Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Grasse, town, Alpes-Maritime dept., SE France. Probably founded in Roman times, Grasse was a commercial center during the Middle Ages. Destroyed many ti...

(Encyclopedia) Lane, Sir Ralph, c.1530–1603, leader of the first attempted English settlement in America, on Roanoke Island, N.C. Sent by Sir Walter Raleigh, the expedition of over 100 colonists left England in Ap...

(Encyclopedia) Newburyport, city (1990 pop. 16,317), a seat of Essex co., NE Mass., at the mouth of the Merrimack River; settled 1635, set off from Newbury and inc. 1764. Its silverware industry dates from colonial ...

(Encyclopedia) Matthiessen, F. O. (Francis Otto Matthiessen) măthˈĭsĕn [key], 1902–50, American critic, b. Pasadena, Calif., grad. Yale Univ., 1923, B.Litt., Oxford, 1925, Ph.D., Harvard, 1927. A Rhodes schola...

(Encyclopedia) Meiss, Millard mēs [key], 1904–75, American art historian, b. Cincinnati. Meiss taught art history at Columbia from 1934 to 1953 and thereafter was professor at Harvard until 1958, when he joined t...

(Encyclopedia) Hampton Roads Peace Conference, meeting held on Feb. 3, 1865, on board the Union transport River Queen in Hampton Roads, Va., with the object of ending the Civil War. President Lincoln and Secretary o...

(Encyclopedia) Yeardley, Sir George yärdˈlē [key], c.1587–1627, British colonial governor of Virginia (1618–21, 1626–27). He was shipwrecked (1609) in the Bermudas but managed to reach Virginia in 1610. In ...

(Encyclopedia) Sutton, Willie (William Francis Sutton, Jr.), 1901–80, American bank robber, b. Brooklyn, N.Y. Sutton, who committed his first serious crime at age 9, robbed his first bank in 1927, and he claimed h...

(Encyclopedia) Wallas, Graham wŏlˈəs [key], 1858–1932, English political scientist and psychologist. He joined (1886) the Fabian Society and was the author of one of the Fabian Essays. In 1914, Wallas became pr...

(Encyclopedia) Tisza, Count Stephen, 1861–1918, Hungarian premier (1903–5, 1913–17); son of Kálmán Tisza. He believed in strong personal government and sought to make Hungary a forceful partner in the Austro...