Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) vaudeville vôdˈvĭl [key], originally a light song, derived from the drinking and love songs formerly attributed to Olivier Basselin and called Vau, or Vaux, de Vire. Similar to the English music ha...

(Encyclopedia) David, T. W. E. (Sir Tannatt William Edgeworth), 1858–1935, Australian geologist and explorer, b. near Cardiff, Wales. David came to Australia in 1882 as an assistant geological surveyor. In 1891 he...

(Encyclopedia) Yeats, W. B. (William Butler Yeats), 1865–1939, Irish poet and playwright, b. Dublin. The greatest lyric poet Ireland has produced and one of the major figures of 20th-century literature, Yeats was ...

(Encyclopedia) Diane de Poitiers pwätyāˈ [key], 1499–1566, duchess of Valentinois, mistress of King Henry II of France. Noted for her beauty, Diane, who was much older than Henry, retained her influence over hi...

(Encyclopedia) Bradford, William, 1590–1657, governor of Plymouth Colony, b. Austerfield, Yorkshire, England. As a young man he joined the separatist congregation at Scrooby and in 1609 emigrated with others to Ho...

(Encyclopedia) West, Jessamyn, 1907–84, American novelist, b. Indiana. A Quaker herself, her most famous novel is The Friendly Persuasion (1945), about the conflicts felt by a Quaker farm family during the Civil W...

(Encyclopedia) Christian X, 1870–1947, king of Denmark (1912–47) and Iceland (1912–44), son and successor of Frederick VIII and brother of King Haakon VII of Norway. He granted (1915) a new constitution that i...

(Encyclopedia) Kyffhäuser kĭfˈhoizər [key], forested mountain, c.1,550 ft (470 m), Saxony-Anhalt, central Germany. It is crowned by the two ruined castles of Rothenburg (7th cent.) and Kyffhausen (12th cent.) an...

(Encyclopedia) Mount Hopkins Observatory: see Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory. ...

(Encyclopedia) Barbarossa, Frederick: see Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor. ...