Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) tuberculosis (TB), contagious, wasting disease caused by any of several mycobacteria. The most common form of the disease is tuberculosis of the lungs (pulmonary consumption, or phthisis), but the int...

(Encyclopedia)  CE5 Hand telephone telephone, device for communicating sound, especially speech, usually by means of wires in an electric circuit. The telephones now in general use evolved from the device invente...

(Encyclopedia) salmon sămˈən [key], member of the Salmonidae, a family of marine fish that spawn in freshwater, including the salmons, the trouts, and the chars (subfamily Salmoninae), the whitefish and the cisco...

(Encyclopedia) Germanic languages, subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages, spoken by about 470 million people in many parts of the world, but chiefly in Europe and the Western Hemisphere. All the modern ...

(Encyclopedia)  CE5 Washington, state in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. It is bordered by Idaho (E); Oregon, with the Columbia River marking much of the boundary (S); the Pacific Ocean (W); and the Ca...

(Encyclopedia)  CE5 Ohio, midwestern state in the Great Lakes region of the United States. It is bordered by Pennsylvania (NE), West Virginia (SE) and Kentucky (S) across the Ohio River, Indiana (W), and Michigan ...

(Encyclopedia) Stalin, Joseph Vissarionovich stäˈlĭn, Rus. vĭsəryôˈnəvĭch stäˈlyĭn [key], 1879–1953, Soviet Communist leader and head of the USSR from the death of V. I. Lenin (1924) until his own deat...

(Encyclopedia) liberalism, philosophy or movement that has as its aim the development of individual freedom. Because the concepts of liberty or freedom change in different historical periods the specific programs of...

(Encyclopedia) book. The word book has come to have many meanings, e.g., any collection of sheets of paper, wood, or other material sewn or bound together; a division of a written work (books of the Bible, books of ...

(Encyclopedia) air forces, those portions of a nation's military organization employing heavier-than-air aircraft for reconnaissance, support of ground troops, aerial combat, and bombing of enemy lines of communicat...