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

Kyd, Thomas
(c. 1557-1595) English dramatist. He was the author of a bloody revenge tragedy, The Spanish Tragedy (printed about 1590), which anticipated elements present in Shakespeare's Hamlet. His Pompey the Great (1594)...

Kydland, Finn Erling
(1943) Norwegian economist. He received the 2004 Nobel Prize in Economics for his research on business cycles and time consistency in macroeconomic policy, an award he shared with US...

Kylemore Abbey
19th-century castle between Letterfrack and Leenane in the Pass of Kylemore, County Galway, Republic of Ireland. It was designed about 1860 by James Franklin Fuller and Ussher Roberts for Mitchell...

Küng, Hans
(1928) Swiss Roman Catholic theologian who was barred from teaching by the Vatican 1979 `in the name of the Church` because he had cast doubt on papal infallibility and on whe ...

Kyoto Protocol
International protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that was agreed at Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997. It commits the 186 signatory countries to binding...

Kyprianou, Spyros
(1932-2002) Cypriot politician, president 1977-88. Foreign minister 1961-72, he founded the federalist, centre-left Democratic Front in 1976. Educated...

Kyrgyzstan
Country in central Asia, bounded north by Kazakhstan, east by China, west by Uzbekistan, and south by Tajikistan. Government Under the 1993 constitution, as amended in 2003, there is a 75 member...

Kyrie Eleison
The words spoken or sung at the beginning of the Mass in the Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican churches. Following the Introit, it has three parts of text:`Kyrie Eleison,...

Kyteler, Alice
(lived 1324) In Irish history, a Kilkenny woman accused of heresy and witchcraft in 1324. Dame Alice, having married and outlived four husbands, was charged by the bishop of Ossory, Richard Ledred, with forming...

La Basée, Battle of
In World War I, inconclusive battle between British and German forces in northern France October 1914. The German 6th Army took Lille before the British force could secure the town, while the 4th...

La Condamine, Charles Marie de
(1701-1774) French soldier and geographer who was sent by the French Academy of Sciences to Peru 1735-43 to measure the length of an arc of the meridian. On his return journey he travelled the length of the...

La Cour, Paul
(1902-1956) Danish poet. He was an outward-looking writer, whose poetry changed with the mood of the times. After living in Paris in the 1920s, he brought modernism into Danish literature and his reflections...

La Farge, John
(1835-1910) US painter and ecclesiastical designer. He is credited with the revival of stained glass in America and also created woodcuts, watercolours, and murals. Lafarge visited Europe 1856 and the Far East...

La Farina, Giuseppe
(1815-1873) Italian historian and publisher of liberal newspapers. In Florence 1847 he established L'Alba, a democratic journal advocating Italian freedom and unity, but went back to Sicily on...

La Fayette, Gilbert Motier de
(c.1380-1462) French soldier who won distinction during the Hundred Years' War. In 1420 he was cre ...

La Follette, Belle Case
(1859-1931) US social reformer and journalist.She devoted herself to various social reforms, especially those involving women and children. She then became her husband's close adviser and assistant following...

La Follette, Philip Fox
(1897-1965) US politician and lawyer. He served as Republican governor of Wisconsin (1931-33), then as Progressive governor (1935-39), pushing through the first state unemployment insurance plan. He founded...

La Follette, Robert Marion
(1855-1925) US political leader. A senator 1906-25, he was a leader of the national progressive reform movement (see Progressivism) and unsuccessfully ran for president on the Progressive ticket in 1924. He...

La Follette, Robert Marion, Jr
(1895-1953) US politician. A Republican from Wisconsin, he was elected to the US Senate (1925-47) to serve out his father's unexpired term. A staunch liberal, he supported tax reform, social security, farm...

La Fosse, Antoine de
(c. 1653-1708) French dramatist. The best known of his tragedies is Manlius Capitolinus 1698, a slice of contemporary history, about the 1681 Spanish conspiracy against Venice. It is written in imitation of...

