Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) torpedo boat, small fast warship built specially for using the torpedo as a means of attack. The first modern torpedo boat was the Lightning, built for the British navy in 1877 by the shipyards of Sir...

(Encyclopedia) Yiddish language yĭdˈĭsh [key], a member of the West Germanic group of the Germanic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Germanic languages; German language). Although it is not ...

(Encyclopedia) Maxwell, William Keepers, Jr., 1908–2000, American novelist, short-story writer, and editor, b. Lincoln, Ill. Educated at the Univ. of Illinois and Harvard, he began his career as a teacher, but soo...

(Encyclopedia) Wilkes-Barre wĭlks-bârˈē [key], city (1990 pop. 47,523), seat of Luzerne co., E Pa., on the east bank of the Susquehanna River; settled 1769, inc. as a city 1871. Once a major anthracite coal cent...

(Encyclopedia) Halifax, Charles Montagu, earl of hălˈəfăks [key], 1661–1715, English statesman. He and Matthew Prior were coauthors of a parody of John Dryden's The Hind and the Panther, entitled The Town and ...

(Encyclopedia) Hebron, Arab. Al-Khalil, city (2003 est. pop. 155,000), the West Bank. Hebron is situated at an altitude of 3,000 ft (910 m) in a region where grapes, cereal grains, and vegetables are grown. Tanning,...

(Encyclopedia) Caesar, Sid (Isaac Sidney Caesar), 1922–2014, American comedian, one of the stars of the “golden age of live television,” b. Yonkers, N.Y. While performing in a World War II military show he met...

(Encyclopedia) Spectator, English daily periodical published jointly by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele with occasional contributions from other writers. It succeeded the Tatler, a periodical begun by Steele on Ap...

(Encyclopedia) Halley, Edmond hălˈē, hôˈlē [key], 1656–1742, English astronomer and mathematician. He is particularly noted as the first astronomer to predict the return of a comet and the first to point out...

(Encyclopedia) calculus of variations, branch of mathematics concerned with finding maximum or minimum conditions for a relationship between two or more variables that depends not only on the variables themselves, a...