Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Swansea swŏnˈzē [key], town (1990 est. pop. 15,500), Bristol co., SE Mass., a suburb of Fall River, on an inlet of Mount Hope Bay; founded 1667, inc. 1785. Once a vast farmland, it has become chief...

(Encyclopedia) Van Vleck, John Hasbrouck, 1899–1980, American physicist, b. Middletown, Conn., Ph.D. Harvard, 1922. As a professor at Harvard, Van Vleck developed fundamental theories on the quantum mechanics of m...

(Encyclopedia) Santa Cruz, Álvaro de Bazán, marqués de älˈvärō ᵺā bäthänˈ märkāsˈ dā sänˈtä kro͞oth [key], 1526–88, Spanish admiral. He fought in various actions against the Ottomans and disti...

(Encyclopedia) Tacca, Pietro pyāˈtrō täkˈkä [key], 1577–1644, Italian sculptor. A pupil of Giovanni Bologna, Tacca adopted the tortuous poses of mannerism and combined them in his bronzes with a classical na...

(Encyclopedia) Edhessa vôᵺānäˈ [key], city, capital of Pella prefecture, N Greece, in Macedonia. It is a ...

(Encyclopedia) Day, John, 1574?–1640?, English dramatist. Educated at Cambridge, he was one of Philip Henslowe's group of playwrights, collaborating with Thomas Dekker, Henry Chettle, and others. The allegorical m...

(Encyclopedia) Marie de' Medici mĕdˈĭchē [key], 1573–1642, queen of France, second wife of King Henry IV and daughter of Francesco de' Medici, grand duke of Tuscany. She was married to Henry in 1600. After his...

(Encyclopedia) Maurice, 1521–53, duke (1541–47) and elector (1547–53) of Saxony. A member of the Albertine branch of the ruling house of Saxony, he became duke of Albertine Saxony during the Protestant Reforma...

(Encyclopedia) abdication, in a political sense, renunciation of high public office, usually by a monarch. Some abdications have been purely voluntary and resulted in no loss of prestige. For instance, Holy Roman Em...

(Encyclopedia) Ward, William George, 1812–82, English Roman Catholic apologist, educated at Oxford. He became (1834) a fellow at Balliol College, Oxford, and was ordained in the Church of England. At first a Broad...