Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Brandeis, Louis Dembitz brănˈdīs [key], 1856–1941, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1916–39), b. Louisville, Ky., grad. Harvard law school, 1877. As a successful Boston lawyer (1879...

(Encyclopedia) Hughes, Charles Evans hyo͞oz [key], 1862–1948, American statesman and jurist, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1910–16), U.S. secretary of state (1921–25), and 11th chief justice of...

(Encyclopedia) Cooper, James Fenimore, 1789–1851, American novelist, b. Burlington, N.J., as James Cooper. He was the first important American writer to draw on the subjects and landscape of his native land in ord...

(Encyclopedia) stove, device used for heating or for cooking food. The stove was long regarded as a cooking device supplementary to the fireplace, near which it stood; its stovepipe led into the fireplace chimney. I...

(Encyclopedia) Washington, Booker Taliaferro, 1856–1915, American educator, b. Franklin co., Va. Washington was born into slavery; his mother was a mulatto slave on a plantation, his father a white man whom he nev...

(Encyclopedia) Emancipation Proclamation, in U.S. history, the executive order abolishing slavery in the Confederate States of America. The proclamation did not reflect Lincoln's desired solution for the slavery p...

(Encyclopedia) Great Depression, in U.S. history, the severe economic crisis generally considered to have been precipitated by the U.S. stock-market crash of 1929. Although it shared the basic characteristics of oth...

(Encyclopedia) Churchill, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer, 1874–1965, British statesman, soldier, and author; son of Lord Randolph Churchill. Churchill was undoubtedly one of the greatest public figures of the 20t...

(Encyclopedia) Paleolithic period pāˌlēəlĭthˈĭk, –lēō–, pălˌ– [key] or Old Stone Age, the earliest period of human development and the longest phase of mankind's history. It is approximately coexten...

(Encyclopedia) cartoon [Ital., cartone=paper], either of two types of drawings: in the fine arts, a preliminary sketch for a more complete work; in journalism, a humorous or satirical drawing. Humorous nonpolitica...