Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Russian State Library (RSL), Russia's national library, located in Moscow; one of the world's largest libraries. Moscow's first public library, the RSL was founded in 1862 as the library portion of th...

(Encyclopedia) Raymond, c.1140–1187, count of Tripoli (1152–87), great-great-grandson of Raymond IV of Toulouse. He played a leading part in the last years of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Captured (1164) by t...

(Encyclopedia) Bastille băstēlˈ [key] [O.Fr.,=fortress], fortress and state prison in Paris, located, until its demolition (started in 1789), near the site of the present Place de la Bastille. It was begun c.1369...

(Encyclopedia) Gregory XII, c.1327–1417, pope (1406–15), a Venetian named Angelo Correr; successor of Innocent VII. As a condition of election, Gregory promised to do everything possible to end the Great Schism,...

(Encyclopedia) Griffith, Arthur, 1872–1922, Irish statesman, founder of Sinn Féin. He joined the nationalist movement as a young man. In 1899 he founded the United Irishman, in which he advocated that Irish membe...

(Encyclopedia) Costa del Sol kōˈstä ᵺĕl sōlˈ [key], a strip of coastline, S. Spain, in Andalusia, extending from Motril to Estepona The area has become famous as a Mediterranean coastal resort, and its touri...

(Encyclopedia) New England, name applied to the region comprising six states of the NE United States—Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. The region is thought to have been ...

(Encyclopedia) Pentecostalism, worldwide 20th–21st-century Christian movement that emphasizes the experience of Spirit baptism, generally evidenced by speaking in tongues (glossolalia). The name derives from Pente...

(Encyclopedia) Cheney, Dick (Richard Bruce Cheney) chēˈnē, chāˈ– [key], 1941–, Vice President of the United States (2001–9), b. Lincoln, Nebr. His family moved to Casper, Wyo., when he was 13, and he atte...

(Encyclopedia) folk song, music of anonymous composition, transmitted orally. The theory that folk songs were originally group compositions has been modified in recent studies. These assume that the germ of a folk m...