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

knot
Intertwinement of parts of one or more ropes, cords, or strings, to bind them together or to other objects. It is constructed so that the strain on the knot will draw it tighter. Bends or hitches...

Knott, Sarah Gertrude
(1895-1984) US folk festival organizer. She was the founding director of the National Folk Festival, the first of which was held in St Louis, Missouri, in 1934. Until her retirement in 1970, she was the moving...

Know Nothings
US political party that flourished in the early 1850s. It was so called because `I know nothing` was the initial response of its members when asked what they stood for. Its policies were...

Knowland, William Fife
(1908-1974) US politician. He was a Republican senator 1945-59, and leader of the Senate 1953-59. In 1964 he promoted the presidential candidature of Barry Goldwater (1909-98). ...

knowledge
Awareness of or familiarity with something or someone, or confidence in the accuracy of a fact or other information. Knowledge is often defined as justified true belief, although philosophers...

Knowles, James Thomas
(1831-1908) English editor. He founded the Metaphysical Society 1869 and was editor of the Contemporary Review 1870-77. In 1877 he founded the Nineteenth Century, which, with contributions from celebrities...

Knowles, Michael Clive
(1896-1974) English historian renowned for his influential studies of monasticism in England and his works on medieval history. A monk of the Benedictine order, he held professorships in history at Cambridge...

Knox, (William) Frank(lin)
(1874-1944) US journalist and cabinet member. He worked as a journalist in Michigan before becoming co-owner of the influential New Hampshire Manchester Union (1912-27). A brilliant administrator, he bought...

Knox, Alexander
(1757-1831) Irish lay Anglican (Church of Ireland) theologian and letter writer, a prominent figure in the Irish High Church revival. Knox published The Doctrine Respecting Baptism Held by the Church of Engl ...

Knox, Bernard MacGregor Walker
(1914) English-born US classics scholar and author. He earned his PhD at Yale University in 1948 and taught classics there (1948-61). He then served as director of the Center for Hellenic Studies in...

Knox, Henry
(1750-1806) US soldier and politician. Having joined the Boston Grenadier Corps in 1772, he became knowledgeable about military tactics and artillery, and he volunteered for the Revolutionary forces at the...

Knox, Philander Chase
(1853-1921) US lawyer, politician, and cabinet member. He practised industrial law in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1877-99). As President William McKinley's attorney general (1901-04), he filed an antitrust...

Knox, Ronald Arbuthnott
(1888-1957) English Roman Catholic scholar whose translation of the Bible (1945-49) was officially approved by the Roman Catholic Church. A fellow of Trinity College, Oxford 1910-17, he became Anglican...

Knudsen, William S(ignius)
(1879-1948) Danish-born US automobile manufacturer. He rose to become president of General Motors 1937-40, and was made responsible for directing vehicle manufacture and supply to the US military throughout...

Knutson, Harold
(1880-1953) Norwegian-born US politician. A Republican serving Minnesota, he was n isolationist congressman (1917-49), who opposed the New Deal and launched personal attacks on President Franklin Roosevelt....

koan
In Zen Buddhism, a superficially nonsensical question or riddle used by a Zen master to help a pupil achieve satori (enlightenment). It is used in the Rinzai school of Zen. A koan supposedly cannot...

Koburgotski, Simeon
(1937) Name taken by former king Simeon II on becoming prime minister of Bulgaria in 2001. ...

Koch
Member of one of the agriculturalist ethnic groups living in northeastern India and Bangladesh, including, among others, the Garo, Jaijong, and Moran. Some trace descent...

Koch, (Heinrich Hermann) Robert
(1843-1910) German bacteriologist who was awarded a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1905 for his investigations and discoveries in relation to tuberculosis. Koch and his assistants devised the...

Koch, Charles Paul de
(1794-1871) French novelist. His novels deal mostly with various aspects of Parisian life in a witty and realistic manner. Among the best are Georgette 1821, André le Savoyard 1826, Le Barbier de Paris 1827,...

