Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) ghost town, term for any once flourishing American community that has been abandoned, generally for economic reasons. While most of the towns have little or no population, they often contain old build...

(Encyclopedia) Mason-Dixon Line, boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland (running between lat. 39°43′26.3″N and lat. 39°43′17.6″N), surveyed by the English team of Charles Mason, a mathematician and ast...

(Encyclopedia) McCulloch v. Maryland, case decided in 1819 by the U.S. Supreme Court, dealing specifically with the constitutionality of a Congress-chartered corporation, and more generally with the dispersion of po...

(Encyclopedia) Midland. 1 City (1990 pop. 38,053), seat of Midland co., central Mich., in the Saginaw valley at the confluence of the Tittabawassee and Chippewa rivers; inc. 1887. Midland owes its development after ...

(Encyclopedia) Carthage. <1> City (2020 pop. 15,522), seat of Jasper co., SW Mo., on the Spring River; inc. 1873. Its gray marble quarries are the largest of ...

(Encyclopedia) National Guard, U.S. militia. The militia is authorized by the Constitution of the United States, which also defines the militia's functions and the federal and state role. Article 1, Section 8 provid...

(Encyclopedia) Hughes, Charles Evans hyo͞oz [key], 1862–1948, American statesman and jurist, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1910–16), U.S. secretary of state (1921–25), and 11th chief justice of...

(Encyclopedia) Mary Washington College, mainly at Fredericksburg, Va.; state supported; chartered 1908 as the State Normal and Industrial School for Women; first given its present name in 1938; coeducational since 1...

(Encyclopedia) Boston, city (2020 pop. 692,600), state capital and seat of Suffolk co., E Mass., on Boston Bay, an arm of Massachusetts Bay; inc. 1822. The city includ...

(Encyclopedia) Shelby, Isaac, 1750–1826, American frontiersman, b. Washington co. (then part of Frederick co.), Md. Around 1773 he settled in the Holston River country in what is now E Tennessee. In the American R...