Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Colorado–Big Thompson project, constructed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to divert water from the headstreams of the Colorado River to irrigate c.720,000 acres (291,400 hectares) of land in NE C...

(Encyclopedia) Cox, Samuel Sullivan, 1824–89, American statesman and legislator, b. Zanesville, Ohio. He traveled widely, practiced law, and was a newspaper editor before serving (1857–65) as a Congressman from ...

(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...

(Encyclopedia) War Department, United States, federal executive department organized (1789) to administer the military establishment. It was reconstituted (1947) as the Dept. of the Army when the military administra...

(Encyclopedia) Preemption Act, statute passed (1841) by the U.S. Congress in response to the demands of the Western states that squatters be allowed to preempt lands. Pioneers often settled on public lands before th...

(Encyclopedia) Schenck, Robert Cumming skĕngk [key], 1809–90, American politician and diplomat, Union general in the Civil War, b. Franklin, Ohio. He studied law and practiced in Dayton. Schenck was a Whig in Con...

(Encyclopedia) Milan Decree, issued Dec., 1807, by Napoleon I of France in an attempt to enforce the Continental System. Designed to strengthen the Berlin Decree, it authorized French warships and privateers to capt...

(Encyclopedia) Bremerhaven brāˈmərhäˌfən [key], city, in the state of Bremen, NW Germany, at the mouth of the Weser ...

(Encyclopedia) paleomagnetism, study of the intensity and orientation of the earth's magnetic field as preserved in the magnetic orientation of certain minerals found in rocks formed throughout geologic time. Paleom...

(Encyclopedia) Sherman Silver Purchase Act, 1890, passed by the U.S. Congress to supplant the Bland-Allison Act of 1878. It not only required the U.S. government to purchase nearly twice as much silver as before, bu...