Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Trojan War, in Greek mythology, war between the Greeks and the people of Troy. The strife began after the Trojan prince Paris abducted Helen, wife of Menelaus of Sparta. When Menelaus demanded her ret...

(Encyclopedia) gneiss nīs [key], coarse-grained, imperfectly foliated, or layered, metamorphic rock. Gneiss is characterized by alternating light and dark bands differing in mineral composition and having coarser g...

(Encyclopedia) hoof, horny epidermal casing at the end of the digits of an ungulate (hoofed) mammal. In the even-toed ungulates, such as swine, deer, and cattle, the hoof is cloven; in the odd-toed ungulates, such a...

(Encyclopedia) Wayland Smith, in English folklore, a skillful blacksmith and great armor maker, whose forge was near the White Horse (Oxfordshire). He appears in the Old English Beowulf and Deor and in Sir Walter Sc...

(Encyclopedia) Pardubice pärˈdo͝obĭtsĕ [key], Ger. Pardubitz, city (1991 pop. 94,636), N central Czech Republic, in Bohemia, on the Elbe River. Its chief economic activities are engineering, oil refining and su...

(Encyclopedia) Turpin, Dick, 1706–39, English robber. After a short and brutal career of horse stealing and general crime he was hanged at York. The fame—or notoriety—that he later achieved derives mainly from...

(Encyclopedia) Bucephalus byo͞osĕˈfələs [key], favorite horse of Alexander the Great. There are legends of his speed and the wondrous deeds that Alexander performed while riding him. He died in 326 b.c. after t...

(Encyclopedia) Peebles, Phillip James Edwin, 1935–, Canadian-American astrophysicist and cosmologist, b. Winnipeg, Man., Ph.D. Princeton, 1962. He spent his entire career as a researcher at Princeton, becoming a f...

(Encyclopedia) Rock Hill, city (1990 pop. 41,643), York co., N S.C.; inc. 1870. An important textile center, it also has industries producing paper, glass, metal products, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, textiles, and f...

(Encyclopedia) Sewell, Anna so͞oˈəl [key], 1820–78, English author. Her only work, Black Beauty (1877), the story of a horse, became a children's classic and has gone into many reprints. Her mother, Mary Wright...