La Fresnaye, Roger de
(1885-1925) French painter. Emphasizing the decorative rather than the analytical aspects of cubism, his works are characterized by bright colours, as in Conquest of the Air 1913 (Museum of...

La Guardia, Fiorello (Henry)
(1882-1947) US Republican politician. He was mayor of New York 1933-45. Elected against the opposition of the powerful Tammany Hall Democratic Party organization, he improved the administration of the city,...

La Guma, Alex(ander)
(1925-1985) South African novelist. A black writer who was actively involved in political opposition to apartheid, La Guma was one of South Africa's most sophisticated writers in the black protest tradition....

La Hogue, Battle of
Naval battle fought off the Normandy coast in 1692 in which the combined British and Dutch fleets defeated the French. ...

La Hyre, Laurent de
(1606-1656) French baroque painter. The example of Nicolas Poussin directed him towards a delicate classicism. He painted decorative and religious works, and also landscapes, in which he came closest to...

La Marmora, Alfonso Ferrero
(1804-1878) Piedmontese general and politician, twice prime minister of the kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont, in 1859-60 and 1864. He commanded the Piedmontese forces that took part in the Crimean War, and...

La Mettrie, Julien Offray de
(1709-1751) French philosopher who put forward an intensely materialistic and atheistic view of the world and humanity. His most important work was L'Homme machine/Man-machine, 1747. His ideas were condemned...

La Mothe le Vayer, François
(1588-1672) French man of letters. Born in Paris, he was preceptor to the duc d'Orleans and also later, for a time, to his elder brother, the young Louis XIV, and wrote a series of manuals for the prince, such...

La Noue, François de
(1531-1591) French soldier and writer. He was widely known as `Bras-de-Fer` (`Iron Arm`) because an arm lost in battle was replaced by an iron one. He fought on the Huguenot side in the French Wars...

La Plante, Lynda
(1946) British television writer, producer, novelist, and occasional actor. She earned a reputation from writing hard-hitting dramatic miniseries such as Widows (1983) and Prime Suspect (1990), which...

La Rochefoucauld, François
(1613-1680) French writer. His `Réflexions, ou sentences et maximes morales/Reflections, or Moral Maxims`, published anonymously in 1665, is a collection of brief, epigrammatic, and cynical observations on...

La Taille, Jean de
(1540-1608) French dramatist. Among his works are the biblical tragedies Saul le furieux (1572) (to which he prefaced the essay `Art de la tragédie`) and La Famine, ou les Gabéonites (1573), and the...

La Tène
Prehistoric settlement at the east end of Lake Neuchâtel, Switzerland, which has given its name to a culture of the Iron Age dating from the 5th century BC to the Roman conquest. The site was...

La Tour du Pin, Count Patrice de
(1911-1975) French poet. His works include La Quête de joie 1932, Le Jeu du seul 1946, Une Somme de poésie 1946, La Contemplation errante 1948, Le Second Jeu 1959, and Petit théâtre crépusculaire 1964. ...

La Tour, Georges de
(1593-1652) French painter. Many of his pictures - which range from religious paintings to domestic genre scenes - are illuminated by a single source of light, with deep contrasts of light and shade, as in...

La Trobe, Charles Joseph
(1801-1875) Australian administrator. He was superintendent of Port Phillip district 1839-51 and first lieutenant governor of Victoria 1851-54. The Latrobe River in Victoria is named after him. ...

laager
Term used by the Boers in South Africa to describe an enclosed encampment; now more widely applied to the siege mentality of sections of the Afrikaner population. ...

Lab
Abbreviation for Labour, a political party in the UK; or Labrador, an area in northeastern Canada. ...

Labarum
Military standard of the Christian Roman emperors, an adaptation of the older cavalry standard. It was first used in 312 by Constantine the Great. ...

