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

Jünger, Ernst
(1895-1998) German novelist and essayist. Although he drew upon his military experience during World War I (Feuer und Blut 1925), he believed in the constant exercise of human virtues as the only means of...

Ka
In ancient Egyptian religion, the energy or life force of the dead which dwelt beside the mummy in the tomb and would perish unless provided with sustenance by the family of the deceased. ...

Kaaba
In Mecca, Saudi Arabia, an oblong building in the quadrangle of the Great Mosque, into the northeastern corner of which is built the Black Stone declared by the prophet Muhammad...

Kabard
People of the northern Caucasus, numbering 391,000 (1989), living mainly in Kabardino-Balkaria. They are the eastern branch of the Circassians; their language is Caucasian...

Kabbalah
Ancient esoteric Jewish mystical tradition of philosophy containing strong elements of pantheism, yet akin to neo-Platonism. Kabbalistic writing reached its peak between the 13th and 16th...

Kabila, Joseph
(1969) Congolese soldier and politician, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo 2001-2007. The son of Laurent Kabila, he became president following his father's assassination in January 2001. He...

Kabila, Laurent (Desiré)
(1939-2001) Congolese soldier and politician, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) 1997-2001. Opposed to the oppressive regime of President Mobutu, his Tutsi-led uprising was...

Kabir
Indian religious poet and teacher, a leader of the bhakti movement. He rejected the external practices of Islam and Hinduism to teach a simple, direct faith in the one God, attracting many followers...

Kabotie, Fred
(1900-1986) Hopi painter and silversmith. Internationally recognized as a leading interpreter and creator of Hopi art, he published and illustrated numerous books and received commissions and held exhibitions...

Kabua, Amata
(1928-1996) Marshall Islands politician, president 1979-96. He campaigned for separation from Micronesia from the early 1970s, and helped draft the new separatist constitution of 1979. He was elected...

Kabuki
Japanese theatrical form popular since the Edo period (1603-1868) and the source of many musical genres. There are two main kinds of Kabuki play:jidaimono or pseudo-historical pieces and...

Kabyle
Member of any of a group of Berber peoples of Algeria and Tunisia....

Kaches
In Armenian mythology, disembodied good spirits who are used by God to carry out punishments for humans. They live in stony places and are musical. ...

Kaczynski, Theodore
(1942) US mathematician and terrorist, known in the media as the `Unabomber`. He sent mail bombs to a number of people over the period 1978-95 in a campaign against technological development, killing...

Kádár, János
(1912-1989) Hungarian communist leader, in power 1956-88, after suppressing the national uprising. As leader of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (HSWP) and prime minister 1956-58 and 1961-65,...

Kaddish
Ancient Jewish prayer in praise of God, normally regarded as a prayer to be said by the bereaved on behalf of a deceased parent, although there is no mention of death or mourning in it. It is in...

Kadikeui
Modern name of the ancient Greek city of Chalcedon in Bithynia. ...

Kadish, Sanford (Harold)
(1921) US law educator. He taught longest at the University of California, Berkeley 1961-64 where he was dean of the law school 1975-82. He was author of several books, including Blame and Punishment...

kaffir
South African English term, usually regarded as offensive, for a black person. It was formerly the designation of various Bantu-speaking peoples, including the Xhosa and Pondo of Cape Province,...

Kafka, Franz
(1883-1924) Austrian novelist. He wrote in German. His three unfinished allegorical novels Der Prozess/The Trial (1925), Das Schloss/The Castle (1926), and Amerika/America (1927) were posthumously published...

Kafkaesque
Evoking the nightmarish atmosphere depicted in the fiction of the novelist Franz Kafka. In Der Prozess/The Trial (1925) and Der Schloss/The Castle (1926), the protagonist experiences a mounting...

Kaga
Japanese aircraft carrier. Originally designed as a battleship, it was converted during building and completed as a carrier in 1928, then modernized in 1935. The Kaga carried part of the strike...

Kaganovich, Lazar Moiseevich
(1893-1991) Soviet politician who was in charge of the enforced collectivization of agriculture (see collective farms) in 1929-34, and played a prominent role in the purges of the Communist Party carried out...

Kahane, Meir (Martin David)
(1932-1990) US rabbi and religious activist. In the 1960s he founded the Jewish Defense League, which advocated the use of violence to defend Jewish rights. In Israel in 1971 he founded Kach, a movement aimed...

Kahlo, Frida
(1907-1954) Mexican painter. Using vivid colour and a naive style that was deliberately based on Mexican folk art, she created deeply personal, moving, and emotional paintings. Often referred to as an...

Kahn, Gustave
(1859-1936) French poet, novelist, and critic. He was one of the first to formulate the theory of vers libre (free verse), and in his Palais nomades 1887 showed complete disregard for the traditional rules of...

