Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Charles XI, 1655–97, king of Sweden (1660–97), son and successor of Charles X. Charles ascended the throne at the age of five, so a council of regency ruled until 1672. The regency ended Swedish w...

(Encyclopedia) Simpson, Sir George, 1792?–1860, governor of the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada (1821–56), b. Scotland. In 1820 he was sent by the Hudson's Bay Company to Canada, where he took charge of the impor...

(Encyclopedia) Trincomalee trĭngˌkəməlēˈ [key], town (1995 est. pop. 50,000), capital of Eastern prov., NE Sri Lanka, on the Bay of Bengal. Trincomalee has one of the world's finest natural harbors and can acc...

(Encyclopedia) Vietnam Veterans Memorial, war memorial in Washington, D.C., built 1982. Designed by the American sculptor and architect Maya Ying Lin, it is a sloping, V-shaped, 493-ft (150-m) wall of highly polishe...

(Encyclopedia) Schley, Winfield Scott slī [key], 1839–1911, American naval officer, b. Frederick co., Md. After serving with Union naval forces in the Civil War, he held various naval posts. In 1884 he commanded ...

(Encyclopedia) Portage [1,] [2] pôrˈtəj; [3] pôrˈtĭj [key]. 1 Town (1990 pop. 29,060), Porter co., NW Ind., a suburb of Gary, on Lake Michigan; inc. 1959. The town, which was once surrounded by great industrie...

(Encyclopedia) Euler, Leonhard lāˈônhärt oiˈlər [key], 1707–83, Swiss mathematician. Born and educated at Basel, where he knew the Bernoullis, he went to St. Petersburg (1727) at the invitation of Catherine ...

(Encyclopedia) Nassau näˈsou [key], former duchy, W central Germany, situated N and E of the Main and Rhine rivers. It is now mostly included in the state of Hesse, and partly in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate....

(Encyclopedia) Boniface VIII, 1235–1303, pope (1294–1303), an Italian (b. Anagni) named Benedetto Caetani; successor of St. Celestine V. As a cardinal he was independent of the factions in the papal court, and h...

(Encyclopedia) Booth, family prominent in the Salvation Army, founded by William Booth. His wife, Catherine Mumford Booth, 1829–90, whom he married in 1855, played a leading part in the foundation and development ...