Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia)  Ward, Douglas Turner, 1930-2021, African-American actor, director, and playwright, b. Burnside, La., as Roosevelt Ward Jr. Ward’s family ...

(Encyclopedia) white dwarf, in astronomy, a type of star that is abnormally faint for its white-hot temperature (see mass-luminosity relation). Typically, a white dwarf star has the mass of the sun and the radius of...

(Encyclopedia) Sayles, John (John Thomas Sayles), 1950–, one of America's most influential independent filmmakers as well as a screenwriter, fiction writer, playwright, and actor, b. Schenectady, N.Y., grad. Willi...

(Encyclopedia) Poitier, Sir Sidney, 1927–2022, Bahamian-American actor, b. Miami, raised in the Bahamas, returned to the United States at 14. Poitier served in the 1...

(Encyclopedia) Burchfield, Charles (Charles Ephraim Burchfield), 1893–1967, American painter, b. Ashtabula Harbor, Ohio, studied Cleveland School of Art. Living at first in Ohio, then moving (1921) to upstate New ...

(Encyclopedia) Grateful Dead, The, American rock music group formed in 1965 by guitarists Jerry Garcia, 1942–95, and Bob Weir, 1947–, harmonica player Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, 1945–73, bassist Phil Lesh, 194...

(Encyclopedia) helium hēˈlēəm [key], gaseous chemical element; symbol He; at. no. 2; at. wt. 4.0026; m.p. below −272℃ at 26 atmospheres pressure; b.p. −268.934℃ at 1 atmosphere pressure; density 0.1785 g...

(Encyclopedia) supernova, a massive star in the latter stages of stellar evolution that suddenly contracts and then explodes, increasing its energy output as much as a billionfold. Supernovas are the principal distr...

(Encyclopedia) Natchez năchˈĭz [key], indigenous North American people who lived along St. Catherine's Creek east of the present-day city of Natchez in Mississippi. At the time of contact with the French in 1682,...

(Encyclopedia) Northern Expedition, in modern Chinese history, the military campaign by which the Kuomintang party overthrew the warlord-backed Beijing government and established a new government at Nanjing. At the ...