Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Everglades, marshy, low-lying subtropical savanna area, c.4,000 sq mi (10,000 sq km), S Fla., extending from Lake Okeechobee S to Florida Bay. Characterized by water, sawgrass, hammocks (islandlike ma...

(Encyclopedia) Jackson, Stonewall (Thomas Jonathan Jackson), 1824–63, Confederate general, b. Clarksburg, Va. (now W.Va.), grad. West Point, 1846. With the diversion in the Shenandoah Valley a complete success...

(Encyclopedia) neutrality, in international law, status of a nation that refrains from participation in a war between other states and maintains an impartial attitude toward the belligerents. Neutrality is not to be...

(Encyclopedia) Masaryk, Thomas Garrigue gərēgˈ [key], 1850–1937, Czechoslovak political leader and philosopher, first president and chief founder of Czechoslovakia. He is revered by most Czechs and was internat...

(Encyclopedia) Bolaño, Roberto bōlänˈyō [key], 1953–2003, Chilean novelist widely regarded as the most influential Spanish-language writer of his generation. He led a peripatetic life, and his fictional prota...

(Encyclopedia) cricket, ball-and-bat game played chiefly in Great Britain and the Commonwealth countries. In the early 21st cent., Twenty20, a new version of cricket with a much faster, more compressed format, eme...

(Encyclopedia) Joan of Arc, Fr. Jeanne D'Arc (zhän därk), 1412?–31, French saint and national heroine, called the Maid of Orléans; daughter of a farmer of Domrémy on the border of Champagne and Lorraine. In...

(Encyclopedia) sonata sənäˈtə [key], in music, type of instrumental composition that arose in Italy in the 17th cent. At first the term merely distinguished an instrumental piece from a piece with voice, which w...

(Encyclopedia) Emancipation Proclamation, in U.S. history, the executive order abolishing slavery in the Confederate States of America. The proclamation did not reflect Lincoln's desired solution for the slavery p...

(Encyclopedia) Melville, Herman, 1819–91, American author, b. New York City, considered one of the great American writers and a major figure in world literature. Like Moby-Dick, Pierre; or, The Ambiguities (18...