Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Fitch, John, 1743–98, American inventor, b. Windsor, Conn. Fitch began (1785) work on the invention of the steam engine and steamboat and secured soon afterward the exclusive right to build and oper...

(Encyclopedia) Ball State University, at Muncie, Ind.; coeducational; founded 1918 as a state institution. In 1929 it became Ball State Teachers College and in 1965 achieved university status. ...

(Encyclopedia) Virginia State University, at Petersburg; land-grant and state supported; coeducational; chartered 1882 as a normal and collegiate institute, opened 1883, became a normal and industrial institute in 1...

(Encyclopedia) Oregon State University, at Corvallis; land-grant and state supported; coeducational; chartered 1858 as Corvallis College, opened 1865. In 1868 it was designated Oregon's land-grant agricultural colle...

(Encyclopedia) home rule, municipal, system adopted in many states of the United States by which a city is given the right to draft and amend its own charter and to regulate purely local matters without interference...

(Encyclopedia) neutrality, in international law, status of a nation that refrains from participation in a war between other states and maintains an impartial attitude toward the belligerents. Neutrality is not to be...

(Encyclopedia) Arkansas State University, at Jonesboro; coeducational; chartered 1909; named State Agricultural and Mechanical College, 1925–33. In 1933 the school became Arkansas State College, and in 1967 it ach...

(Encyclopedia) Hayes, Rutherford Birchard, 1822–93, 19th President of the United States (1877–81), b. Delaware, Ohio, grad. Kenyon College, 1843, and Harvard law school, 1845. He became a moderately successful l...

(Encyclopedia) Raritan, river, 85 mi (137 km) long, rising in N central N.J., and flowing generally SE to Raritan Bay, an arm of Lower New York Bay, at Perth Amboy. Through pumping the Raritan supplies water to the ...

(Encyclopedia) Cinco de Mayo, May 5, the anniversary of Mexico's victory over France in 1862 in the Battle of Puebla, in which Gen. Ignacio Zaragoza's small, ill-equipped Mexican forces defeated a much larger French...