Copy of `The History Channel - Encyclopedia`

The wordlist doesn't exist anymore, or, the website doesn't exist anymore. On this page you can find a copy of the original information. The information may have been taken offline because it is outdated.

The History Channel - Encyclopedia Category: History and Culture > History Date & country: 02/12/2007, UK Words: 25833

Hidalgo y Costilla, Miguel
(1753-1811) Catholic priest, known as `the Father of Mexican Independence`. He led a violent social protest in 1810 against Spanish rule in which his forces swelled to 100,000. During the unrest the Indian...

hide
Anglo-Saxon unit of measurement used to measure the extent of arable land; it varied from about 296 ha/120 acres in the east of England to as little as 99 ha/40 acres in Wessex. One hide was...

Hideyoshi
Japanese warlord; see Toyotomi Hideyoshi. ...

Hiempsal
(died 118 BC) Prince of the ancient North African kingdom of Numidia, son of King Micipsa. He was murdered by his cousin Jugurtha, to whom Micipsa had given a share in the kingdom. ...

Hiempsal II
(lived 2nd and 1st centuries BC) Numidian king, grandson of King Micipsa. After the war of 112-105 BC between Rome and the ancient North African kingdom of Numidia, which...

Hierapolis
Ancient city in Phrygia. It was a centre of the worship of the Earth goddess Cybele, the birthplace of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, and an early seat of Christianity. ...

Hierapolis
Ancient city in Syria, on the road from Antioch to Iraq. It was the centre of worship of the goddess of love and war Astarte, whose temple was sacked by...

hieroglyphic
Egyptian writing system of the mid-4th millennium BC-3rd century AD, which combines picture signs with those indicating letters. The direction of writing is normally from right to left, the...

Hieron I
(died 466 BC) Tyrant of Syracuse 478-467 BC after his brother Gelon. He consolidated Syracusan influence in Sicily...

Hieron II (or Hiero II)
(c. 308-215 BC) Tyrant of Syracuse from 270 BC. He won a victory over the Mamertines (Campanian mercenaries) 270 BC, and, claiming descent from the tyrant Gelon, he was unanimously elected king by all the states of...

Higden, Ranulf
(died 1364) English chronicler. He was a Benedictine monk at St Werburgh's monastery in Chester, England. His great work was a general history of the world from the Creation down to his own time, entitled...

Higgenbotham, A Leon, Jr
(1928) US judge. From 1964-77 he was a federal judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He was then promoted to the US Circuit Court of Appeals, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1977. As one of the...

Higgins, George Vincent
(1939-1999) US novelist. He wrote many detective and underworld novels, often set in Boston, including The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1972), The Impostors (1986), and Trust (1989). ...

Higgins, Henry Bournes
(1851-1929) Irish-born Australian politician and judge. An expert in constitutional law, Higgins was critical of the terms of federation within the British Empire when Australia became a self-governing...

Higgins, Jack
Pseudonym of English novelist Harry Patterson. ...

Higgins, Marguerite
(1920-1966) Hong Kong-born journalist. An intrepid and resourceful war correspondent, she covered the Seventh Army in Europe during 1944 and won a Pulitzer Prize for her Korean War coverage. Later a...

Higgins, Matthew James
(1810-1868) Irish journalist and social commentator. Born in Benown Castle, County Meath, he earned his nickname from the title of his first published article. The targets of Higgins's witty...

Higgins, Rosalyn
(1937) English judge and lawyer. Having developed an early interest in United Nations law, she became the UK representative on the UN Committee on Human Rights in 1985. In 1995 she became a judge in the...

High Church
Group in the Church of England that emphasizes aspects of Christianity usually associated with Catholics, such as ceremony and hierarchy. The term was first used in 1703 to describe those who...

High Commission
In England, ecclesiastical court established under the Royal Supremacy in the provinces of York and Canterbury following Henry VIII's break with Rome 1534. It dealt primarily with offences against...

high commissioner
Representative of one independent Commonwealth country in the capital of another, ranking with ambassador. Also a high administrative officer in a dependency or protectorate. The member countries of...

high constable
In England from the reign of Henry VII (1485-1509), an officer appointed to keep the peace in a hundred. High constables were chosen at...

high sheriff
County or city officer in England and Wales, with wide judicial and executive authority. The sheriff's duties are defined by the Sheriffs' Act of 1887, and include attendance on judges during...

high steward
In England, one of the great officers of state. The Court of the High Steward formerly decided upon claims to do services at the coronation of the sovereign; this duty is now performed by the Court...

high-tech
In architecture, an approach to design, originating in the UK in the 1970s, which concentrates on technical innovation, often using exposed structure and services as a means of creating exciting...

Highet, Gilbert
(1906-1978) Scottish classicist. He popularized classical literature in a number of ways, writing the books The Classical Tradition (1949) and The Art of Teaching (1950); serving as chief literary critic for...

