Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Garrick, David, 1717–79, English actor, manager, and dramatist. He was indisputably the greatest English actor of the 18th cent., and his friendships with Diderot, Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, ...

(Encyclopedia) anchor, device cast overboard to secure a ship, boat, or other floating object by means of weight, friction, or hooks called flukes. In ancient times an anchor was often merely a large stone, a bag or...

(Encyclopedia) go or i-go, a board game popular in Japan that probably originated in China or India as long ago as the third millennium b.c. The board is marked by a grid of 19 horizontal and 19 vertical lines to fo...

(Encyclopedia)  CE5 Relations between potential energy (PE) and kinetic energy (KE) for a swinging pendulum energy, in physics, the ability or capacity to do work or to produce change. Forms of energy include hea...

(Encyclopedia) Limerick, city (1991 pop. 56,083), seat of Co. Limerick, SW Republic of Ireland, at the head of the Shannon estuary. The city has a port with two docks. The primary imports are grain, timber, and coal...

(Encyclopedia) limestone, sedimentary rock wholly or in large part composed of calcium carbonate. It is ordinarily white but may be colored by impurities, iron oxide making it brown, yellow, or red and carbon making...

(Encyclopedia) obelisk ŏbˈəlĭsk [key], slender four-sided tapering monument, usually hewn of a single great piece of stone, terminating in a pointed or pyramidal top. Among the ancient Egyptians these monoliths ...

(Encyclopedia) National Road, U.S. highway built in the early 19th cent. At the time of its construction, the National Road was the most ambitious road-building project ever undertaken in the United States. It final...

(Encyclopedia) New Journalism, intensely subjective approach to journalistic writing prevalent in the United States during the 1960s and 70s, incorporating stylistic techniques associated with fiction in order to pr...

(Encyclopedia) pipe smoking. The habit of smoking various substances probably arose independently in different parts of the world. Herodotus in the 5th cent. b.c. describes the Scythians as inhaling the fumes of bur...