Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Louvre lo͞oˈvrə [key], foremost French museum of art, located in Paris. The building was a royal fortress and palace built by Philip II in the late 12th cent. In 1546 Pierre Lescot was commissioned...

(Encyclopedia) Lydia, ancient country, W Asia Minor, N of Caria and S of Mysia (now NW Turkey). The tyrant Gyges was the founder of the Mermnadae dynasty, which lasted from c.700 b.c. to 550 b.c. The little kingdom ...

(Encyclopedia) Mansa Musa (Musa I) mänˈsä mo͞oˈsä [key], c.1280–1337, ruler of the Mali empire (1312–37). A devout Muslim, he brought the Mali empire to its greatest height, encompassing what is now Niger ...

(Encyclopedia) Gipson, Lawrence Henry gĭpˈsən [key], 1880–1971, American historian, b. Greeley, Colo. A Rhodes scholar, he received his Ph.D. from Yale in 1918 and taught at several schools before becoming (192...

(Encyclopedia) Macedon măsˈədŏn [key], ancient country, roughly equivalent to the modern region of Macedonia. In the history of Greek culture Macedon had its single significance in producing the conquerors and a...

(Encyclopedia) Ross, Edward Alsworth, 1866–1951, American sociologist, b. Virden, Ill., Ph.D. Johns Hopkins, 1891. He taught economics (1893–1900) at Stanford Univ., from which he was ousted in a controversy ove...

(Encyclopedia) Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, established in 1805, incorporated in 1806. It is supported by private endowment. The academy grew out of a proposal by Charles Willson Peale for an...

(Encyclopedia) transept trănˈsĕptˌ [key], term applied to the transverse portion of a building cutting its main axis at right angles or to each arm of such a portion. Transepts are found chiefly in churches, whe...

(Encyclopedia) White House, official name of the executive mansion of the President of the United States. It is on the south side of Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, D.C., facing Lafayette Square. The building, constr...

(Encyclopedia) August Coup, attempted coup (Aug. 18–22, 1991) against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. On the eve of the signing ceremony for a new union treaty for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, memb...