Koch, Ed(ward Irving)
(1924) US politician, mayor of the city of New York 1979-89. A Democrat, he was a member of Congress 1969-79. As mayor, he faced a budget deficit and the deterioration of the inner city. He handled...

Koch, Frederick (Henry)
(1877-1944) US folklorist and educator. While teaching English at the University of North Dakota (1905-18), he organized a drama society of students and faculty to produce original plays on regional themes....

Kochanowski, Jan
(1530-1584) Polish poet whose work comprises mainly lyrics and elegies, both in Latin and Polish. Influenced by contemporary French classicism, his works include Treny (1580), a cycle of elegies on the death of...

Koenig, Marie-Pierre Joseph Francis
(1898-1970) French general. He fought in Norway and France 1940 then escaped to the UK to join de Gaulle. He commanded the French Brigade in the Libyan desert, defending Bir Hachiem before being evicted by...

Koenigsberg, Moses
(1878-1945) US journalist. After wide experience as a reporter, he became city editor of William Randolph Hearst's Chicago American in 1903. Later a Hearst executive, he established the successful...

Koestler, Arthur
(1905-1983) Hungarian-born British writer. Imprisoned by the Nazis in France 1940, he escaped to England. His novel Darkness at Noon (1940), regarded as his masterpiece, is a fictional account of the...

Kog&acaron;lniceanu, Mihail
(1817-1891) Romanian liberal politician and historian, prime minister of Romania 1862-65. During his term of office, he introduced many reforms, including compulsory elementary education, seizure of land from...

Koga, Mineichi
(1885-1943) Japanese admiral of World War II. He succeeded Yamamoto as commander-in-chief of the Japanese fleet 1943 and followed the same policy of defending the Pacific islands. He frequently suffered...

Kohima, Battle of
One of the most savage battles of World War II, April-May 1944, as the Allied garrison at Kohima, a town in Manipur province, northeast India, repulsed a wave of Japanese...

kohl
(Arabic) powdered antimony sulphide, used in Asia and the Middle East to darken the area around the eyes. Commonly used eyeliners also contain carbon (bone black, lamp black, carbon black) or black...

Kohl, Helmut
(1930) German conservative politician, leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) 1976-98, West German chancellor (prime minister) 1982-90, and German chancellor from 1990-98. He oversaw the...

Kohlberg, Jerome, Jr
(1925) US lawyer and financier. He worked as an investment banker for Bear Stearns & Co., before becoming a partner in Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Co. (1976-87), known as `the kings of the leveraged...

Kohler, Foy D(avid)
(1908-1990) US diplomat. Among his various assignments were postings to Greece and the Soviet Union. He directed the Voice of America (1949-52) and was ambassador to the Soviet Union (1962-66). He was...

Kohler, Kaufmann
(1843-1926) German-born US rabbi and scholar. In 1869 he emigrated to the USA as rabbi of the Beth-El Congregation in Detroit, Michigan. In 1871 he moved on to Sinai Temple in Chicago, Illinois, where,...

Kohler, Walter J(odok), Jr
(1904-1976) US businessman and politician. He began his working life as an engineer in his father's plumbing appliance company in 1924. He became the Kohler company director in 1936, and director of Volrath,...

Kohut, Alexander
(1842-1894) US rabbi and scholar. Called to New York as rabbi of Congregation Ahavath Chesed in 1885, he soon launched a series of sermons against Reform Judaism. He helped found and taught at the conservative...

Kohut, George Alexander
(1874-1933) Hungarian-born US rabbi and educator. He was active in a wide range of Jewish educational projects including schools and camps. Though always in frail health, he was a generous and energetic...

Koivisto, Mauno Henrik
(1923) Finnish politician, prime minister 1968-70 and 1979-82, and president 1982-94. He was finance minister 1966-67 and led a Social Democratic Party coalition as prime minister 1968-70. He...

Kojève, Alexandre
(1902-1968) Russian-born French philosopher and interpreter of the German idealist philosopher, Georg Hegel. He gave a series of influential lectures on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) at the École...

