Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Moore, Thomas, 1779–1852, Irish poet, b. Dublin. He achieved prominence in his day not only for his poetry but also for his love of Ireland and personal charm. A lawyer, he was for a time registrar ...

(Encyclopedia) civil time, local time based on universal time. Civil time may be formally defined as mean solar time plus 12 hr; the civil day begins at midnight, while the mean solar day begins at noon. Civil time ...

(Encyclopedia) woodchuck or groundhog, common name of a North American species of marmot, Marmota monax. This large rodent is found in open woods and ravines throughout most of Canada and the NE United States. Its h...

(Encyclopedia) Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, 1952–, emir of Qatar (1995–2013). The son of Emir Khalifa bin Hamad al-Thani, Hamad is credited with having turned a country of desert nomads into a modern, industriali...

(Encyclopedia) tournament or tourney, in the Middle Ages, public contest between armed horsemen in simulation of real battle. In this military game, which flourished from the 12th to the 16th cent., combatants were ...

(Encyclopedia) Gunpowder Plot, conspiracy to blow up the English Parliament and King James I on Nov. 5, 1605, the day set for the king to open Parliament. It was intended to be the beginning of a great uprising of E...

(Encyclopedia) Auerstedt ouˈərshtĕt [key], village, Thuringia, S central Germany. At Auerstedt on Oct. 14, 1806 (the same day Napoleon I triumphed at Jena), French Marshal Louis Nicholas Davout defeated the Pruss...

(Encyclopedia) Censorinus sĕnsōrīˈnəs [key], fl. c.238, Roman grammarian. He wrote De die natali [on the day of birth], an essay partly astrological, partly chronological, which affords much information on anci...

(Encyclopedia) Coos kōˈŏs [key], in the New Testament, island in the Aegean Sea, the present-day Kós. ...

(Encyclopedia) Hazarmaveth hāˈzärmāˈvĕth [key], in the Bible, son of Joktan and eponym of the present-day region of Hadhramaut. ...