Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) demography dĭmŏgˈrəfē [key], science of human population. Demography represents a fundamental approach to the understanding of human society. Its primary tasks are to ascertain the number of peop...

(Encyclopedia) Foppa, Vincenzo vēnchĕnˈtsō fôpˈpä [key], c.1427–c.1515, Italian painter. Giving new life to the art of the Lombard school, he exercised a great influence upon northern Italian art until the ...

(Encyclopedia) Hampton Roads Peace Conference, meeting held on Feb. 3, 1865, on board the Union transport River Queen in Hampton Roads, Va., with the object of ending the Civil War. President Lincoln and Secretary o...

(Encyclopedia) Sandys, George, 1578–1644, English poet and traveler, b. Yorkshire, son of Archbishop Edwin Sandys. He was educated at Oxford and in 1610 began an extended tour of Europe and the Middle East, which ...

(Encyclopedia) Brown, Joseph Emerson, 1821–94, U.S. public official, b. Pickens District, S.C. As governor of Georgia during the Civil War, Brown quarreled with Jefferson Davis over conscription and the suspension...

(Encyclopedia) Glyndebourne Festival glīnˈdəbərn, glīnˈbôrn [key], opera festival given each summer since 1934 on the estate of John Christie at Glyndebourne, near Lewes, Sussex, England. The festival is know...

(Encyclopedia)  Jarrett, Keith , 1945- , American jazz pianist and composer, b. Allentown, Pa. A child prodigy on the piano, Jarrett was exposed to contemporary jazz d...

(Encyclopedia) Neutral Nation, group of Native North American tribes of the Iroquoian branch of the Hokan-Siouan linguistic stock (see Native American languages). In the early 17th cent. they occupied the territory ...

(Encyclopedia) Mitchell, Maria, 1818–89, American astronomer and educator, b. Nantucket, Mass. Mitchell taught school in Nantucket, and later became a librarian. On Oct. 1, 1847, Mitchell discovered a comet (1847 ...

(Encyclopedia) Bonus Marchers, in U.S. history, more than 20,000 veterans, most of them unemployed and in desperate financial straits, who, in the spring of 1932, spontaneously made their way to Washington, D.C. The...