Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Halifax, city, Canada

(Encyclopedia)Halifax, city and regional municipality, provincial capital, S central N.S., Canada, on the Atlantic Ocean. It is the largest city in the Maritime Provi...

Davis, William Morris

(Encyclopedia)Davis, William Morris, 1850–1934, American geographer, geologist, and teacher, b. Philadelphia; B.S. Harvard, 1869. He founded (1904) the Association of American Geographers and served three terms a...

Kansas-Nebraska Act

(Encyclopedia)Kansas-Nebraska Act, bill that became law on May 30, 1854, by which the U.S. Congress established the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. By 1854 the organization of the vast Platte and Kansas river c...

Frémont, John Charles

(Encyclopedia)Frémont, John Charles, 1813–90, American explorer, soldier, and political leader, b. Savannah, Ga. He taught mathematics to U.S. naval cadets, then became an assistant on a surveying expedition (18...

airmail

(Encyclopedia)airmail, transport of mail by airplanes. Demonstration flights that showed the feasibility of carrying mail by air were made in Great Britain and in the United States in 1911. In the United States, af...

Santa Fe Railroad

(Encyclopedia)Santa Fe Railroad, former U.S. railroad, chartered in 1863 as the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe RR; opened to traffic in 1864. Construction continued, and in 1880 it reached Santa Fe, N.Mex.; the fol...

Dire Dawa

(Encyclopedia)Dire Dawa or Diredawa both: dēˌrədäˈwä [key], city, Harar region, E Ethiopia. It is...

Baltimore & Ohio Railroad

(Encyclopedia)Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O), first U.S. public railroad, chartered in 1827 by a group of Baltimore businessmen to regain trans-Allegheny traffic lost to the newly opened Erie Canal. Constr...

Turkistan-Siberia Railroad

(Encyclopedia)Turkistan-Siberia Railroad, abbreviated as Turk-Sib, important railroad in Central Asia, providing the shortest link between Siberia and Central Asia. Completed in 1931, it runs from the Trans-Siberia...
 

Browse by Subject