Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) jaguar jăgˈwär [key], large New World carnivore of the cat family, Panthera onca. Jaguars range from the SW United States to S central Argentina, though there have been no resident breeding females...

(Encyclopedia) Wolseley, Garnet Joseph Wolseley, 1st Viscount wo͝olzˈlē [key], 1833–1913, British field marshal. He fought in Burma (present-day Myanmar; 1852–53), the Crimea (1854–56), India (1857–58), a...

(Encyclopedia) Valencia, city (1990 pop. 758,738), capital of the autonomous community of Valencia and of Valencia prov., E Spain, on the Turia River. The third largest city in Spain, it lies in a fertile garden reg...

(Encyclopedia) Rivera, Diego ᵺyāˈgō rēvāˈrä [key], 1886–1957, Mexican mural painter, studied as a youth with Posada and other Mexican painters; husband of Frida Kahlo. The native sculpture of Mexico deepl...

(Encyclopedia) New Granada grənäˈdə [key], former Spanish colony, N South America. It included at its greatest extent present Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela. Between 1499 and 1510 a host of conquerors ...

(Encyclopedia) mechanized warfare, employment of modern mobile attack and defense tactics that depend upon machines, more particularly upon vehicles powered by gasoline and diesel engines. Central to the waging of m...

(Encyclopedia) Petra pēˈtrə [key], ancient city, in present-day Jordan, known to the Arabs as Wadi Musa for the stream that flows through it. A narrow, winding pass between towering walls leads to the flat, open ...

(Encyclopedia) Derrida, Jacques zhäkˈ dĕrˌrēdäˈ [key], 1930–2004, French philosopher, b. El Biar, Algeria. A graduate of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, he taught there and at the Sorbonne, the Éc...

(Encyclopedia) Borges, Jorge Luis hôrˈhā lo͞oēsˈ bôrˈhās [key], 1899–1986, Argentine poet, critic, and short-story writer, b. Buenos Aires. Borges has been widely hailed as the foremost contemporary Spani...

(Encyclopedia) Nile, longest river in the world, c.4,160 mi (6,695 km) long from its remotest headstream, the Luvironza River in Burundi, central Africa, to its delta on the Mediterranean Sea, NE Egypt. The Nile flo...