Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Juan Fernández hwän fārnänˈdās [key], group of small islands, S Pacific, c.400 mi (640 km) W of Valparaiso, Chile. They belong to Chile and are constitutionally a special territory; they are adm...

(Encyclopedia) Sinyavsky, Andrey Donatovich ŭndrāˈ dōnätˈəvyĭchˌ sĭnyäfˈskē [key], 1925–97, Russian novelist and essayist. Starting in the 1960s, Sinyavsky, a protege of Boris Pasternak, had a number ...

(Encyclopedia) Vincent de Paul, Saint, 1580?–1660, French priest renowned for charitable work, b. Gascony. He was ordained in 1600. There are conflicting stories about his capture by pirates and enslavement in Tun...

(Encyclopedia) Webster-Ashburton Treaty, Aug., 1842, agreement concluded by the United States, represented by Secretary of State Daniel Webster, and Great Britain, represented by Alexander Baring, 1st Baron Ashburto...

(Encyclopedia) Glazer, Nathan, 1923–2019, American sociologist, b. New York City, grad. City College, 1944. He became an editor at The Contemporary Jewish Record, later Commentary, and contributed to The Lonely Cr...

(Encyclopedia) oratory, the art of swaying an audience by eloquent speech. In ancient Greece and Rome oratory was included under the term rhetoric, which meant the art of composing as well as delivering a speech. Or...

(Encyclopedia) Moscow or Muscovy, grand duchy of, state existing in W central Russia from the late 14th to mid-16th cent., with the city of Moscow as its nucleus. Its formation and eventual ascendancy over other Rus...

(Encyclopedia) O'Connor, Feargus fûrˈgəs [key], 1794–1855, Irish Chartist leader. Elected to the Parliament of 1832 as a supporter of Daniel O'Connell, he soon quarreled with O'Connell and was forced out of Par...

(Encyclopedia) Wiseman, Nicholas Patrick Stephen, 1802–65, English prelate, cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, b. Seville, Spain, of Irish-English parentage. In 1836 he founded (with Daniel O'Connell) the Dubl...

(Encyclopedia) Wilderness Road, principal avenue of westward migration for U.S. pioneers from c.1790 to 1840, blazed in 1775 by the American frontiersman Daniel Boone and an advance party of the Transylvania Company...