Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) pitta pĭtˈə [key], name used to refer to a genus (Pitta) of small, plump, brightly colored birds. The genus, including some twenty-three species, constitutes the whole of the family Pittidae. Known...

(Encyclopedia) Stanhope, Philip Henry Stanhope, 5th Earl, 1805–75, English historian. He was undersecretary for foreign affairs (1834–35) in Sir Robert Peel's first ministry and secretary of the board of control...

(Encyclopedia) Wilson, Henry Maitland Wilson, 1st Baron, 1881–1964, British field marshal. He served in the South African War and World War I and in 1939 became commander of the British forces in Egypt. He led the...

(Encyclopedia) Melville, Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount, 1742–1811, British lawyer and politician. He was solicitor general for Scotland (1766–75), entered Parliament in 1774, and became lord advocate in 1775. Durin...

(Encyclopedia) Olmec ōlˈmĕk [key], term denoting the culture of ancient Mexican natives inhabiting the tropical coastal plain of the contemporary states of Veracruz and Tabasco, between 1300 and 400 b.c. The term...

(Encyclopedia) Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 1807–82, American poet, b. Portland, Maine, grad. Bowdoin College, 1825. He wrote some of the most popular poems in American literature, in which he created a new body o...

(Encyclopedia) Molyneaux, James Henry, Baron Molyneaux of Killead, 1920–2015, Northern Irish political leader. A Protestant and strong Unionist, he served in the Royal Air Force during World War II and subsequentl...

(Encyclopedia) Grey, Albert Henry George Grey, 4th Earl, 1851–1917, English statesman, nephew of the 3d Earl Grey. In 1880 he entered the House of Commons as a Liberal, but he lost his seat as a result of his oppo...

(Encyclopedia) Maine, Sir Henry James Sumner, 1822–88, English jurist and historian, educated at Cambridge. A pioneer in the historical and comparative study of institutions, he viewed the history of laws as the m...

(Encyclopedia) Cairngorms kârngôrmzˈ, kârnˈgôrmz [key], group of mountains forming part of the Grampian Mts, in Highland, Moray, and Aberdeenshire, central Scotland, between the Dee and the upper Spey rivers; ...