Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Lowell Observatory, astronomical observatory located in Flagstaff, Ariz.; it was founded in 1894 by Percival Lowell, the American astronomer who popularized the idea that Mars might support intelligen...

(Encyclopedia) baboon, any of the large, powerful, ground-living monkeys of the genus Papio, also called dog-faced monkeys. Five subspecies live in Africa, with one species extending into the Arabian peninsula. They...

(Encyclopedia) Macmillan, (Maurice) Harold, 1st earl of Stockton, 1894–1986, British statesman. A descendant of the founder of the publishing house of Macmillan and Company, he was educated at Eton and at Oxford a...

(Encyclopedia) lanthanum lănˈthənəm [key] [Gr.,=to lie hidden], metallic chemical element; symbol La; at. no. 57; at. wt. 138.90547; m.p. about 920℃; b.p. about 3,460℃; sp. gr. 6.19 at 25℃; valence +3. Lan...

(Encyclopedia) Lanzmann, Claude, 1925–2018, French filmmaker and journalist, b. Paris. While his Jewish family was in hiding in rural France during World War II, Lanzmann joined the Resistance and fought the Nazis...

(Encyclopedia) Mesozoic era mĕzˌəzōˈĭk [key] [Gr.,=middle life], major division of geologic time (see Geologic Timescale, tablegeologic timescale, table) from 65 to 225 million years ago. Great crustal disturb...

(Encyclopedia) Isherwood, Christopher ishˈərwo͝od [key], 1904–86, British-American author. After the appearance of his first novel, All the Conspirators (1928), Isherwood went to Germany. The four years he spen...

(Encyclopedia) New Democratic party (NDP), Canadian political party, founded in 1961 when the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) reorganized itself and entered into close ties with Canadian labor unions, espe...

(Encyclopedia) paleomagnetism, study of the intensity and orientation of the earth's magnetic field as preserved in the magnetic orientation of certain minerals found in rocks formed throughout geologic time. Paleom...

(Encyclopedia)  CE5 White birch, Betula papyrifera birch, common name for some members of the Betulaceae, a family of deciduous trees or shrubs bearing male and female flowers on separate plants, widely distribut...