Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) poker, card game, believed to have originated in Asia and first played in the United States in the 19th cent. A traditional cutthroat gambling game at first, it is now also an internationally popular ...

(Encyclopedia) wood carving, as an art form, includes any kind of sculpture in wood, from the decorative bas-relief on small objects to life-size figures in the round, furniture, and architectural decorations. The w...

(Encyclopedia) National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), organization composed mainly of American blacks, but with many white members, whose goal is the end of racial discrimination and seg...

(Encyclopedia)  CE5 soccer, outdoor ball and goal game, also called association football or simply football. The first recorded game probably was that on a Shrove Tuesday in Derby, England, part of a festival to c...

(Encyclopedia)  CE5 Yukon, territory (2001 pop. 28,674), 207,076 sq mi (536,327 sq km), NW Canada. The territory's history began with the explorations in the 1840s of Robert Campbell and John Bell, fur traders f...

(Encyclopedia) Whitman, Walt (Walter Whitman), 1819–92, American poet, b. West Hills, N.Y. Considered by many to be the greatest of all American poets, Walt Whitman celebrated the freedom and dignity of the indivi...

(Encyclopedia) euthanasia yo͞oˌthənāˈzhə [key], either painlessly putting to death or failing to prevent death from natural causes in cases of terminal illness or irreversible coma. The term comes from the Gre...

(Encyclopedia) machine, arrangement of moving and stationary mechanical parts used to perform some useful work or to provide transportation. From a historical perspective, many of the first machines were the result ...

(Encyclopedia) Byron, George Gordon Noel Byron, 6th Baron bīˈrən [key], 1788–1824, English poet and satirist. Ranked with Shelley and Keats as one of the great Romantic poets, Byron became famous throughout E...

(Encyclopedia) Henry VI, 1421–71, king of England (1422–61, 1470–71). Henry was a mild, honest, and pious man, a patron of literature and the arts and the founder of Eton College (1440). He was, however, u...