Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) reggae, Jamaican popular music that developed in the 1960s among Kingston's poor blacks, drawing on American “soul” music and traditional African and Jamaican folk music and ska (a Jamaican and Br...

(Encyclopedia) Brown, Robert, 1773–1858, Scottish botanist and botanical explorer. In 1801 he went as a naturalist on one of Matthew Flinders's expeditions to Australia, returning (1805) to England with valuable c...

(Encyclopedia) Gauck, Joachim, 1940–, German political and human-rights activist, president of Germany (2012–17), b. Rostock. An anticommunist from his youth, Gauck was ordained a Lutheran minister and was pasto...

(Encyclopedia) Fanning, Edmund, 1739–1818, American Loyalist in the American Revolution, b. Suffolk co., Long Island, N.Y. He moved to North Carolina, practiced law, held minor political posts, and supported the r...

(Encyclopedia) landslide, rapid slipping of a mass of earth or rock from a higher elevation to a lower level under the influence of gravity and water lubrication. More specifically, rockslides are the rapid downhill...

(Encyclopedia) Meir, Golda māērˈ [key], 1898–1978, Israeli political leader, b. Kiev, Russia, originally named Golda Mabovitch. Her family emigrated to the United States in 1906, settling in Milwaukee. She beca...

(Encyclopedia) Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 1815–1902, American reformer, a leader of the woman-suffrage movement, b. Johnstown, N.Y. She was educated at the Troy Female Seminary (now Emma Willard School) in Troy, N.Y...

(Encyclopedia) Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), former independent agency of the U.S. government, established in 1887; it was charged with regulating the economics and services of specified carriers engaged in ...

(Encyclopedia) cruelty, prevention of. In the 19th cent. many laws were passed in Great Britain and the United States to protect the helpless, especially children, lunatics, and domestic animals, from willful and ma...

(Encyclopedia) suite swēt [key], in music, instrumental form derived from dance and consisting of a series of movements usually in the same key but contrasting in rhythm and mood. The principle of the suite can be ...