Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) plaster casting, as a sculpture process, is of three kinds. One employs a waste mold, another a piece mold (both plaster of paris), and the third a gelatin mold; all reproduce the original clay or wax...

(Encyclopedia) Fulton, city (2020 pop. 12,490), seat of Callaway co., central Mo., in an agricultural and farm area; inc. 1859. It has printing plants and factories th...

(Encyclopedia) Compromise of 1850. The annexation of Texas to the United States and the gain of new territory by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the close of the Mexican War (1848) aggravated the hostility betwee...

(Encyclopedia) Polk, James Knox pōk [key], 1795–1849, 11th President of the United States (1845–49), b. Mecklenburg co., N.C. To the surprise of many, the new President proved to be his own man; he even ignor...

(Encyclopedia) shooting, firing with rifle, shotgun, pistol, or revolver at stationary or moving targets. The term shooting is also used in Great Britain to mean small-game hunting. In the 19th cent. the sport of ri...

(Encyclopedia) silicon, nonmetallic chemical element; symbol Si; at. no. 14; interval in which at. wt. ranges 28.084–28.086; m.p. 1,410℃; b.p. 2,355℃; sp. gr. 2.33 at 25℃; valence usually +4. Silicon is the ...

(Encyclopedia) Lewiston. 1 City (1990 pop. 28,082), seat of Nez Perce co., NW Idaho, at the Wash. line and at the junction of the Snake and Clearwater rivers; founded 1861. It is the commercial and industrial center...

(Encyclopedia) Liberty party, in U.S. history, an antislavery political organization founded in 1840. It was formed by those abolitionists, under the leadership of James G. Birney and Gerrit Smith, who repudiated Wi...

(Encyclopedia) Perelman, Grigori Yakovlevich, 1966–, Russian mathematician. After doing graduate work in the late 1980s for his Candidate of Science degree from Leningrad State Univ. (now St. Petersburg State Univ...

(Encyclopedia) Black, Hugo LaFayette, 1886–1971, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1937–71), b. Harlan, Clay co., Ala. He received his law degree from the Univ. of Alabama in 1906. He practiced law an...