Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) securities trading, financial activity involving transactions of property such as stocks, bonds, commodities, and currency (see securities). Although the trading of stocks and bonds dates back several...

(Encyclopedia) history, in its broadest sense, is the story of humanity's past. It also refers to the recording of that past. The diverse sources of history include books, newspapers, printed documents, personal pap...

(Encyclopedia) Campbell kămˈbəl [key], Scottish noble family, the head of which is the duke of Argyll. The Campbells of Lochow (Lochawe) rose to power in W Scotland in the later Middle Ages. In 1445, Sir Duncan C...

(Encyclopedia) Santayana, George säntäyäˈnä [key], 1863–1952, American philosopher and poet, b. Madrid, Spain. Santayana's philosophic stance has been given the apparently opposite descriptions of materiali...

(Encyclopedia) scarab beetle or scarab, name for members of a large family of heavy-bodied, oval beetles (the Scarabaeidae), with about 30,000 species distributed throughout most of the world and over 1,200 in North...

(Encyclopedia) Alzheimer's disease ălsˈhīˌmərz, ôls– [key], degenerative disease of nerve cells in the cerebral cortex that leads to atrophy of the brain and senile dementia and, ultimately, death. The disea...

(Encyclopedia) Gorges, Sir Ferdinando gôrˈjĭz [key], c.1566–1647, English colonizer, proprietor of Maine. He was knighted (1591) for his services to Henry IV of France in the French Wars of Religion and was sub...

(Encyclopedia) Madrid mədrĭdˈ, Span. mäᵺhrēᵺˈ [key], city (1990 pop. 3,120,732), capital of Spain and of the autonomous community and prov. of Madrid, central Spain, on the Manzanares River. The newest of ...

(Encyclopedia) Peary, Robert Edwin pērˈē [key], 1856–1920, American arctic explorer, b. Cresson, Pa. In 1881 he entered the U.S. navy as a civil engineer and for several years served in Nicaragua, where he was ...