Kok, Wim
(1938) Dutch trade unionist and politician, leader of the Partij van der Arbeid (PvdA; Labour Party) (PvdA) and prime minister 1994-2002. After an inconclusive general election in May 1994, Kok...

Kokhba, Bar
Hebrew leader of the revolt against the Hellenization campaign of Emperor Hadrian 132-35, when Palestine was a province of the Roman Empire. The uprising resulted in the razing of Jerusalem and...

Kokoschka, Oskar
(1886-1980) Austrian expressionist painter. Initially influenced by the Vienna Sezession painters, he painted vivid landscapes, and highly charged allegories and portraits, for example The Bride of the Wind...

Kolchak, Alexander Vasilievich
(1874-1920) Russian admiral, commander of the White forces in Siberia after the Russian Revolution. He proclaimed himself Supreme Ruler of Russia in 1918, but was later handed over to the Bolsheviks by his own...

Kollár, Jan
(1793-1852) Slovak poet who wrote in Czech. He was the chief exponent of pan-Slavism, which he saw as a cultural rather than a political philosophy. He wrote Slávy dcera/The Daughter of Slava 1824, a sonnet...

Kollataj (or Kollontaj), Hugo
(1750-1812) Polish politician, writer, and educational reformer. He helped draft the liberal Polish constitution in 1791, and served in government. When Prussia and Russia seized Polish territory in 1793,...

Kollwitz, Käthe
(1867-1945) German graphic artist and sculptor. One of the leading expressionists, she is noted for her harrowing and often disturbing drawings, etchings, lithographs, and woodcuts on the themes of social...

Kolodin, Irving
(1908-1988) US music critic. He wrote for the New York Sun 1932-50 and for the Saturday Review from 1947. Best known for the popular Guide to Recorded Music, he also wrote programme notes for the New York...

Kolombangara, Battle of
In World War II, inconclusive naval engagement between US and Japanese forces in July 1943 off Kolombangara, one of the Solomon Islands. Four Japanese transports escorted by a cruiser and four...

Koltsov, Aleksei Vasilievich
(1809-1842) Russian poet. His poetry is mainly concerned with his peasant background and nature, and in form and style is close to folklore. Through his friendship with the critic Viss ...

Komandorski Islands, Battle of the
In World War II, minor US naval victory over Japanese forces on 26 March 1943. A Japanese naval force escorting a troop convoy to reinforce the Aleutian Islands clashed with US naval forces and,...

Komi
Member of a Finnish people living mainly in the tundra and coniferous forests of the autonomous republic of Komi in the northwestern Urals, Russia. They raise livestock, grow timber,...

Komsomol
Russian name for the All-Union Leninist Communist Youth League of the former Soviet Union. Founded in 1918, it acted as the youth section of the Communist Party. ...

Komura, Jutaro
(1855-1911) Japanese politician and diplomat. Komura was foreign minister at the time of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), which broke out over control of...

Kon-Tiki
Legendary creator god of Peru and sun king who ruled the country later occupied by the Incas and was supposed to have migrated out into the Pacific. The name was used by explorer Thor Heyerdahl in...

Kondo, Nobutaki
(1856-1953) Japanese admiral of World War II. Kondo was the commander of the Southern Sea Force which sank the British battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse off the coast of Malaya 10 December 1941. He took...

Kondyles, George
(1879-1936) Greek general and politician. A royalist supporter, Kondyles led a number of military interventions in Greek political life, most notably to restore King George II to the throne in 1935. After...

Kong Zi
Pinyin form of Confucius, Chinese philosopher. ...

Kongo
African kingdom flourishing in the lower Congo region in the 14th-18th centuries. Although it possessed a sophisticated system of government, its power began to decline early in the 17th century...

Koniev, Ivan Stepanovich
(1898-1973) Soviet marshal who in World War II liberated Ukraine from the invading German forces 1943-44 and then in 1945 advanced from the south on Berlin to link up with the British-US forces. He...

Koninck, Philips
(1619-1688) Dutch painter. One of the greatest Dutch landscape painters, he created panoramic views of the Dutch lowlands in which much of the picture is taken up with sky. His brother Jacob Koninck...