Kahn, Louis Isadore
(1901-1974) US architect. A follower of Mies van der Rohe, he developed a classically romantic style, in which functional `servant` areas such as stairwells and air ducts feature prominently, often as...

Kahn, Otto (Herman)
(1867-1934) German-born US financier and art patron. He owed much of his wealth to financing railways. He was a major supporter of the Metropolitan Opera Company, serving as its chairman 1911-31 and...

Kahn, Richard Ferdinand
(1905-1989) English economist and professor of economics at Cambridge University (1951-72). He collaborated with John Maynard Keynes, with whom he worked on the formulation of the concept of the multiplier....

Kahneman, Daniel
(1934) Israeli-born US psychologist who was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences (with Vernon L Smith) for introducing psychological methods into economic research. Kahneman, working with...

Kaifu, Toshiki
(1932) Japanese conservative politician, prime minister 1989-91. A protégé of former premier Takeo Miki, he was selected as a compromise choice as Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) president and prime...

Kaigani
Alternative name for a member of the American Indian Haida people. ...

Kailyard School
Name applied in derision to the sentimental school of Scots novelists of which J M Barrie, Ian Maclaren (1850-1907), and S R Crockett were the leading members. The term was taken from the opening...

Kairos
In Greek mythology, the personification of Opportunity. He is portrayed in Greek art as bald at the back, but with long hair at the front. ...

Kaiser
Title formerly used by the Holy Roman emperors, Austrian emperors 1806-1918, and German emperors 1871-1918. The word, like the Russian `tsar`, is derived from the Latin Caesar. ...

Kaiser Wilhelm Geschütz
Official name of the Paris Gun, a German long-range gun of World War I. ...

Kaiser, Georg
(1878-1945) German playwright. He was the principal exponent of German expressionism. His large output includes Die Bürger von Calais/The Burghers of Calais (1914) and Gas (1918-20). ...

Kaiser, Robert G
(1943) US editor and author. Working for the Washington Post he distinguished himself as an overseas correspondent in London 1964-66, Saigon in 1969, and Moscow 1971-74, and on the national staff...

kakemono
In Japanese art, a work of art mounted for hanging. A picture or piece of calligraphy on paper or silk is glued on a paper backing with a silk or brocade frame and different pieces of silk above and...

kakiemon
Japanese white-body porcelain made in western Kyushu, fashionable in the West from the 1620s and again in the 1990s. It is made at the Nangawara kiln in Arita by a line of potters established by...

kalam
Islamic scholastic theology. Kalam was founded by al-Ashari (873-935), whose Ashariyya School was the dominant school of scholastic theology. Kalam has always been of secondary importance to...

Kalat Seman
Ruined city in northern Syria, about 40 km/25 mi north of Aleppo. The site includes the church of St Simeon Stylites, one of the best examples of Christian Syrian...

Kalb, Johann (Baron de)
(1721-1780) German-born soldier of fortune. In the American Revolution he served under the Marquis de Lafayette in 1777, as a major general under George Washington at Valley Forge 1777-78 and under Gen....

Kaldor, Nicholas, Baron Kaldor
(1908-1986) Hungarian-born British economist and special adviser 1964-68 and 1974-76 to the UK government. Kaldor was a firm believer in long-term capital gains tax and selective employment tax, and a...

Kalecki, Michal
(1899-1970) Polish-born economist who settled in England in the 1930s. In the late 1940s, he moved to the USA to work in the United Nations secretariat. In 1955 he resigned in protest against the communist...

Kaledin, Alexander Maximovich
(1861-1918) Russian soldier. Kaledin joined the Trans-Baikal Cossack horse artillery 1879 and by the outbreak of World War I was a general commanding a cavalry division. He succeeded General Brusilov in...

Kalevala
Finnish national epic poem compiled from legends and ballads by Elias Lönnrot 1835-49; its hero is Väinämöinen, god of music and poetry. It inspired the poet Longfellow, who borrowed its metre...

Kalf, Willem
(1619-1693) Dutch painter. He specialized in still lifes set against a dark background. These typically feature arrangements of glassware, polished metalwork, decorated porcelain, and fine carpets, with the...

Kali
In Hindu mythology, the goddess of destruction and creation. She is the wife of Shiva. Kali feeds herself on blood, but produces life and destroys ignorance. She shows Hindus that death is an...

Kali-Yuga
In Hinduism, the last of the four yugas (ages) that make up one cycle of creation. The Kali-Yuga, in which Hindus believe we are now living, is characterized by wickedness and disaster, and leads...

Kalidasa
(lived 5th century AD) Indian epic poet and dramatist. His works, in Sanskrit, include the classic drama Sakuntala, the love story of King Dushyanta and the nymph Sakuntala. ...

