Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Darién Scheme, Scottish project to establish a colony on the Isthmus of Panama (Darién). In 1695, the Scottish Parliament passed an act that chartered a company for trading with Africa and the Indie...

(Encyclopedia) Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), independent agency of the U.S. government, with headquarters in Washington, D.C. It was established in 1970 to reduce and control air and water pollution, noise ...

(Encyclopedia) fair-trade laws, in the United States, a former group of statutes that permitted manufacturers to specify the minimum retail price of a commodity. The first fair-trade law was adopted (1931) by Califo...

(Encyclopedia) Fraser, James Earle, 1876–1953, American sculptor, b. Winona, Minn., studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and in Paris. The best known of his many works are The End of the Trail (Visalia, Calif.)...

(Encyclopedia) mastectomy măstĕkˈtəmē [key], surgical removal of breast tissue, usually done as treatment for breast cancer. There are many types of mastectomy. In general, the farther the cancer has spread, th...

(Encyclopedia) Gratian grāˈshən [key], 359–83, Roman emperor of the West (375–83). At the death of his father, Valentinian I, he accepted the army's election of his brother, Valentinian II, as his colleague. ...

(Encyclopedia) Gallas, Matthias, Graf von mätēˈäs gräf fən gälˈäs [key], 1584–1647, imperial general in the Thirty Years War. He served under Tilly, commander of the Catholic League, in Germany until 1629...

(Encyclopedia) alien, in law, any person residing in one political community while owing allegiance to another. A procedure known as naturalization permits aliens to become citizens. Each nation establishes conditio...

(Encyclopedia) gambling or gaming, betting of money or valuables on, and often participation in, games of chance (some involving degrees of skill). In England and in the United States, gambling was not a common-law ...

(Encyclopedia) caste [Port., casta=basket], ranked groups based on heredity within rigid systems of social stratification, especially those that constitute Hindu India. Some scholars, in fact, deny that true caste s...