Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Tallapoosa, river, 268 mi (431 km) long, rising in NW Ga. and flowing SW through E Ala.; joins the Coosa River near Montgomery, Ala., to form the Alabama River. Martin, Thurlow, and Yates dams provide...

(Encyclopedia) Hartmann von Aue härtˈmän fən ouˈə [key], c.1170–c.1220, German poet whose name is also spelled von Ouwe. His chivalric romances Erec and Iwain are tales of Arthurian legend. Other works inclu...

(Encyclopedia) hertz hûrts [key] [for Heinrich R. Hertz], abbr. Hz, unit of frequency, equal to 1 cycle per second. The term is combined with metric prefixes to denote multiple units such as the kilohertz (1,000 Hz...

(Encyclopedia) Rose, Gustav go͝osˈtäf rōˈzə [key], 1798–1873, German mineralogist. He served as professor at the Univ. of Berlin from 1839. Noted especially as a crystallographer, he advanced the scientific ...

(Encyclopedia) Hernández, José hōsāˈ ārnänˈdĕs [key], 1834–86, Argentine poet, journalist, and soldier. Hernández lived in the pampas as a child. He was the author of the national classic of gaucho liter...

(Encyclopedia) cerium sērˈēəm [key] [from the asteroid Ceres], metallic chemical element; symbol Ce; at. no. 58; at. wt. 140.116; m.p. 799℃; b.p. 3,426℃; sp. gr. 6.77 at 25℃; valence +3 or +4. Cerium is a ...

(Encyclopedia) Lorelei lôrˈəlī, Ger. lōˈrəlī [key], cliff, 433 ft (132 m) high, on the right bank of the Rhine River, near St. Goarshausen, W Germany, about midway between Koblenz and Bingen. There the Rhine...

(Encyclopedia) Neruda, Jan yän nĕˈro͝odä [key], 1834–91, Czech essayist and poet, b. Prague. His popular Stories from Malá Strana (1878), tales drawn from his childhood in Prague and satiric portraits of mem...

(Encyclopedia) Tiryns tīˈrĭnz [key], ancient city of Greece, in the NE Peloponnesus, 2.5 mi (4 km) N of Nauplia (now Návplion) and near Argos. The site seems to have been inhabited since the 3d millennium b.c. I...

(Encyclopedia) King, Coretta Scott, 1927–2006, American civil-rights leader, b. Heiberger, Ala.; the wife (1953–68) of Martin Luther King, Jr. After her husband's assassination, she carried on his civil-rights w...