Kalidasa
(lived 5th century AD) Sanskrit poet and dramatist who is thought to have lived at Ujjain in central India in around AD 400. Kalidasa created his courtly dramas from a blend of sacred myth and historical fantasy. His play...

Kalki
In Hinduism, the last avatar (manifestation) of Vishnu, who will appear at the end of the Kali-Yuga, or final age of the world, to destroy it in readiness for a new creation. ...

Kallio, Kyosti
(1873-1940) Finnish politician, president of Finland 1937-40. After serving several terms of office as prime minister, he was elected president and led his country's defence against the USSR's invasion in the...

Kallman, Chester (Simon)
(1921-1975) US poet and librettist. He was praised for his volumes of poetry such as Absent and Present (1963), but is best known for writing, in collaboration with W H Auden, the libretto for Stravinsky's...

Kalmyk
Member of a Mongolian-speaking people living in the Kalmyk Autonomous Republic. Traditionally they were seminomads, raising horses, cattle, sheep, and a few camels, and living in yurts (tents made...

Kaltenborn, H(ans) V(on)
(1878-1965) US radio commentator. He joined CBS in 1930 and became widely known as the first US radio news analyst. From 1940 to 1955 he broadcast for National Broadcasting Company radio; his clipped...

Kaltenbrunner, Ernst
(1903-1946) Austrian Nazi leader. After the annexation of Austria in 1938 he joined police chief Himmler's staff, and as head of the Security Police (SD) from 1943 was responsible for the murder of millions of...

Kalunga
Supreme being of the Ndonga people in Namibia, also identified with the underworld. He is said to take the form of a giant man always partially hidden by clouds. ...

kama
In Hinduism, one of the four prescribed aims of material life. These aims are dharma (religion), artha (prosperity), kama (sensual pleasure), and moksha (liberation). From religion followed...

Kamba
Member of a Bantu people of Kenya. Authority is held by age-grade elders and district councils. They are an agricultural and trading people with a tradition of woodcarving, but many now work in...

Kamehameha I
(c. 1758-1819) Hawaiian unifier and king. Following the death in 1782 of the chief of Hawaii, his uncle Kalaniopu'u, Kamehameha conquered the island. After other victories on Maui, Oahu, Kauai, and the other...

Kamenev, Lev Borisovich
(1883-1936) Russian leader of the Bolshevik movement after 1917 who, with Stalin and Zinovyev, formed a ruling triumvirate in the USSR after Lenin's death in 1924. His alignment with the Trotskyists led to his...

Kami
In Shinto, the generic term for `beings above`, including gods and goddesses, spirits, and revered aspects of nature. ...

kamikaze
Pilots of the Japanese air force in World War II who deliberately crash-dived their planes, loaded with bombs, usually on to ships of the US Navy. A special force of suicide pilots was established...

Kamperduin
Dutch spelling of Camperdown, a village in the Netherlands. ...

Kanagawa
Port on the east coast of Honshu, Japan, now part of Yokohama. Kanagawa was where US emissary Matthew Perry negotiated with the Japanese in 1854. The resultant trade agreement was one of the Kanaka
Ethnic Hawaiian. The word was formerly used indiscriminately by Australians to describe all South Sea islanders, especially those who were abducted and sent to Australia to work on the Queensland...

Kanares (or Kanaris), Konstantinos
(1790-1877) Greek revolutionary who carried out many daring naval actions during the Greek War of Independence in the 1820s. In 1822, he used a fire-ship to blow up the flagship of the commander of the...

Kander, Lizzie Black
(1858-1940) US settlement founder and cookbook writer. She was president of the Milwaukee Jewish Mission and its successor, the Settlement 1896-1918. Her Settlement Cook Book 1901, compiled in conjunction...

Kandinsky, Vasily
(1866-1944) Russian-born painter. He was a pioneer of abstract art. Between 1910 and 1914 he produced the series Improvisations and Compositions, the first known examples of purely abstract work in...

Kane, John
(1860-1934) Scottish-born US painter. An untrained artist, he began painting freight cars and houses. It was only late in his life (1927) that he started exhibiting his documentary paintings of Pittsburgh. A...

Kane, Sheikh Hamidou
(1928) Senegalese novelist, writing in French. His first novel, L'Aventure ambigué/Ambiguous Adventure (1961), is an autobiographical account of a young African alienated from the simple faith of his...

Kang Keqing (or K'ang K'o-ch'ing)
(1911-1992) Chinese political leader. In 1957 she was elected to the committee of the Chinese Democratic Women's Federation, becoming its president in 1978, then honorary president in 1988. From her election in...

Kang Sheng (or K'ang Sheng)
(1899-1975) Chinese politician. A prominent member of the Communist Party during the 1960s, he exercised considerable influence behind the scenes in his capacity as head of party security. During the Cultural...