Highland Clearances
Forced removal of tenants from large estates in Scotland during the early 19th century, as landowners `improved` their estates by switching from arable to sheep farming. It led ultimately to...

Highland Host
Force of highlanders brought into southwest Scotland in 1678 to suppress Scottish Covenanters by the Earl of Lauderdale. For two months the host engaged in pillage and confiscation of lands until...

highlight
In painting and drawing, the lightest part of an artwork or the subject being viewed. Highlights in a picture represent light reflecting off the subject, and can bring an image to life, making the...

Highmore, Joseph
(1692-1780) English artist. He was a portrait painter to King William III. Examples of his work are his portrait of the novelist Samuel Richardson (National Portrait Gallery, London) and the series of 12...

Highsmith, Patricia
(1921-1995) US crime novelist. Her first book, Strangers on a Train 1950, was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock. She excelled in tension and psychological exploration of character. The Ripley series Her debut was...

highwayman
In English history, a thief on horseback who robbed travellers on the highway (those who did so on foot were known as footpads). With the development of regular coach services in the 17th and 18th...

Hijab
In Islam, the Arabic term for the seclusion of women enjoined by the Koran. It also refers to the modest, covering dress worn by Muslim women when outside their homes and at any time when they are...

hijacking
Illegal seizure or taking control of a vehicle and/or its passengers or goods. The term dates from 1923 and originally referred to the robbing of freight lorries. Subsequently it (and its derivative...

Hijrah
The flight from Mecca to Medina of the prophet Muhammad, which took place in AD 622 as a result of the persecution of the prophet and his followers. The Muslim calendar dates from this event, and...

Hikmet, Nazim
(1902-1963) Turkish poet. Acclaimed since his death as a revolutionary hero, he was educated at Moscow University and was imprisoned in Turkey for his activities as a communist propagandist. His...

Hilanderas, Las
Painting by the Spanish artist Diego Velázquez about 1656 (Prado, Madrid). It is a view of the interior of the state tapestry works, full of light and movement, in which the artist contrasts the...

Hilary of Poitiers, St
(c. 315-368) French bishop. In 352 he was sent to the Emperor Constantius by Pope Liberius on a special mission to uphold orthodoxy against the Arians at the council of Milan. He became bishop in 353, but was...

Hilary, St
(died 468) Pope, 461-68. Of two treatises attributed to him, one is usually incorporated with the works of St Augustine, the other with those of St Ambrose. His feast is on 28 February. He...

Hilda, St
(or St Hild) (614-680) English abbess. She was related to the Northumbrian royal family and for 22 years she was abbess of the double monastery for monks and nuns at Whitby (Streoneshalh), England, which she founded in...

Hildebrand
Benedictine monk who became Pope Gregory VII. ...

Hildebrand, Adolf von
(1847-1921) German sculptor and writer on art. His desire for classical simplicity can be seen in such works as the bronze statuette Sleeping Shepherd Boy, shown at the Vienna Exhibition 1873, and the...

Hildebrandt, Johann Lucas von
(1668-1745) Italian-born Austrian architect. He trained under Carlo Fontana (1638-1714), the leading baroque architect in late 17th-century Rome, and was successor to Viennese court architect Johann...

Hildegard of Bingen
(1098-1179) German abbess, writer, and composer. Her encyclopedia of natural history, Liber simplicis medicinae (1150-60), giving both Latin and German names for the species described as well as their...

hill figure
In Britain, any of a number of figures, usually of animals, cut from the turf to reveal the underlying chalk. Their origins are variously attributed to Celts, Romans, Saxons, Druids, or Benedictine...

hill fort
European Iron Age site with massive banks and ditches for defence, used as both a military camp and a permanent settlement. Examples found across Europe, in particular France, central Germany, and...

Hill, (John Edward) Christopher
(1912-2003) British historian. He employed a traditionally Marxist approach to 17th-century English history, although this was less marked in his later work. His publications include The English Revolution,...

Hill, Aaron
(1685-1750) English poet and dramatist. His contributions to drama include Elfrid or the Fair Inconstant produced 1710, The Tragedy of Zara 1736,...

Hill, Anita (Faye)
(1956) US lawyer and educator. After Yale Law School, she worked in Washington (1981-83) then taught law at Oral Roberts (1983-88) and the University of Oklahoma (1988). Her testimony at the...

Hill, Austin Bradford
(1897-1991) English epidemiologist and statistician. He pioneered rigorous statistical study of patterns of disease and, together with Richard Doll, was the first to demonstrate the connection between cigarette...

Hill, Benny
(1925-1992) English comedian. His television shows, which first appeared in 1952, combined the bawdy humour of the seaside postcard with the manic slapstick of the silent cinema, a format which he perfected but...