Labé, Louise
(c. 1524-c. 1566) French poet. She was a member of the poets, led by Maurice Scève, who flourished in her native Lyons in the 16th century. Her poetic works, published in 1555, consist of three elegies and 24 love...

Laberius, Decimus
(c. 115-43 BC) Roman knight who, with his contemporary Publius Syrus, gave literary shape to the mime, or burlesque drama. Fragments of his work survive, and justify the opinion of Horace who admired him for...

Labiche, Eugène Marin
(1815-1888) French dramatist. He wrote numerous light comedies and farces, including Un Chapeau de paille d'Italie/An Italian Straw Hat 1851, Le Voyage de M Perrichon/Monsieur Perrichon's Journey 1860, and La...

Labienus, Titus Atius
(c. 100-45 BC) Roman general and tribune of the plebs 63 BC. He was Julius...

Labille-Guiard, Adelaide
(1749-1803) French portrait painter. Originally a pastellist and miniature-painter, she turned to painting in oils and devoted herself entirely to portraiture. She received commissions from the royal family...

Labor, Department of
US government department created in 1913, after decades of campaigning by organized labour for a `voice in the cabinet`. Its purpose is to promote the welfare of working people and to improve...

Labor, Knights of
In US history, a national labour organization founded by Philadelphia tailor Uriah Stephens in 1869 and committed to cooperative enterprise, equal pay for both sexes, and an eight-hour day. The...

Labori, Fernand Gustave Gaston
(1860-1917) French lawyer who defended the army officer Alfred Dreyfus at his retrial on the trumped-up charge of treason in 1899. Labori's skilful advocacy succeeded in winning Dreyfus a pardon, though he...

Labouchere, Henry Dupré
(1831-1912) English diplomat, newspaper proprietor, and politician. In 1864 he entered Parliament as a Liberal, and became one of Gladstone's most loyal supporters. Later he sat as a Radical MP. He owned and...

Labour Day
Legal national holiday in honour of workers. In Canada and the USA, Labor Day is celebrated on the first Monday in September. In many countries it coincides with May Day, the first day of May. The...

labour market
Market that determines the cost and conditions of the work force, taking into consideration the demand of employers, the levels and availability of skills, and social conditions. ...

labour theory of value
In classical economics, the theory that the price (value) of a product directly reflects the amount of labour it involves. According to the theory, if the price...

Labourers, Statute of
Legislation in 1351 designed to prevent costs in wages and feudal services from growing out of control in the labour shortage caused by the Black Death. Labourers demanded higher wages from lords....

Labrouste, (Pierre François) Henri
(1801-1875) French architect. He was a pioneer in his use of such materials as iron. His Library of Ste Geneviēve, Paris, 1843-50, has a slender and elegant ironwork frame supporting a vaulted ceiling. The...

labyrinth
In archaeology, any sort of building with a complicated plan. The term was applied to the Palace of Minos at Knossos and also used by Herodotus to describe the funeral temple of Amenemhet III at...

Labyrinth
In Greek legend, the maze designed by the Athenian artisan Daedalus at Knossos in Crete for King Minos, as a home for the Minotaur - a monster, half man and half bull. After killing the Minotaur,...

Lacalle, Luis Alberto
(1941) Uruguayan politician and president 1989-94. His period of office promoted the continuation of democratic political and human rights practices that his predecessor Jose Mariá Sanguinetti had...

Laccnaire, Pierre-François
(1803-1836) French criminal, guillotined for murder. A petty criminal and army deserter, he became a dandy in the 1830s. In his memoirs 1835, he chillingly describes how he financed his high life by killing....

lace
Delicate, decorative, openwork textile fabric. Lace is a European craft with centres in Belgium, Italy, France, Germany, and England. Needlepoint or point lace (a development of embroidery)...

Lacey, Janet
(1903-1988) English philanthropist. As director of the Inter-Church Aid department 1952-68, she oversaw the foundation of Christian Aid Week in 1957 (renamed Christian Aid in 1964). She later moved to the...

laches
In law, neglect and unreasonable delay in enforcing an equitable right. If the court is satisfied that a plaintiff has taken an unnecessarily long time in pursuing a case, the action...

