Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Berger, Victor Louis, 1860–1929, American Socialist leader and congressman, b. Austria-Hungary. After studying at the universities of Budapest and Vienna, he emigrated (1878) to the United States an...

(Encyclopedia) surfing, sport of gliding on a breaking wave. Surfers originally used long, cumbersome wooden boards but now ride lightweight synthetic boards that allow a greater degree of maneuverability. Boards ar...

(Encyclopedia) sweepstakes, contest or race, usually a horse race, on which a lottery is run. Prizes are awarded to the holders of winning tickets. In the case of a horse race, the draw is made from the names of all...

(Encyclopedia) psychokinesis, movement or deformation of a physical object by thought or willpower alone (i.e., without the application of physical force). Telekinesis (sometimes abbreviated TK), an older term for p...

(Encyclopedia) Gateway Arch National Park, 90.9 acres (36.8 hectares), St. Louis, Mo., est. 1935 as Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, designated a national park and renamed 2018. Located on the Mississippi, the...

(Encyclopedia) Gilman, Alfred Goodman, 1941–2015, American biochemist, b. New Haven, Conn., M.D., Ph.D. Case Western Reserve Univ., 1969. He taught at the Univ. of Virginia (1971–1981) before becoming a professo...

(Encyclopedia) Anderson, Jack (Jackson Northman Anderson), 1922–2005, American newspaper columnist, b. Long Beach, Calif. After serving as a Mormon missionary (1941–44) and a term as a war correspondent during 1...

(Encyclopedia) Grisham, John, 1955–, American novelist and lawyer, b. Jonesboro, Ark., B.S. Mississippi State Univ., 1977, J.D. Univ. of Mississippi School of Law, 1981. He practiced law for nearly a decade and se...

(Encyclopedia) limit, in mathematics, value approached by a sequence or a function as the index or independent variable approaches some value, possibly infinity. For example, the terms of the sequence 1⁄2, 1⁄4, ...

(Encyclopedia) pinochle pēˈnŭˌkəl [key], card game, probably derived from bezique, that was developed in the United States in the 19th cent. Pinochle is played by two, three, or four players, with a deck of 48 ...