Hill, David Jayne
(1850-1932) US college administrator and diplomat. As president of Bucknell University (1879-88) and the University of Rochester (1888-95), he increased the endowment of both institutions. He was assistant...

Hill, George Birkbeck Norman
(1835-1903) English literary critic. He was an authority on Samuel Johnson and published a series of scholarly editions of Johnsonian literature, including Boswell's Life of Johnson 1887 and Dr Johnson, His...

Hill, J(oseph) Lister
(1894-1984) US politician. A Democrat representing Alabama, he was elected to the US House of Representatives (1923-38) and to the US Senate (1939-69). He helped shape the Tennessee Valley Authority...

Hill, James Jerome
(1838-1916) US railway president. He defeated E H Harriman in the struggle to gain control of the Northern Pacific, a competitor with the Great Northern Railway for the traffic from the Middle West to the...

Hill, Joe
(c. 1872-1915) Swedish-born US labour organizer. A member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, `Wobblies`), he was convicted of murder on circumstantial evidence in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1914....

Hill, John
(c. 1716-1775) English quack doctor and writer. He became editor of the British Magazine 1746-50, and contributed to the newspaper London Advertiser and the magazine Literary Gazette. He also published a...

Hill, Octavia
(1838-1912) English campaigner for housing reform and public open spaces. She co-founded the National Trust in 1894. With encouragement and financial help from John Ruskin she pioneered a successful...

Hill, Rowland
(1795-1879) English Post Office official who reformed the postage system with the introduction of adhesive stamps. His pamphlet Post Office Reform (1837) prompted the introduction of the penny prepaid post in...

Hill, Rowland
(1744-1833) English preacher. He was ordained in June 1773 but was refused priest's orders on account of his unconventional style. He continued, however, to preach to immense congregations. In 1783 Surrey...

Hill, Rowland, 1st Viscount Hill
(1772-1842) English general. He commanded the 90th Regiment in Abercromby's Egyptian expedition in 1801 and served throughout the Peninsular War. He captured the forts of Almarez, for which he was made a baron...

Hill, Susan Elizabeth
(1942) English novelist, short-story writer, and radio dramatist. Her works, which explore the nature of loss, isolation, and grief, include her first novel The Enclosure (1961), A Change for the Better...

Hillary, Edmund (Percival)
(1919) New Zealand mountaineer. In 1953, with Nepalese Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay, he reached the summit of Mount Everest, the first to climb the world's highest peak. As a member of the...

Hillel
(born c. 60 BC) Jewish scholar, lawyer, and teacher; member of the Pharisaic movement (see Pharisee). His work was accepted by later rabbinic Judaism and is noted for its tolerance. ...

Hillenbrand, Reynold (Henry)
(1904-1979) US activist Catholic priest. While a seminary teacher and rector (through 1944) and pastor (through 1970) in the Chicago archdiocese, he encouraged lay leadership and liturgical reform and played a...

Hiller, Wendy
(1912-2003) English actor. Her many roles include Catherine Sloper in The Heiress (1947) and Eliza in the film version of Shaw's Pygmalion (1938). Her other films include The Elephant Man (1980). She was made a...

Hillery, Patrick John
(1923) Irish politician, president 1976-90. As minister of foreign affairs, he successfully negotiated Ireland's entry into the European Economic Community (EEC, now the European Union) in 1973....

Hilliard, Nicholas
(c. 1547-1619) English miniaturist and goldsmith. Court artist to Elizabeth I and James I, he painted many leading figures of Tudor and Stuart society, including Francis Drake, Walter Raleigh, and Mary Queen of...

Hillman, Sidney
(1887-1946) Lithuanian-born US labour leader. He was president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA) union, which by 1940 dominated the manufacture of men's clothing and had pioneered such...

Hillquit, Morris
(1869-1933) Latvian-born US lawyer, author, and reformer. He helped found the Socialist Party of America (1900) and afterwards defended many Socialists, including those prosecuted in 1917-18 for antiwar...

Hillsborough Agreement
Another name for the Anglo-Irish Agreement (1985). ...

Hillsborough disaster
Disaster at the Hillsborough football ground in Sheffield in 1989 in which 96 Liverpool fans were killed during an FA Cup match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. The incident occurred on 15...

Hilly, Francis Billy
(1947) Solomon Islands politician, prime minister 1993-94. He replaced Solomon Mamaloni as prime minister after the June 1993 general election, but his fractious coalition was soon weakened by the...

Hillyer, Robert (Silliman)
(1895-1961) US poet and teacher. While a student Harvard University, he published Eight Harvard Poets (1917), a volume including his own work and that of E E Cummings and John Dos Passos, among others. After...

Hilprecht, H(erman) V(olrath)
(1859-1925) German-born US archaeologist. An authority on cuneiform and Babylonian antiquities, he was scientific director of four expeditions to Nippur, Iraq, the source of more than a dozen volumes of...

