Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) cruelty, prevention of. In the 19th cent. many laws were passed in Great Britain and the United States to protect the helpless, especially children, lunatics, and domestic animals, from willful and ma...

(Encyclopedia) steady-state theory: see cosmology. ...

(Encyclopedia) Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), organization that seeks to upgrade moral life, especially through abstinence from alcohol. The National WCTU of the United States was founded (1874) in Cleve...

(Encyclopedia) Schoenbrunn Village State Memorial shānˈbrən, –bro͝on [key], E Ohio, S of New Philadelphia; site of the first town in Ohio, est. 1772 by Moravian missionary David Zeisberger and his Native Ameri...

(Encyclopedia) Oregon, University of, mainly at Eugene; state supported; coeducational; chartered 1872, opened 1876. Its is one of seven institutions in the Oregon Univ. System. The university has schools and colleg...

(Encyclopedia) Natal nətälˈ [key], city (1991 pop. 606,887), capital of Rio Grande do Norte state, NE Brazil, just above the mouth of the Potengi River. A modern city that has retained its colonial flavor and is ...

(Encyclopedia) Vicuña Mackenna, Benjamin bānhämēnˈ vēko͞oˈnyä mäkāˈnä [key], 1831–86, Chilean historian and journalist. A vigorous opponent of the conservative government of Manuel Montt, he was sente...

(Encyclopedia) quinoa kēnwäˈ [key], tall annual herb (Chenopodium quinoa) of the family Chenopodiaceae (goosefoot family), whose seeds have provided a staple food for peoples of the higher Andes since pre-Columbi...

(Encyclopedia) persistent vegetative state: see under coma, in medicine. ...

(Encyclopedia) Brown, Jerry (Edmund Gerald Brown, Jr.), 1938–, American political leader, b. San Francisco. The son of Edmund Gerald (Pat) Brown (1905–96), governor of California (1959–67), Brown abandoned ear...