Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Ferris wheel, amusement park ride. It consists of a power-operated wheel that is about 50 ft (15 m) in diameter. It has two rims that are parallel to and equidistant from the shaft about which the whe...

(Encyclopedia) Jágr, Jaromír, 1972–, Czech ice hockey player, b. Kladno. Jágr played professional hockey in Czechoslovakia as a teenager, and joined the Pittsburgh Penguins of the National Hockey League in 1990...

(Encyclopedia) van Zweden, Jaap yäp vän zvāˈdĕn [key], 1960–, Dutch conductor and violonist, b. Amsterdam. An accomplished violonist, he was appointed concertmaster of Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw Orchestr...

(Encyclopedia) Vescovo, Victor Lance, 1966–, American private equity investor and adventurer, b. Dallas, Tex., M.B.A. Harvard, 1994. He was a principal at Lehman Brothers (1991–92), a senior manager at Bain and ...

(Encyclopedia) Banks, Ernie (Ernest Banks), 1931–2015, American baseball player, b. Dallas, Tex. “Mr. Cub” began (1950) his baseball career with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro leagues, served in the arm...

(Encyclopedia) Hull, Brett Andrew, 1956–, Canadian-American hockey player, son of Bobby Hull. Brett, an outstanding scoring right wing and a dual Canadian-U.S. citizen, played for the Univ. of Minnesota–Duluth (...

(Encyclopedia) popular sovereignty, in U.S. history, doctrine under which the status of slavery in the territories was to be determined by the settlers themselves. Although the doctrine won wide support as a means o...

(Encyclopedia) Warren Commission, popular name given to the U.S. Commission to Report upon the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, established (Nov. 29, 1963) by executive order of President Lyndon B. Johnso...

(Encyclopedia) Parcells, Bill, 1941–, American football coach, b. Englewood, N.J., as Duane Charles Parcells, nicknamed “the Big Tuna.” He played for Colgate and Wichita State before being drafted (1964) and c...

(Encyclopedia) Clark, Tom Campbell, 1899–1977, U.S. attorney general (1945–49), associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1949–67), b. Dallas, Tex.; father of Ramsey Clark. He received his law degree from t...