Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Robinson, John, 1576?–1625, English nonconformist pastor of the Pilgrim Fathers in Holland. In 1592 he entered Cambridge; in 1597 he received a fellowship and was ordained. Soon thereafter he became...

(Encyclopedia) Fukuyama, Francis, 1952–, American political scientist, b. Chicago, grad. Cornell (B.A., 1974), Harvard (Ph.D., 1981). He has been a political scientist at the RAND Corporation (1979–80, 1983–89...

(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) Ambarvalia ămbərvālˈyə [key], in Roman religion, yearly agricultural rite held at the end of May. To insure fertility and disperse evil, each farmer led members of his household and a sacrificial...

(Encyclopedia) Emba ĕmˈbə [key], river, c.400 mi (640 km) long, W Kazakhstan. It rises in the Mugodzhar Mts. and flows SW into the Caspian Sea. The lower course traverses an area of salt domes and the petroleum-r...

(Encyclopedia) Adams, John Quincy, 1767–1848, 6th President of the United States (1825–29), b. Quincy (then in Braintree), Mass.; son of John Adams and Abigail Adams and father of Charles Francis Adams (1807–8...

(Encyclopedia) oil industry, the business of discovering oil (petroleum), extracting it from the ground, refining it into a variety of products, and distributing it to the public. The development of the oil industry...

(Encyclopedia) Baraka, Amiri amērē bəräˈkə [key], 1934–2014, American poet, playwright, and political activist, b. Newark, N.J., as Everett LeRoy Jones, studied at Rutgers Univ., Howard Univ. In college he a...

(Encyclopedia) machine translation, in computational linguistics, publishing, and other fields, the use of computers to conduct large-scale translation operations. The electronic translation of one language into ano...

(Encyclopedia) Fisher, Andrew, 1862–1928, Australian statesman. He emigrated from Scotland to Australia in 1885, helped organize the Australian Labor party, and served three times as Labor prime minister of Austra...