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

Lango
Member of a Nilotic people living in central Uganda. The Lango are cultivators and cattle herders on the grasslands north of Lake Kioga. Traditionally, they were governed by a system of age sets...

Langobard
Another name for Lombard, member of a Germanic people. ...

Langston, John Mercer
(1829-1897) US educator and public official. He was elected township clerk in 1855, the first African-American elected to public office. During the Civil War, he worked to recruit black troops and after the...

Langtry, Lillie
(1853-1929) English actor. She was the mistress of the future Edward VII. She was known as the `Jersey Lily` from her birthplace in the Channel Islands and considered to be one...

language, philosophy of
Offshoot of logic concerned with the analysis of such notions as truth, facts, meaning, concept, and sentence. It is different from linguistic philosophy, which is not a subject but an approach to...

Languet, Hubert
(1518-1581) French writer and diplomat. He travelled widely in Europe before entering the service of Augustus I, Elector of Saxony, in 1559, whom he represented at the French court from 1561-72. He narrowly...

Lanhydrock House
House in Cornwall, England, 3 km/2 mi southeast of Bodmin. The original 17th-century house was largely destroyed by fire in 1881, but the north wing and detached granite gatehouse survived, and...

Lanier, Sidney
(1842-1881) US flautist and poet. His Poems (1877) contain interesting metrical experiments, in accordance with the theories expounded in his Science of English Verse (1880), on the relation of verse to music. ...

Lankavatara S?tra
One of the most important and influential Buddhist texts. It was written around 300 AD and is found in the canon of the Yogacara School, which emerged in the 5th century. This school emphasized the...

Lannes, Jean
(1769-1809) French soldier who served in numerous campaigns under Napoleon. He was named by Napoleon as one of the 18 marshals of the empire in 1804. His most renowned military exploit was the brilliant assault...

Lanrezac, Charles Louis Marie
(1852-1925) French soldier. He saw action in the Franco-Prussian War and Tunisia. At the start of World War I, he commanded the 5th Army which was driven back from the Sambre, precipitating the retreat from...

Lansbury, George
(1859-1940) British Labour politician, leader in the Commons 1931-35. He was a member of Parliament for Bow from 1910-12 - when he resigned to force a by-election on t ...

Lansing, Robert
(1864-1928) US politician and lawyer. In 1915 he succeeded William J Bryan as secretary of state. He was one of the five delegates to represent the USA at the Inter-Allied Peace Conference in Paris in 1919....

Lanson, Gustave
(1857-1934) French literary critic. He became professor of French literature at the Sorbonne 1919 and was director of the Ecole Normale Supérieure 1919-27. After the death of Brunetière, he was the chief...

lantern
In architecture, an ornamental turret erected on the roof or dome of a building to provide light (and also sometimes providing ventilation). A lantern may be square, circular, or polygonal in plan;...

Lanuvium
Ancient city of Latium, 30 km/19 mi southeast of Rome. Its inhabitants were granted Roman citizenship 338 BC, but its chief magistrate and council continued to be called dictator and senatus...

Lanyon, Charles
(1813-1889) English-born civil engineer and architect, who created some of the most important Victorian buildings in Ireland, chiefly in the industrial city of Belfast. As county surveyor for Antrim, Lanyon's...

Lanzi, Luigi
(1732-1810) Italian art historian. His Storia Pittorica della Italia/A History of Italian Painting 1796 was the first attempt to treat the schools of painting in historical sequence and is seen as a landmark in...

Lao
People who live along the Mekong river system in Laos (2 million) and northern Thailand (9 million). The Lao language is a member of the Sino-Tibetan family. The majority of Lao live in rural...

Laocoön
In classical mythology, a Trojan priest of Apollo and a visionary, brother of Anchises. He and his sons were killed by serpents when he foresaw disaster for Troy in the Trojan horse left by the...

Laomedon
In Greek mythology, the founder and king of Troy, father of Priam. He refused to pay Poseidon and Apollo for building his city walls, and Poseidon sent a sea monster to ravage his country and Apollo...

Laon, Battle of
In the Napoleonic Wars, French defeat by a joint British-Prussian army 9-10 March 1814. Napoleon Bonaparte had taken up a position at Laon, a major fortress northeast of Paris, with about 45,000...

