Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

357 results found

tomahawk

(Encyclopedia)tomahawk [from an Algonquian dialect of Virginia], hatchet generally used by Native North Americans as a hand weapon and as a missile. The earliest tomahawks were made of stone, with one edge or two e...

Cartwright, Alexander Joy

(Encyclopedia)Cartwright, Alexander Joy, 1820–92, American baseball player, b. New York City. He worked as a bank teller and a bookseller, and was a volunteer firefighter with the Knickerbocker Fire Engine Compan...

Sherman, Roger

(Encyclopedia)Sherman, Roger, 1721–93, American political leader, b. Newton, Mass. Sherman helped to draft and signed the Declaration of Independence. He was long a member (1774–81, 1783–84) of the Continenta...

Akenside, Mark

(Encyclopedia)Akenside, Mark āˈkĭnsīd [key], 1721–70, English poet and physician. His chief literary work was the didactic poem The Pleasures of Imagination (1744). Among his other works are the neoclassical ...

Wilson, John

(Encyclopedia)Wilson, John, pseud. Christopher North, 1785–1854, Scottish author. Among the first contributors to Blackwood's Magazine, he joined the staff in 1817 and quickly became one of its chief critical wri...

Garamond, Claude

(Encyclopedia)Garamond, Claude klōd gärämôNˈ [key], 1480–1561, Parisian designer and maker of printing types. According to tradition he learned his art from Geofroy Tory. Types designed by Garamond were used...

Taizé Community

(Encyclopedia)Taizé Community tāzāˈ [key], ecumenical Christian community based in Taizē, Burgundy, France. The community was founded by Roger Schutz, 1915–2005, a Swiss Protestant theologian who came to Tai...

Manley, Mary de la Rivière

(Encyclopedia)Manley, Mary de la Rivière, 1663–1724, English author, one of the first women to earn a living by writing. Notorious because of her marriage to her cousin, who was already married and who later des...

Kit-Cat Club

(Encyclopedia)Kit-Cat Club, London political and literary club, active c.1700–1720. The membership of some four dozen included leading Whig politicians and London's best young writers. Among them were Charles Sey...

Hume, Joseph

(Encyclopedia)Hume, Joseph, 1777–1855, English politician and reformer. Although a Tory in early life, he sat in Parliament from 1818 to 1855 (with only one interruption) as an indefatigable Radical. Hume was a l...
 

Browse by Subject