Kanin, Garson
(1912-1999) US playwright/screenwriter, stage/film director, and author. In Hollywood from 1938 he directed several films; during World War II he made documentary films for the government, the most ambitious...

Kano School
Japanese school of painting founded by Kano Masanobu (c. 1434-1530); it was responsible for much palace and temple decoration of the period, characterized by broad, sweeping designs painted in...

Kansa
Alternative name for a member of the American Indian Kaw people. ...

Kansas-Nebraska Act
US legislation passed by Congress in 1854, regulating the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. By allowing the settlers in the territories to decide for...

Kant, Immanuel
(1724-1804) German philosopher. He believed that knowledge is not merely an aggregate of sense impressions but is dependent on the conceptual apparatus of the human understanding, which is itself not derived...

Kantor, Tadeusz
(1915-1990) Polish theatre director and scene designer. He founded his experimental theatre Cricot 2 in 1955, and produced such plays as Dead Class 1975, with which he became internationally known. Later...

Kantorovich, Leonid Vitaliyevich
(1912-1986) Soviet mathematical economist who shared the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1975 with Dutch-born US economist Tjalling Koopmans for the independent development of linear...

KANU
Political party founded in 1944 and led by Jomo Kenyatta from 1947, when it was the Kenya African Union (KAU); it became KANU on independence in 1964. The party formed Kenyatta's political power...

kapel
Traditional skullcap worn by Orthodox Jewish males and Reform Jews of both sexes during worship. Some Jews, particularly the Orthodox sects, wear a kapel all the time. Jews consider covering the...

Kapilavastu
Childhood home of Siddartha Gautama, the Buddha, close to his birthplace at Lumbini in Nepal, India. Kapilavastu was the capital of his father's domain as chief of the Shakya clan, and the prince...

Kapital, Das
Three-volume work presenting the theories of Karl Marx on economic...

Kaplan, Mordecai (Menahem)
(1881-1983) Lithuanian-born US rabbi and educator. He founded the Reconstructionist Movement in 1935, which holds that Judaism is an entire civilization, not just a religion. He was chairman of the editorial...

Kapoor, Anish
(1954) Indian-born British abstract sculptor. His early work was usually in light materials and often brightly coloured, but from the late 1980s he began using much heavier materials such as stone in...

Kara-Kalpak
Member of a Turkic people closely related to the Kazakhs, inhabiting Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. Near the Aral Sea they are agriculturalists, but in the deserts to the south they herd cattle and...

Karachai
Member of a Turkic-speaking people who live on the northern slopes of the Caucasus Mountains. In the 16th century they were under the domination of the Kabards. They were ruled by Turkey from 1733...

Karadžic, Radovan
(1945) Montenegrin-born leader of the Bosnian Serbs' unofficial government 1992-96. He co-founded and became president of the Serbian Democratic Party of Bosnia-Herzegovina (SDS-BH) in 1990 and...

Karadžic, Vuk Stefanovic
(1787-1864) Serbian linguist and translator. He collected folk songs and popular stories, compiled a Serbian grammar 1815 and dictionary 1818 and 1852, and translated the New Testament 1847. ...

karagoz
Turkish shadow-puppet plays, which take their name from the leading character Karagoz. He is an unpretentious `everyman` who is contrasted with the hypocritical Hacivat. The element of...

karah prashad
In Sikhism, blessed pudding made from a rich mixture of semolina, milk, sugar, and butter, cooked to make a thick, sweet paste. It is shared from a communal bowl by the congregation at the end of...

Karaite
Member of an 8th-century sect of Judaism that denied the authority of rabbinic tradition, recognizing only the authority of the scriptures. ...

Karamanlis, Constantinos
(1907-1998) Greek politician of the New Democracy Party. A lawyer and an anticommunist, he was prime minister 1955-58, 1958-61, and 1961-63 (when he went into self-imposed exile because of a military...

Karami, Rashid
(1921-1987) Lebanese politician, prime minister of Lebanon 1955-56, 1958-60, 1961-64, and five times subsequently between 1965 and 1976. His final term of office began in 1984. Karami was a member of the...

Karamojong
Member of a people living in eastern Uganda. Primarily cattle herders, they also practise some agriculture. ...

Karásek ze Lvovic, Jiri
(1871-1951) Czech writer. He was the most prolific Czech exponent of decadence. He treated the themes of Roman Catholicism in The Gothic Soul 1900, mythmaking in The Legend of the Melancholy Prince 1897, and...

Karavelov, Lyuben
(1837-1879) Bulgarian writer, publicist, and nationalist. In 1857, he went to Moscow, where he developed radical views. On his return, he became a leading member of the Bulgarian liberation movement. His...