Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) home rule, municipal, system adopted in many states of the United States by which a city is given the right to draft and amend its own charter and to regulate purely local matters without interference...

(Encyclopedia) Albright, Madeleine, 1937–2022, American government official, b. Prague, Czechoslovakia, as Maria Jana Körbel. Her family immigrated to the United States in 1948, and she attended Welle...

(Encyclopedia) Obasanjo, Olusegun ōlo͞oˈshĕgo͞on ōbāˈsănjō [key], 1937–, Nigerian military officer and political leader, b. Abeokuta. Obasanjo, who joined the army in 1958 and rose quickly to general, wa...

(Encyclopedia) Montevideo mŏntāvēᵺāˈō [key], city (1996 pop. 1,330,405), S Uruguay, capital and largest city of Uruguay, on the Río de La Plata. It is one of the major ports of South America and the governm...

(Encyclopedia) United Irishmen or United Irish Society, Irish political organization. It was founded at Belfast in 1791 by Theobald Wolfe Tone. Disgruntled by the use of English patronage to control Irish politics, ...

(Encyclopedia) Cartier, Sir Georges Étienne zhôrzh ātyĕnˈ kärtyāˈ [key], 1814–73, Canadian statesman, b. Quebec prov. He was called to the bar of Lower Canada (Quebec) in 1835. He took part in the rebellio...

(Encyclopedia) Shays's Rebellion, 1786–87, armed insurrection by farmers in W Massachusetts against the state government. Debt-ridden farmers, struck by the economic depression that followed the American Revolutio...

(Encyclopedia) cabildo käbēlˈdō [key], autonomous municipal council, the lowest administrative unit in the Spanish government. The institution was especially influential in Spanish America, where it was set up i...

(Encyclopedia) Americanization, term used to describe the movement during the first quarter of the 20th cent. whereby the immigrant in the United States was induced to assimilate American speech, ideals, traditions,...

(Encyclopedia) Hassan II häˈsän [key], 1929–99, king of Morocco (1961–99). Formerly crown prince Moulay Hassan ben Mohammed Alaoui, he ascended the throne on the death (1961) of his father, Muhammad V. A grad...