Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Valentine's Day: see Saint Valentine's Day. ...

(Encyclopedia) leap year: see calendar.

(Encyclopedia) holy year: see jubilee.

(Encyclopedia) New Caledonia, Fr. Nouvelle Calédonie, officially Territory of New Caledonia and Dependencies, internally self-governing dependency of France (2015 est. pop. 269,000), land area 7,241 sq mi (18,760 s...

(Encyclopedia) Labor Day, holiday celebrated in the United States and Canada on the first Monday in September to honor the laborer. It was inaugurated by the Knights of Labor in 1882 and made a national holiday by t...

(Encyclopedia) Five-Year Plan, Soviet economic practice of planning to augment agricultural and industrial output by designated quotas for a limited period of usually five years. Nations other than the former USSR a...

(Encyclopedia) midsummer day and midsummer night, names given to the feast of the nativity of St. John the Baptist (June 24) and the preceding night (St. John's Eve, June 23). Because midsummer is about the time of ...

(Encyclopedia) Year 2000 problem, Y2K problem, or millennium bug, in computer science, a design flaw in the hardware or software of a computer that caused erroneous results when working with dates beyond Dec. 31, 1...

(Encyclopedia) Fools, Feast of, burlesque religious festival of the Middle Ages. It occurred during the Christmas and New Year's revels, on or near New Year's Day. In many places a Lord of Misrule ruled over the rev...

(Encyclopedia) Geophysical Year, International: see International Geophysical Year. ...