Konoe, Fumimaro, Prince
(1891-1945) Japanese politician and prime minister 1937-39 and 1940-41. He helped to engineer the fall of the Tojo government in 1944 but committed suicide after being suspected of war crimes. He entered...

Konstantinov, Aleko
(1863-1897) Bulgarian satirical writer. His most famous work is Bai Ganyu (1895), in which the eponymous hero is shown to be a cunning, greedy, and ignorant peasant behind the fanglishade of a...

Koolhaas, Rem
(1934) Dutch architect, a postmodernist. His work includes the National Dance Theatre, The Hague, Netherlands, (1987); the Kunsthal art gallery in Rotterdam, Netherlands, (1992); Eurolille (railway...

Koons, Jeff
(1954) US artist. He gained both popularity and notoriety in the 1980s for his kitsch, often controversial, conceptual sculptures, and his self-promotion. Koons became an artist while working as a Wall...

Koontz, Dean R(ay)
(1945) US writer of popular thrillers based on themes such as time travel, technology, and serial killers. Best-selling titles include Lightning (1988), Midnight (1989), Cold Fire (1991), Dragon Tears...

Koop, called `Chick`
(1916) US surgeon and public health official. Surgeon-in-chief of Children's Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he also taught at the University of Pennsylvania (1948-81). Regarded as a superb...

Koopmans, Tjalling C(harles)
(1910-1985) Dutch-born US economist who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1975 for his work on `linear programming` or `activity analysis`, sharing the prize with Leonid Kantorovich, a Soviet...

Kopet-Dag
Mountain range on the frontier between Turkmenistan and Iran, extending about 650 km/404 mi along the border east of the Caspian Sea. The highest peak of the range in Turkmenistan, southwest of the...

Kopit, Arthur Lee
(1937) US dramatist whose plays made biting, satirical comment on contemporary American attitudes and values. His plays include the `tragifarce`Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm...

Koppel, Ted
(1940) English-born US television journalist. Originally a newscaster for WABC radio (1963-67), he switched to television reporting while covering the Vietnam War, becoming ABC's chief diplomatic...

Koran
The sacred book of Islam, written in Arabic. It is said to have been divinely revealed through the angel Jibra'el (Gabriel) to the prophet Muhammad between about AD 610 and 632. The Koran is the...

Korean
Person who is native to or an inhabitant of Korea; also the language and culture. There are approximately 33 million Koreans in South Korea, 15 million in North Korea, and 3 million elsewhere,...

Korean War
War from 1950 to 1953 between North Korea (supported by China) and ...

Korematsu v. US
Landmark US Supreme Court case of 1944 dealing with congressional measures forcing the relocation of citizens of certain national origins. Fred Korematsu (1919-2005), a US citizen of Japanese...

Koresh, David
(1959-1993) US Christian religious leader of the Branch Davidians, an offshoot of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church that believes in the literal apocalyptic end of history, as described in the biblical Book of...

Korin, Ogata
Japanese artist; see Korin Ogata. ...

Kornaros, Vitsentzos
Cretan poet. His masterpiece, the Erotokritos, written in local dialect, reflects the culture of Venetian-occupied Crete. In it the French romance Paris et Vienne is transformed into a thoroughly...

Kornilov, Lavr Georgyevich
(1870-1918) Russian general, commander-in-chief of the army, who in August 1917 launched an attempted coup, backed by officers, against the revolutionary prime minister, Kerensky. The coup failed, but...

Korolenko, Vladimir Galaktionovich
(1853-1921) Russian writer, publicist, and social activist. Exiled to Siberia in 1879, he wrote a series of stories about its people and way of life; for example, `Son Makara/Makar's Dream` 1885. Warm...

Koroma, Alhaji Abdul Karim
(1945) Sierra Leonean diplomat and lawyer, permanent representative to the United Nations (UN) from 1993, and permanent delegate to UNESCO. He was first elected to parliament in 1977, subsequently becoming...

Korsch, Karl
(1886-1961) German Marxist philosopher. In Marxism and Philosophy 1923 he argued against the dialectical materialism of Friedrich Engels. Always critical of the Soviet variety of Marxism, Korsch also...

