Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia)  Plummer, Christopher (Arthur Christopher Orme), 1929-2021, Canadian-American actor, b. Toronto, Canada. Raised by his mother, Plummer first aspire...

(Encyclopedia) Pompadour, Jeanne Antoinette Poisson Le Normant d'Étioles, marquise de pŏmˈpədôr, Fr. zhän äNtwänĕtˈ pwäsôNˈ lə nôrmäNˈ dātyôlˈ märkēzˈ də pôNpädo͞orˈ [key], 1721–64, mis...

(Encyclopedia) Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns Eliot), 1888–1965, American-British poet and critic, b. St. Louis, Mo. One of the most distinguished literary figures of the 20th cent., T. S. Eliot won the 1948 Nobel P...

(Encyclopedia) Weed, Thurlow thûrˈlō [key], 1797–1882, American journalist and political leader, b. Cairo, N.Y. After working on various newspapers in W New York, Weed joined the Rochester Telegraph and was inf...

(Encyclopedia) My Lai incident mē lī [key], a massacre of Vietnamese civilians by U.S. soldiers in the Vietnam War. On Mar. 16, 1968, a unit of the U.S. army's Americal division, led by Lt. William L. Calley, inva...

(Encyclopedia) Ungaretti, Giuseppe jo͞ozĕpˈpā o͞ongärĕtˈtē [key], 1888–1970, Italian poet, critic, and translator, b. Alexandria, Egypt. Ungaretti spent his youth in North Africa, where he was greatly inf...

(Encyclopedia) Wells-Barnett, Ida Bell, 1862–1931, African-American civil-rights advocate and feminist, b. Holly Springs, Miss. Born a slave, she attended a freedman's school and was orphaned at 16. She moved (188...

(Encyclopedia) Anderson, Sherwood, 1876–1941, American novelist and short-story writer, b. Camden, Ohio. After serving briefly in the Spanish-American War, he became a successful advertising man and later a manage...

(Encyclopedia) Hill, James Jerome, 1838–1916, American railroad builder, b. Ontario, Canada. He went to St. Paul, Minn., in 1856. He became a partner of Norman Kittson in a steamboat line and, with Kittson, Donald...

(Encyclopedia) African music, the music of the indigenous peoples of Africa. Sub-Saharan African music has as its distinguishing feature a rhythmic complexity common to no other region. Polyrhythmic counterpoint, wh...