Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Hopkinson, Francis, 1737–91, American writer and musician, signer of the Declaration of Independence, b. Philadelphia. A practicing lawyer, Hopkinson was also an accomplished poet, essayist, and mus...

(Encyclopedia) Howard University, at Washington, D.C.; coeducational; with federal support. It was founded in 1867 by Gen. Oliver O. Howard of the Freedmen's Bureau, to provide education for newly emancipated slaves...

(Encyclopedia) Fiske, Minnie Maddern, 1865–1932, American actress, b. New Orleans. Born of a family of actors, she spent her childhood on the stage. In 1890 she married Harrison Grey Fiske, editor of the New York ...

(Encyclopedia) Five, The, name of a group of late 19th-century Russian composers. They were Balakirev, the leader, Cui, Moussorgsky, Borodin, and Rimsky-Korsakov. These men, united by a nationalistic fervor, tried t...

(Encyclopedia) Heraclitus hĕrəklīˈtəs [key], c.535–c.475 b.c., Greek philosopher of Ephesus, of noble birth. According to Heraclitus, there was no permanent reality except the reality of change; permanence wa...

(Encyclopedia) Kollwitz, Käthe Schmidt kāˈtə shmĭt kôlˈvĭts [key], 1867–1945, German graphic artist and sculptor. She first gained a reputation with her illustrations for Hauptmann's Weavers and Zola's Ger...

(Encyclopedia) Zoar zôr, zōˈər [key], village, Tuscarawas co., E central Ohio, on the Tuscarawas River; founded 1817, inc. 1884. It was founded by a group of Separatists from S Germany who fled religious persecu...

(Encyclopedia) Williston, Samuel Wendell, 1851–1918, American paleontologist and entomologist, b. Boston, grad. Kansas State Agricultural College (B.S., 1872) and Yale (M.D., 1880; Ph.D., 1885). He taught at Yale ...

(Encyclopedia) San Angelo săn ănˈjəlō [key], city (1990 pop. 84,474), seat of Tom Green co., W Tex., where two forks join to form the Concho River; laid out 1869, inc. 1903. It is an important wool and mohair m...

(Encyclopedia) Gadsden Purchase gădzˈdən [key], strip of land purchased (1853) by the United States from Mexico. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) had described the U.S.-Mexico boundary vaguely, and Presiden...