Koryak
Member of a people living on the Kamchatka peninsula of Siberia, Russia. Most Koryaks are fishers, reindeer breeders, and fur trappers. Their religious practices combine...

kosher
Conforming to religious law with regard to the preparation and consumption of food; in Judaism, conforming to the food laws (kashrut) of the Torah (as laid down in Deuteronomy and Leviticus) and the...

Kosinski, Jerzy Nikodem
(1933-1991) Polish-born US author, in the USA from 1957. His childhood experiences as a Jew in Poland during World War II are recounted in The Painted Bird 1965, a popular success. The novel that established...

Kosovo Liberation Army
Paramilitary force that operated in the predominantly ethnic Albanian province of Kosovo, in Serbia, and fought for the independence of Kosovo. The KLA emerged as an organized movement in 1996, and...

Kosovo, Battles of
Turkish victories over the combined forces of Serbia, Bosnia, and Albania in 1389 and 50 years later over a combined Hungarian and Wallachian army in 1448. The Plain of Kosovo forms part of Serbia...

Kosovo, retreat from
In World War I, retreat of the Serbian Army before the advancing Austrians in November 1915. The Austrian army's sweep in north and central Serbia, combined with the Bulgarian army's advance in...

Kossuth, Lajos
(1802-1894) Hungarian nationalist and leader of the revolution of 1848. He proclaimed Hungary's independence of Habsburg rule, became governor of a Hungarian republic in 1849, and, when it was defeated by...

Kostof, Spiro (Konstantin)
(1936-1991) Turkish-born US architectural historian. A Yale-trained proponent of the `new` architectural history stressing the social context of buildings, he became a professor at the University of...

Kostov, Ivan
(1949) Bulgarian politician, prime minister 1997-2001. A trained economist, he was elected to the National Assembly in 1991, representing the right-of-centre Union of Democratic Forces (UDF)....

Koštunica, Vojislav
(1944) Serbian nationalist politician and president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (the separate countries of Montenegro and Serbia from 2006) from 2000 to 2003 after a disputed poll victory. A wave...

Kosygin, Alexei Nikolaievich
(1904-1980) Soviet politician, prime minister 1964-80. He was elected to the Supreme Soviet in 1938, became a member of the Politburo in 1946, deputy prime minister in 1960, and succeeded Khrushchev as...

Kosztolányi, Deszö
(1885-1936) Hungarian poet, novelist, and critic. He was associated with the literary magazine Nyugat/The West, founded 1908, but unlike others in that circle he was more interested in aesthetic than social...

Kotoku, Shusui
(1871-1911) Japanese journalist and political activist. A prolific writer, Kotoku moved from social democracy to pacifism to anarchist communism. In 1903, just before the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, he...

Koundouriotis, Paul
(1855-1935) Greek admiral and president 1924-29. He acted as regent on the death of King Alexander in 1920 and again on the departure of King George II in 1923, and was proclaimed president in 1924. He...

Kovac, Michal
(1930) Slovak politician, president 1993-98, when Czechoslovakia split in two to become the Czech and Slovak republics. He was known to favour some confederal arrangement with the Czech Republic and, in...

Kozyrev, Andrei Vladimirovich
(1951) Russian politician, foreign minister 1991-95. Appointed by Boris Yeltsin as Russia's foreign minister while it still had no official foreign policy as part of the USSR, Kozyrev inherited in...

Kościuszko, Tadeusz Andrzej
(1746-1817) Polish general and nationalist. He served with George Washington in the American Revolution (1776-83). He returned to Poland in 1784, fought against the Russian invasion that ended in the...

Kraft, Adam
(c. 1460-c. 1508) German sculptor. He worked in an elaborate late Gothic style, as seen in his tabernacle in the Church of St Lawrence in Nuremberg (1493-96), for which he made not only the sculptures but also the...

kraken
Gigantic sea monster, which, according to legend, lurks off the shores of Norway. It was first described in 1752 by the Norwegian bishop Pontoppidan. ...