Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Wharton, Edith Newbold Jones, 1862–1937, American novelist, b. New York City, noted for her subtle, ironic, and superbly crafted fictional studies of New York society at the turn of the 20th cent. T...

(Encyclopedia) fingerprint, an impression of the underside of the end of a finger or thumb, used for identification because the arrangement of ridges in any fingerprint is thought to be unique and permanent with eac...

(Encyclopedia) Woolf, Virginia, 1882–1941, English novelist and essayist, b. Adeline Virgina Stephen; daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen. A successful innovator in the form of the novel, she is considered a significan...

(Encyclopedia) electronics industry, the business of creating, designing, producing, and selling devices such as radios, televisions, stereos, computers, semiconductors, transistors, and integrated circuits (see ele...

(Encyclopedia) marsupial märso͞oˈpēəl [key], member of the order Marsupialia, or pouched mammals. With the exception of the New World opossums and an obscure S American family (Caenolestidae), marsupials are no...

(Encyclopedia) protozoan prōˌtəzōˈən [key], informal term for the unicellular heterotrophs of the kingdom Protista. Protozoans comprise a large, diverse assortment of microscopic or near-microscopic organisms ...

(Encyclopedia) Hamer, Fannie Lou, 1917–1977, U.S. voting rights activist and civil rights leader, b. Montgomery County, Miss. Fannie Lou Hamer was the first woman fr...

(Encyclopedia)  CE5 Virginia, state of the S Middle-Atlantic United States. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean (E), North Carolina and Tennessee (S), Kentucky and West Virginia (W), and Maryland and the District...

(Encyclopedia) Kennedy, John Fitzgerald, 1917–63, 35th President of the United States (1961–63), b. Brookline, Mass.; son of Joseph P. Kennedy. On Nov. 22, 1963, President Kennedy was shot and killed while ...

(Encyclopedia) Franklin, Benjamin, 1706–90, American statesman, printer, scientist, and writer, b. Boston. The only American of the colonial period to earn a European reputation as a natural philosopher, he is bes...