Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Great Depression, in U.S. history, the severe economic crisis generally considered to have been precipitated by the U.S. stock-market crash of 1929. Although it shared the basic characteristics of oth...

(Encyclopedia) horehound, aromatic Old World perennial herb (Marrubium vulgare) of the family Labiatae (mint family), naturalized in North America. It has woolly white foliage and tiny white clustered flowers and is...

(Encyclopedia) pyroxene pīˈrŏksēn [key], name given to members of a group of widely distributed rock minerals called metasilicates in which magnesium, iron, and calcium, often with aluminum, sodium, lithium, man...

(Encyclopedia) Bahr el Jebel bäˈhər ĕl jĕbˈĕl [key], river, 594 mi (956 km) long, section of the White Nile, central South Sudan, Africa. The name is usually used for the White Nile between Nimule, where it e...

(Encyclopedia) Spotted swine, breed that is predominantly black with many white spots. Except for its additional white coloring, it is much like the Poland China swine, which together with Gloucester Old Spot hogs f...

(Encyclopedia) Thomas, Helen Amelia, 1920–2013, American journalist, b. Winchester, Ky., grad Wayne State Univ. (B.A., 1942). The daughter of Lebanese immigrants, she was a pioneering woman journalist in an era do...

(Encyclopedia) Ginsberg, Allen gĭnzˈbûrg [key], 1926–97, American poet, b. Paterson, N.J., grad. Columbia, 1949. An outspoken member of the beat generation, Ginsberg is best known for Howl (1956), a long poem a...

(Encyclopedia) navy, originally, all ships of a nation, whether for war or commerce; the term navy now designates only such vessels as are built and maintained specifically for war. There have been three major devel...

(Encyclopedia) Carlyle, Jane Baillie Welsh, 1801–66, English woman of letters; wife of Thomas Carlyle, whom she married in 1826. She possessed a genius for letter writing, manifest in the volumes of her published ...

(Encyclopedia) Madhyamika mädyŭˈmĭkə [key] [Skt.,=of the middle], philosophical school of Mahayana Buddhism, based on the teaching of “emptiness” (see sunyata) and named for its adherence to the “middle p...