Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Compromise of 1850. The annexation of Texas to the United States and the gain of new territory by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the close of the Mexican War (1848) aggravated the hostility betwee...

(Encyclopedia) Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, philanthropic institution founded in 1994 by Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, to improve the lives of the poor throughout the world, primarily th...

(Encyclopedia) Fourteenth Amendment, addition to the U.S. Constitution, adopted 1868. The amendment comprises five sections. Section 2 provides for apportionment of membership in the House of Representatives on th...

(Encyclopedia) standard of living, level of consumption that an individual, group, or nation has achieved. The evaluation of a standard of living is relative, depending upon the judgment of the observer as to what c...

(Encyclopedia) Ghose, Chinmoy gōsh [key], 1931–, Indian mystic and poet. Orphaned at the age of 12, he went to live at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in S India, where he stayed for the next 20 years, practicing spiri...

(Encyclopedia) Neusner, Jacob, 1932–2016, American scholar and historian of Judaism, b. West Hartford, Conn, B.A. Harvard, 1953, M.A. Jewish Theological Seminary, 1960), Ph.D. Columbia, 1960. Regarded as the world...

(Encyclopedia) Brigham Young University, at Provo, Utah; Latter-Day Saints; coeducational; opened as an academy in 1875 and became a university in 1903. It is noted for its law and business schools. The Charles Redd...

(Encyclopedia) husband and wife, the legal aspects of the married state (for the sociological aspects, see marriage). The former Anglo-American law of marriage was chiefly characterized by the view that husband an...

(Encyclopedia) mountain, high land mass projecting conspicuously above its surroundings and usually of limited width at its summit. Although isolated mountains are not unusual, mountains commonly form ranges, compri...

(Encyclopedia) Nauvoo nôvo͞oˈ [key], historic city (1990 pop. 1,108), Hancock co., W Ill., on heights overlooking the Mississippi River; inc. 1841. Situated in an agricultural area where fruit, corn, and soybeans...