Lachesis
In Greek mythology, one of the Fates. ...

Lachish
Ancient city southwest of Jerusalem, destroyed 589 BC. Inscribed pottery fragments found there have thrown light on Hebrew manuscripts and the early development of the alphabet. ...

Lacock
Village in Wiltshire, England, mostly owned by the National Trust, including Lacock Abbey, Manor Farm, and Bewley Common, about 130 ha/321 acres in all; population (2001) 1,000. Lacock Abbey was a...

Laconia
Region of ancient Greece in the southeast of the Peloponnesus. It was bounded on the north from west to east by Messenia, Arcadia, and Argolis, and terminated in the south in the two promontories of...

lacquer
Waterproof resinous varnish obtained from Oriental trees Toxicodendron verniciflua, and used for decorating furniture and art objects. It can be applied to wood, fabric, leather, or other materials,...

Lacy, Franz Mauritz
(1725-1801) Austrian soldier. Appointed chief of staff to Count von Daun in 1758, he was responsible for directing Austrian strategy in...

Ladd-Franklin, Christine
(1847-1930) US psychologist and logician. In 1883 she proposed the `antilogism`, a syllogism concluding that if any two premises are true, the third must be false. Her experiments in psychological optics...

Ladd, Edwin Fremont
(1859-1925) US educator and politician. As a chemist and president of North Dakota State Agricultural College, he led a statewide campaign for pure food testing. A progressive Republican, he was elected to the...

Ladd, William
(1778-1841) US pacifist. A former sea captain, farmer, and abolitionist, he became a leading pacifist from c. 1819, founding a number of new peace groups. He lectured and wrote peace propaganda and was one of...

Ladies' Land League
Irish peasant-rights organization set up by Anna and Fanny Parnell in 1881; its supporters and activists were women. ...

Ladin
An ethnic community (numbering about 16,000) in the Dolomites, southern Tyrol, Austria, whose language (Ladin) derives directly from Latin; they may be descended from the Etruscans and other early...

Ladislas
(1380-1414) King of Naples from 1386. The heir of the Anjou dynasty, he became king when he was six, but his reign was harried by the French claimants to his throne. Despite this, Ladislas led an aggressive...

Lady
In the UK, the formal title of the daughter of an earl, marquess, or duke, and of any woman whose husband's rank is above that of baronet or knight; the title `Lady` is prefixed to her first...

lady chapel
In church architecture, a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary, usually a prolongation of the choir, built eastward of the high altar and projecting from the m ...

Lady Chatterley's Lover
Novel by D H Lawrence, printed privately in Florence in 1928 and in an expurgated form in England in 1932; in its original form it was not published until 1959 in...

Lady Day
British name for the Christian festival (25 March) of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary; until 1752 it was the beginning of the legal year in England, and it is still a quarter day (date for the...

Ladysmith
Town in province of KwaZulu-Natal (formerly Natal), South Africa, 185 km/115 mi northwest of Durban, near the Klip River; population (1991) 12,700. It has textile, clothing, and other light...

LAES
Abbreviation for Latin American Economic System, organization for cooperation in the region. ...

LaFarge, John
(1880-1963) US Catholic priest and social activist. A Jesuit who did pastoral work among African-American Catholics in Maryland (1911-26), he devoted much of his later life to promoting racial justice and...

Lafayette, Marie-Madeleine
(1634-1693) French author. Her Mémoires of the French court are keenly observed, and her La Princesse de Clèves (1678) is the first French psychological novel and roman à clef (`novel with a key`), in...

Lafever, Minard
(1798-1854) US builder and architect. His five builders' guides (1829-56) spread the Greek Revival style nationwide, while his many New York City churches popularized various other revival styles, notably...

