Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) water supply, process or activity by which water is provided for some use, e.g., to a home, factory, or business. The term may also refer to the supply of water provided in this way. In the United Sta...

(Encyclopedia) Food and Drug Administration (FDA), agency of the Public Health Service division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is charged with protecting public health by ensuring that foods...

(Encyclopedia) Talmadge, Eugene, 1884–1946, governor of Georgia (1933–37, 1941–43), b. Forsyth, Ga. In his second term as governor (1935–37) of Georgia, his staff was forbidden by Harry Hopkins to disburse f...

(Encyclopedia) Work Projects Administration (WPA), former U.S. government agency, established in 1935 by executive order of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as the Works Progress Administration; it was renamed th...

(Encyclopedia) Livingstone, city (1990 est. pop. 82,218), S Zambia, near the Zambezi River, which forms the border with Zimbabwe. It is an industrial, commercial, and transportation center. Manufactures include clot...

(Encyclopedia) Peru pəro͞oˈ [key], city (1990 pop. 12,843), seat of Miami co., N Ind., on the Wabash River; inc. 1847. It is a trade, processing, and rail center for a fertile agricultural area. Among its product...

(Encyclopedia) housing, in general, living accommodations available for the inhabitants of a community. Throughout the 19th cent., with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, housing as a problem worsened as urban...

(Encyclopedia) lobbying, practice and profession of influencing governmental decisions, carried out by agents who present the concerns of special interests to legislators and administrators. The term originated in t...

(Encyclopedia) McCulloch v. Maryland, case decided in 1819 by the U.S. Supreme Court, dealing specifically with the constitutionality of a Congress-chartered corporation, and more generally with the dispersion of po...

(Encyclopedia) National Defense Education Act (NDEA), federal legislation passed in 1958 providing aid to education in the United States at all levels, public and private. NDEA was instituted primarily to stimulate ...