŏshˈĭtô [key], river, c.450 mi (720 km) long, rising in the Texas Panhandle near the Okla. line and flowing generally SE across Oklahoma to Lake Texoma or the Red River. The Native Americ...

(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) Representation of the People Acts, statutes enacted by the British Parliament to continue the extension of the franchise begun by the Reform Bills (see under Reform Acts). As a result of the governmen...

(Encyclopedia) Peculiar People, an alternate rendering for the biblical phrase “chosen people” (of Israel), applied to numerous Protestant dissenting sects such as the Plumstead peculiars. This group, founded in...

(Encyclopedia) North Carolina, University of, main campus at Chapel Hill; state supported; coeducational; chartered 1789, opened 1795, the first state college to open as a university. In 1931 the North Carolina Stat...

(Encyclopedia) North Texas, University of, at Denton, Tex.; coeducational; est. 1890 as Texas Normal College, became North Texas State Normal College in 1899, North Texas State Teachers College in 1923. In 1949 the ...

(Encyclopedia) lost tribes, 10 Israelite tribes that, according to the Bible, were transported to Assyria by Tiglathpileser III or Shalmaneser after the conquest of Israel in 722 b.c. Numerous conjectures have been ...

(Encyclopedia)  CE5 North Carolina, state in the SE United States. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean (E), South Carolina and Georgia (S), Tennessee (W), and Virginia (N). ...