Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Fort Bliss, U.S. army post, 1,122,500 acres (454,300 hectares), W Tex., E of El Paso; est. 1849 and named for Col. William Bliss, Gen. Zachary Taylor's adjutant in the Mexican War. Originally strategi...

(Encyclopedia) Johnson, Lady Bird, 1912–2007, b. Karnack, Tex., as Claudia Alta Taylor. She married (1934) Lyndon B. Johnson and played an active role in his political career. As first lady (1963–69), she was th...

(Encyclopedia) Worth, William Jenkins, 1794–1849, American army officer, b. Hudson, N.Y. He served with distinction on the Niagara frontier in the War of 1812 and later became commandant of cadets and instructor o...

(Encyclopedia) Davis, Jefferson, 1808–89, American statesman, President of the Southern Confederacy, b. Fairview, near Elkton, Ky. His birthday was June 3. Davis took little part in the secession movement until ...

(Encyclopedia) parallel processing, the concurrent or simultaneous execution of two or more parts of a single computer program, at speeds far exceeding those of a conventional computer. Parallel processing requires ...

(Encyclopedia) Dresser, Christopher, 1834–1904, British designer, pioneer of modern industrial design, b. Scotland, He moved (1847) to London, where he studied (1847–54) at the Government School of Design. He be...

(Encyclopedia) Carlotta, Span. Carlota kärlōˈtä [key], 1840–1927, empress of Mexico, daughter of Leopold I of Belgium, christened Marie Charlotte Amélie. She married (1857) Maximilian, archduke of Austria and...

(Encyclopedia) Hunkers, conservative faction of the Democratic party in New York state in the 1840s, so named because they were supposed to “hanker” or “hunker” after office. In opposition to them stood the ...

(Encyclopedia) Fields, W. C. (William Claude Fields), 1880–1946, American comic actor, b. Philadelphia as Claude William Dukenfield. He began his career as a juggler, and much later appeared in the Ziegfeld Follie...

(Encyclopedia) Proclus prōˈkləs [key], 410?–485, Neoplatonic philosopher, b. Constantinople. He studied at Alexandria and at Athens, where he was a pupil of the Platonist Syrianus, whom he succeeded as a teache...