Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Piedras Negras pyāˈᵺräs nāˈgräs [key] [Span.,=black stones], ruined city of the Classic era of the Maya, NW Petén, Guatemala, in the Usumacinta valley. Reaching a peak of sculptural achieveme...

(Encyclopedia) Afyonkarahisar äfyōnˈkäˌrähĭsärˈ [key] [Turk.,=black castle of opium], city, capital of Afyonkarahisar prov., W central Turkey, at an elevation of c.3,500 ft (1,0...

(Encyclopedia) Adrianople, Treaty of, also called Treaty of Edirne, 1829, peace treaty between Russia and the Ottoman Empire (see Russo-Turkish Wars). Turkey gave Russia access to the mouths of the Danube and additi...

(Encyclopedia) Eboué, Félix Adolphe fālēksˈ ädôlfˈ ĕbwāˈ [key], 1884–1944, French colonial official. After service in Martinique and in the Sudan, he became France's first black colonial governor. He se...

(Encyclopedia) Boise project, in the Boise, Payette, and Snake river valleys, SW Idaho and E Oregon; developed in 1905 by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation for irrigation, hydroelectricity, flood control, and recreatio...

(Encyclopedia) Bradley, Tom (Thomas Bradley), 1917–98, African-American politician, b. Calvert, Tex. A sharecropper's son who became (1940) a Los Angeles police officer, he earned (1956) a law degree from Southwes...

(Encyclopedia) antithesis ăntĭthˈĭsĭs [key], a figure of speech involving a seeming contradiction of ideas, words, clauses, or sentences within a balanced grammatical structure. Parallelism of expression serves...

(Encyclopedia) hearts, card game played by three to six players with an ordinary deck. All the cards are dealt to the players. After a card is led, each hand must follow suit if possible. The object is to avoid accu...

(Encyclopedia) Kizil Irmak kəzŭlˈ ərmäkˈ [key], anc. Halys, longest river of Turkey, c.715 mi (1,150 km) long, rising in the Kizil Dağ, N central Turkey, and flowing in a wide arc SW, then N, and then NE into...

(Encyclopedia) Sochi sôˈchē [key], city (1989 pop. 337,000), Krasnodar Territory, S European Russia, on the east shore of the Black Sea, in the foothills of the Caucasus. It is a port and subtropical resort, esta...