Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) West New York, town (1990 pop. 38,125), Hudson co., NE N.J., atop the Palisades across the Hudson River from New York City; settled 1790, inc. 1898. It is a residential town with some light industry, ...

(Encyclopedia) West Siberian Plain, an extensive region of continuous flatland, N Asia, comprising the western third of Siberia, Russia. It is bounded on the east by the Yenisei River, on the north by the Arctic Oce...

(Encyclopedia) West, Dame Rebecca, 1892–1983, English novelist and critic, b. Ireland as Cicily Isabel Fairfield. West began her career as a journalist for feminist and suffragist publications. At various times sh...

(Encyclopedia) West, Jessamyn, 1907–84, American novelist, b. Indiana. A Quaker herself, her most famous novel is The Friendly Persuasion (1945), about the conflicts felt by a Quaker farm family during the Civil W...

(Encyclopedia) Kemper, Reuben, d. 1827, American adventurer, b. Virginia. With his brothers Nathan and Samuel he settled c.1800 in Feliciana, just above Baton Rouge, in West Florida, then Spanish territory. Expelled...

(Encyclopedia) Newport, Christopher, 1565?–1617, English mariner, commander of early voyages to Virginia. He commanded a privateering expedition to the West Indies (1592) that returned to England with the Spanish ...

(Encyclopedia) West Orange, town (1990 pop. 39,103), Essex co., NE N.J., a residential suburb of Newark; set off from Orange 1862, inc. 1900. “Glenmont,” Thomas Edison's home in Llewellyn Park, and his laborator...

(Encyclopedia) West Yorkshire, former metropolitan county, N central England. Created in the 1974 local government reorganization, the county largely embraced the Leeds conurbation and comprised five metropolitan di...

(Encyclopedia) British West Africa, former inclusive term for the British colonies of Cameroons, Gambia, Gold Coast, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Togoland. ...

(Encyclopedia) West Indies Federation, former federation of 10 British West Indian territories formed in 1958. Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and Barbados were the principal members, but the federation included most ...