What is "columbia"

Columbia \Co*lum"bi*a\, n. America; the United States; -- a poetical appellation given in honor of Columbus, the discoverer.
--Dr. T. Dwight.

poetic name for United States of America, earlier for the British colonies there, 1730s, also the nation's female personification, from name of Christopher Columbus (also see Colombia) with Latin "country" ending -ia. A popular name for places and institutions in the U.S. in the post-Revolutionary years, when former tributes to king and crown were out of fashion: such as Columbia University (New York, U.S.) founded in 1754 as King's College; re-named 1784. Also District of Columbia (1791, as Territory of Columbia); "Hail, Columbia" (Joseph Hopkinson, 1798), Barlow's "Columbiad" (1809).

Columbia may refer to:

Columbia was an American racing yacht built in 1899 for the America's Cup races. She was the defender of the tenth America's Cup race that same year against British challenger Shamrock as well as the defender of the eleventh America's Cup race in 1901 against British challenger Shamrock II. She was the first vessel to win the trophy twice in a row (a record not equaled until Intrepids back-to-back wins in 1967 and 1970.)

Columbia was one of the two yachts to successfully defend the second America's Cup race in 1871 against English challenger Livonia.

Columbia (US-16) was the successful defender of the 1958 America's Cup for the New York Yacht Club.

Columbia, also known as Nuna and Hudsonland, was one of Earth's ancient supercontinents. It was first proposed by and is thought to have existed approximately 2.5 to 1.6 billion years ( Ga) ago in the Paleoproterozoic Era. proposed that the assembly of the supercontinent Columbia was completed by global-scale collisional events during 2.1–1.8 Ga.

Columbia consisted of proto- cratons that made up the cores of the continents of Laurentia, Baltica, Ukrainian Shield, Amazonian Shield, Australia, and possibly Siberia, North China, and Kalaharia as well.

The evidence of Columbia's existence is based upon geological and paleomagnetic data.

Named in honor of the crew who died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, Columbia was a supercomputer built by Silicon Graphics (SGI) for the National Aeornautics and Space Administration (NASA). It was decommissioned March 15, 2013 after over three billion CPU hours and nearly nine years of service.

It was installed at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility located at Moffett Field, California in 2004 and increased NASA's supercomputing capacity 10-fold for the agency's science, aeronautics and exploration programs. Some of the missions run on Columbia include high-fidelity simulations of the Space Shuttle vehicle and launch systems, hurricane track prediction, global ocean circulation, and the physics of supernova detonations.

"Columbia" (; ) is a historical and poetic name used for the United States of America and also as one of the names of its female personification. It has given rise to the names of many persons, places, objects, institutions, and companies; e.g., Columbia University, the District of Columbia (the national capital), and the ship Columbia Rediviva, which would give its name to the Columbia River. Images of the Statue of Liberty largely displaced Columbia as the female symbol of the U.S. by around 1920.

Columbia is a New Latin toponym, in use since the 1730s for the Thirteen Colonies. It originated from the name of Christopher Columbus and from the ending -ia, common in Latin names of countries (paralleling Britannia, Gallia etc.).

Columbia was a provincial electoral district in the Canadian province of British Columbia. It made its first appearance on the hustings in the election of 1903. It lasted until the 1928 election, after which the revised riding was renamed Columbia River. This riding was later merged with the Revelstoke riding to become Columbia River-Revelstoke, the current riding for the western part of the area. The eastern part of the riding is now part of East Kootenay.

For other current and historical electoral districts in the Kootenay region, please see Kootenay (electoral districts).

Columbia was an American brand of automobiles produced by a group of companies in the United States. They included the Pope Manufacturing Company of Hartford, Connecticut, the Electric Vehicle Company, and an entity of brief existence in 1899, the Columbia Automobile Company.

At the turn of the Twentieth century they were producing and selling hundreds of vehicles a year under Pope's Columbia brand name, while most gasoline engine automobile manufacturers had made only a few dozen.

In 1908, the company was renamed the Columbia Motor Car Company and in 1910 was acquired by United States Motor Company. A different Columbia Motors existed from 1917 to 1924.

The Columbia, sometimes called the Steamer Columbia, was a paddle steamer excursion boat on which 87 or 88 people died on the Illinois River in July 1918 across from Creve Coeur between Peoria and Pekin, Illinois.

MV Columbia was a passenger motor vessel used on the Arrow Lakes in British Columbia, Canada from 1948 to 1954. She was the Canadian Pacific Railway Company's last vessel of a long line of ships on the Arrow Lakes and she was sold after the retirement of SS Minto to Ivan Horie, who continued a freight service for a few years.

Columbia, also known as the Philip Haxall House, is a historic home located in Richmond, Virginia. It was built in 1817-1818, and is a two-story, three bay Federal style brick dwelling on a high basement. The entrance features an elliptical fanlight opening sheltered by a one-story Doric porch. It was added when the entrance was moved from the Lombardy Street side to the Grace Street side in 1924, when the building was expanded to house the T.C. Williams School of Law of the University of Richmond. It housed the School of Law from 1917 to 1954. After 1834, the house was the main academic building of Richmond College, which grew to become the present University of Richmond.

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.