Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Haywood, William Dudley, 1869–1928, American labor leader, known as Big Bill Haywood, b. Salt Lake City, Utah. He began work as a miner at 15 years of age. In 1896 he joined the newly organized West...

(Encyclopedia) Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali zo͝olˈfĭkär älēˈ bo͞otˈtō [key], 1928–79, Pakistani political leader. Member of a wealthy landowning family, he entered politics as the protégé of General Ayub Khan....

(Encyclopedia) Andersen, Hans Christian, 1805–75, Danish poet, novelist, and writer of fairy tales. Born to an illiterate washerwoman and reared in poverty, he left Odense at 14 for Copenhagen, where he lived with...

(Encyclopedia) Welles, Orson, 1915–85, American actor, director, and producer, b. Kenosha, Wis. From childhood he evinced a precocious talent and lofty sense of self-assurance in theatrical matters. He began actin...

(Encyclopedia) Washington, Booker Taliaferro, 1856–1915, American educator, b. Franklin co., Va. Washington was born into slavery; his mother was a mulatto slave on a plantation, his father a white man whom he nev...

(Encyclopedia) Brown, John, 1800–1859, American abolitionist, b. Torrington, Conn. He spent his boyhood in Ohio. Before he became prominent in the 1850s, his life ha...

(Encyclopedia) Lawrence, T. E. (Thomas Edward Lawrence), 1888–1935, British adventurer, soldier, and scholar, known as Lawrence of Arabia. While a student at Oxford he went on a walking tour of Syria and in 1911 j...

(Encyclopedia) Sherman, William Tecumseh, 1820–91, Union general in the American Civil War, b. Lancaster, Ohio. Sherman is said by many to be the greatest of the Civil War generals. Sherman was promoted to lie...

(Encyclopedia) Minoan civilization mĭnōˈən [key], ancient Cretan culture representing a stage in the development of the Aegean civilization. It was named for the legendary King Minos of Crete by Sir Arthur Evans...

(Encyclopedia) nonlinear dynamics, study of systems governed by equations in which a small change in one variable can induce a large systematic change; the discipline is more popularly known as chaos (see chaos theo...