Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Comanche kəmănˈchē [key], Native North Americans belonging to the Shoshonean group of the Uto-Aztecan branch of the Aztec-Tanoan linguistic stock (see Native American languages). They originated f...

(Encyclopedia) infinity, in mathematics, that which is not finite; it is often indicated by the symbol ∞. A sequence of numbers, a1, a2, a3, … , is said to “approach infinity” if the numbers eventually b...

(Encyclopedia) Prime Ministers of Great Britain 1 The modern party system did not evolve until the end of the 18th cent. ...

(Encyclopedia) Progressive party, in U.S. history, the name of three political organizations, active, respectively, in the presidential elections of 1912, 1924, and 1948. At Philadelphia in July, 1948, a new...

(Encyclopedia) Liberal Republican party, in U.S. history, organization formed in 1872 by Republicans discontented at the political corruption and the policies of President Grant's first administration. Other disaffe...

(Encyclopedia) North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), accord establishing a free-trade zone in North America; it was signed in 1992 by Canada, Mexico, and the United States and took effect on Jan. 1, 1994. NAF...

(Encyclopedia) Shackleton, Sir Ernest Henry, 1874–1922, British antarctic explorer, b. Ireland. The first of his voyages to Antarctica was made as a member of the expedition (1901–4) of Robert F. Scott. Shacklet...

(Encyclopedia) Benn, Anthony Wedgwood (Tony Benn), 1925–2014, British politician, b. London, grad. New College, Oxford. After working for the British Broadcasting Corporation (1949–50), he was elected a Labour m...

(Encyclopedia) Crane, Hart (Harold Hart Crane), 1899–1932, American poet, b. Garrettsville, Ohio. He published only two volumes of poetry during his lifetime, but those works established Crane as one of the most o...