Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Cotton Belt, former agricultural region of the SE United States where cotton was the main cash crop throughout the 19th and much of the 20th cent. Located on the Atlantic and Gulf coastal plains and o...

(Encyclopedia) Philadelphia, city (2020 pop. 1,603,797), coextensive with Philadelphia co., SE Pa., on the Delaware River c.100 mi (160 km) upstream at the influx of t...

(Encyclopedia) San Jose sănəzāˈ, săn hōzāˈ [key], city (1990 pop. 782,248), seat of Santa Clara co., W central Calif.; founded 1777, inc. 1850. Along with San Francisco and Oakland the city comprises the fou...

(Encyclopedia) Willard, Emma, 1787–1870, American educator, pioneer in woman's education, b. Emma Hart in Berlin, Conn. She attended and later taught in the local academy and in 1807 took charge of the Female Acad...

(Encyclopedia) folk high school, type of adult education that in its most widely known form originated in Denmark in the middle of the 19th cent. The idea as originally conceived by Bishop Nikolai Grundtvig was to s...

(Encyclopedia) local government, political administration of the smallest subdivisions of a country's territory and population. The British system of local government, which has been the model for most of that cou...

(Encyclopedia) Kansas-Nebraska Act, bill that became law on May 30, 1854, by which the U.S. Congress established the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. By 1854 the organization of the vast Platte and Kansas river c...

(Encyclopedia) Lease, Mary Elizabeth, 1853–1933, American agrarian reformer and temperance advocate, b. Ridgeway, Pa. The daughter of an Irish political refugee, she first gained recognition for a series of lectur...

(Encyclopedia) ocher ōˈkər [key], mixture of varying proportions of iron oxide and clay, used as a pigment. It occurs naturally as yellow ocher (yellow or yellow-brown in color), the iron oxide being limonite, or...

(Encyclopedia) United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference: see Bretton Woods Conference. ...