Hilton, James
(1900-1954) English-born US novelist. His books include Lost Horizon (1933), envisaging Shangri-la, a remote district of Tibet where time stands still; and Goodbye, Mr Chips (1934), a portrait of an old...

Hilton, Paris
(1981) US socialite and model, great-granddaughter of the Hilton hotel chain founder, Conrad Hilton. She became notorious for her wild party antics before starring in the popular reality TV show The...

Hilton, Roger
(1911-1975) English painter. His uncompromising abstract works of the 1950s were heavily influenced by Mondrian. Later associated with the Hilton, Walter
(c. 1340-1396) English mystic. He wrote The Ladder of Perfection, a treatise on asceticism and contemplation. It was widely circulated in manuscript and was one of the first books printed 1494 by Wynkyn de Worde...

Himba
Member of a southwest African nomadic herding people of the Hereo group. Some 10,000 Himba live on the Namibian side of the Cunene River and range over an area more than three times the size of...

Himera
Greek city on the north coast of Sicily, founded about 649 BC by exiles from Syracuse. In 483 BC Theron of Acragas expelled...

Himes, Chester (Bomar)
(1909-1984) US novelist. After serving seven years in prison for armed robbery, he published his first novel If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945), a powerful depiction of racist victimization set in a Californian...

Himes, Joshua Vaughan
(1805-1895) US Protestant religious leader. In 1839 he fell under the spell of the Baptist minister William Miller, who predicted the imminent Second Coming of Christ, and he became chief publicist for the...

Himmler, Heinrich
(1900-1945) German Nazi leader, head of the SS elite corps from 1929, t ...

Hinckley, John W(arnock), Jr
(1955) US criminal. The son of an oil executive, he drifted aimlessly in southern California before becoming obsessed by the actor Jodie Foster and President Ronald Reagan. He shot Reagan and three other...

Hincks, Francis
(1807-1885) Irish-born Canadian Liberal politician and British colonial governor. He was joint premier of Canada (with A M Morin) 1851-54, governor of Barbados 1855-62, and governor...

Hincmar
(c. 806-882) French prelate. He became abbot of Compiègne and of St Germain and finally, in 845, archbishop of Reims. As metropolitan he excommunicated his suffragan (assistant bishop), Rothad, bishop of...

Hindenburg Line
German western line of World War I fortifications running from Arras, through Cambrai and St Quentin, to Soissons, built 1916-17. Part of the line was taken by the British in the third battle of...

Hindley, Myra
(1942-2002) British murderer who, with Ian Brady, was found guilty of the murder of two children and a 17-year-old youth between 1963 and 1965. They were known as `the Moors Murderers` because they...

Hinds, Asher Crosby
(1863-1919) US politician. While the Republicans were in control of the House of Representative, he served as clerk of the Speaker's table (1895-1911), studying parliamentary law and procedure, while serving...

Hinds, Samuel Archibald Anthony
(1943) Guyanese engineer and politician, president March-December 1997 and prime minister 1992-â€Æ`. An engineer by profession, Hinds worked in the bauxite industry for 25 years before being named prime...

Hindu ethics
Questions of right and wrong considered according to Hinduism. Hindu ethics...

Hindu scriptures
The sacred writings of Hinduism, an oral tradition for many centuries before being written in Sanskrit, the classical language of India. The most sacred are the sruti, transmitted directly from God,...

Hinduism
Religion originating in northern India about 4,000 years ago, which is superficially and in some of its forms polytheistic, but has a concept of the supreme spirit, Brahman, above the many divine...

Hines, Duncan
(1880-1959) US travel author and publisher. He published restaurant and hotel reviews such as Adventures in Good Eating 1936 and Lodging for a Night 1939. A pioneer travel critic, Hines helped raise the...

Hines, Frank (Thomas)
(1879-1960) US soldier and administrator. As head of the army's embarkation service (1918-19), he sent more than 2 million US soldiers to Europe during World War I. Hines served as long-term head of the...

Hines, John Leonard
(`Birdie`) (1868-1968) US soldier who served with distinction in the Spanish-American War. Taken by Gen Pershing to France in 1917, he became the first US soldier since Stonewall Jackson to lead in combat successively a...

Hinsley, Arthur
(1865-1943) English cardinal. He was professor at Ushaw College (1893-99), headmaster of St Bede's Grammar School in Bradford (1889-1904), and parish priest of Sutton Park (1904-17). In 1917 he was...

Hinton, Nigel
(1941) English novelist. His experience as a teacher gave him insight into the minds and interests of young teenagers, and most of his work has been aimed at this age group. His book Buddy (1983) is the...

Hipparchus
(c. 555-514 BC) Younger son of the Athenian tyrant Pisistratus, bro ...