Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Wellesley College, at Wellesley, Mass.; for women; chartered 1870, opened 1875. Long a leader in women's education, it was the first woman's college to have scientific laboratories. With Lake Waban an...

(Encyclopedia) Lee, George Washington Custis, 1832–1913, Confederate general in the American Civil War, b. Fort Monroe, Va.; eldest son of Robert E. Lee. He served in the Corps of Engineers until May, 1861, when h...

(Encyclopedia) Becker, Boris, 1967–, German tennis player, b. Leimen, West Germany (now Germany). Noted for his powerful, often acrobatic serve-and-volley game, he gained notice in 1985 when, at 17, he became the ...

(Encyclopedia) Budge, Don (John Donald Budge), 1915–2000, American tennis player, b. Oakland, Calif. A powerful, consistent player, Budge was the first person to capture the sport's grand slam, winning the Austral...

(Encyclopedia) Hill, Daniel Harvey, 1821–89, Confederate general in the American Civil War, b. York District, S.C. He served in the Mexican War but resigned from the army in 1849. He was professor of mathematics a...

(Encyclopedia) Stafford, Jean, 1915–79, American writer, b. Covina, Calif., grad. Univ. of Colorado, 1936. Her literary reputation rests primarily on her exquisitely wrought short stories. Both these and her novel...

(Encyclopedia) taconite, low-grade iron ore, a flintlike rock usually containing less than 30% iron. Resistant to drilling and to the extraction of its contained metal, the rock was long considered worthless. Experi...

(Encyclopedia) Wooden, John, 1910–2010, American basketball coach, b. Martinsville, Ind. He was the first athlete to be honored in the basketball Hall of Fame as both player and coach. An All-American guard at Pur...

(Encyclopedia) Stone Mountain Memorial, memorial to the Confederacy, consisting of the equestrian figures of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis carved on the northern face of Stone Mt., a granite ...

(Encyclopedia) Leo Africanus ăfrĭkāˈnəs [key], c.1465–1550, Moorish traveler in Africa and the Middle East. His Arabic name was Al-Hasan ibn Muhammad. Captured by pirates, he was sent as a slave to Pope Leo X...