Lafitte, Jean
(c. 1780-c. 1825) Pirate in America. Suspected of complicity with the British, he was attacked by American forces soon after the outbreak of the Anglo-American War 1812. He proved his loyalty to General Andrew...

Lafontaine, Henri Marie
(1854-1943) Belgian international lawyer and president of the International Peace Bureau (1907-1943). Lafontaine was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1913 for his efforts to establish and further the...

Lafontaine, Louis Hyppolyte
(1807-1864) Canadian politician. He formed two governments with Robert Baldwin, 1842-43 and 1848-51, and held the position of attorney general for Lower Canada. He introduced the Rebellion Losses Bill 1848,...

Lafontaine, Oskar
(1943) German socialist politician, federal deputy chair of the Social Democrat Party (SPD) from 1987 and chair from 1995. Leader of the Saar regional branch of the SPD from 1977 and former mayor of...

Laforet, Carmen Díaz
(1921-2004) Spanish novelist. Chiefly remembered for Nada/Nothing 1944, a gloomy picture of an adolescent's arrival in post-Civil War Barcelona (her birthplace), her other works include La isla y los...

Laforgue, Jules
(1860-1887) French poet. He experimented with new kinds of verse forms, rhythms, and vocabulary, and pioneered free verse. His work, which was also influenced by the Symbolists, is often marked by a lyrical...

Lafreri, Antonio
(c.1512-1577) French-born Italian engraver and publisher. Lafreri is best known for devising `Lafreri atlases`- atlases in which sheet maps by various cartographers are bound into a single (unique) volume...

lagan
Legal term for wreckage lying on the ocean floor. See flotsam, jetsam, and lagan. ...

Lagash
Sumerian city north of Shatra, Iraq, under independent and semi-independent rulers from about 3000-2700 BC. Besides objects of high artistic value, it has provided about 30,000 clay tablets...

Lagerkvist, Pär Fabian
(1891-1974) Swedish writer. His work includes lyric poetry, dramas, and novels. At first influenced by expressionism, notably in his poems Ã…ngest/Angst (1916) and Kaos/Chaos (1918), he later matured towards a...

Lagerlöf, Selma Ottiliana Lovisa
(1858-1940) Swedish novelist. Her first work was the romantic historical novel Gösta Berling's saga/The Story of Göst Berling (1891). The children's fantasy Nils Holgerssons underbara resa/The Wonderful...

Lagos (Escobar), Ricardo
(1938) Chilean economist and politician, president 2000-06. Widely regarded as a moderate leftist, Lagos was Chile's first socialist president since Allende was overthrown in 1973. Lagos, who won in the...

Laharpe, Jean François de
(1739-1803) French writer. He wrote a number of tragedies, including Warwick 1763, but is now best remembered for his critical lectures Lycée, ou Cours de littérature ancienne et moderne 1799-1805. He was...

Lahore Resolution
Meeting in Lahore in March 1940 at which the Indian politician Muhammad Ali Jinnah led the Muslim League in demanding the eventual partition of India and the creation of a Muslim state of Pakistan. ...

Lahoud (or Lahud), General Emile
Lebanese Maronite Christian politician, president from 1998. A career army oficer, Lahoud was appointed commander of the Lebanese army in November 1989, and with the backing of Syria's president...

Lahr, Bert
(1895-1967) US actor. A comedian with a loveably ugly face, he mugged and gagged his way through impossible situations that he created for his characters. After touring in vaudeville with his wife (1916-27),...

lai
A medieval lyrical poem in pairs of stanzas in different metrical forms; also the music set to such poems. ...

Laib, Konrad
(lived mid-15th century) Austrian painter. He was active in Salzburg. His work shows both Italian and German traits; an example is his crowded and ornamental Crucifixion (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). ...

Laidlaw, William
(1780-1845) Scottish poet. He is best known as Walter Scott's secretary and general adviser from 1817. He also wrote several lyrics and ballads, notably `Lucy's Flittin`, and compiled part of the Edinburgh...