Laos
Landlocked country in southeast Asia, bounded north by China, east by Vietnam, south by Cambodia, west by Thailand, and northwest by Myanmar. Government Laos is a one-party socialist republic. The...

Laotian
An Indochinese people who live along the Mekong river system. There are approximately 9 million Laotians in Thailand and 2 million in Laos. The Laotian language is a Thai member of the...

Lapiths
In Greek mythology, a people of the mountains of Thessaly, northern Greece, often represented in Greek art fighting with their neighbours, the centaurs (creatures half man, half horse), at the...

Lar
Etruscan word meaning lord, king, or hero. It was used as a first name (a praenomen), notably by the Etruscan king Porsena of Clusium. ...

Larbaud, Valéry
(1881-1957) French writer. His Poésies de A O Barnabooth 1908, poems written in free verse, show the influence of Walt Whitman. Some years later he published the prose work A O Barnabooth, ses oeuvres...

larceny
In the USA, and formerly in the UK, theft, the taking of personal property without consent and with the intention of permanently depriving the owner of it. In the UK until 1827 larceny was divided...

Larcom, Lucy
(1824-1893) US poet. Her collections of simple verse about largely domestic matters include Roadside Poems 1876 and Hillside and Seaside in Poetry 1877. ...

Lardner, Ring(gold Wilmer)
(1885-1933) US short-story writer. A sports reporter, he based his characters on the people he met professionally. His collected volumes of short stories include You Know Me, Al (1916), Round Up (1929), and...

lares and penates
In Roman mythology, spirits of the farm and departed ancestors (lares) and of the store cupboard (penates). They joined to form a single group of household guardians represented by small statues;...

Largillièrre, Nicolas de
(1656-1746) French rococo painter. Having studied in Antwerp, he moved to London and worked for Peter Lely, filling in still-life and landscape details in Lely's portraits. In 1682 he went to Paris, where he...

Largo Caballero, Francisco
(1869-1946) Spanish politician; leader of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE). He became prime minister of the Popular Front government elected in February 1936 and remained in office for...

Larguier, Léo
(1878-1950) French writer. He published poetry, including La Maison du poète 1903, Les Isolements 1905, Jacques 1907, and Les Ombres 1935; novels, including Sabine 1926 and L'An mille 1933; a tragedy, Les...

Larionov, Mikhail Fedorovich
(1881-1964) Russian painter. He was active in Paris from 1919. With his wife Natalia Goncharova, he pioneered a semi-abstract style known as Rayonnism in which subjects appear to be deconstructed by rays of...

Larkin, James
(1876-1947) Irish labour leader. He founded the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (ITGWU) in 1909. Depressed by his failure in the 1913 Dublin lockout, he went to the USA in 1914. He returned to...

Larkin, Philip Arthur
(1922-1985) English poet. His perfectionist, pessimistic verse appeared in The Less Deceived (1955), and in the later volumes The Whitsun Weddings (1964) and High Windows (1974), which confirmed him as one of...

Larkin, Thomas Oliver
(1802-1858) US merchant and diplomatic agent. He moved to California in 1832 and became the US consul to California (1844-48) and a confidential agent of the US government (1845-48). On behalf of President...

Laroon, John Marcellus
(1679-1774) English painter. He was one of Godfrey Kneller's assistants and a friend of William Hogarth. He imitated Hogarth in conversation pieces and spirited drawings of concerts and music parties that also...

Larousse, Pierre Athenase
(1817-1875) French grammarian and lexicographer. His encyclopedic dictionary, the Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXème siècle/Great Universal 19th-Century Dictionary (1865-76), cont ...

Larsen, Henning
(1925) Danish architect. His works include the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs at Riyadh (considered to be his masterpiece), the opera house at Compton Verney, Warwickshire, England (1989), and the...

Larsen, Jack Lenor
(1927) US textile designer. In 1953 he started a successful firm to mass produce textiles with a handwoven quality for such commissions as Lever House and Sears Tower. Larsen was...

Larsson, Carl
(1853-1919) Swedish painter, engraver, and illustrator. His watercolours of domestic life, subtly coloured and full of detail, were painted for his book Ett Hem/A Home 1899. ...

Larunda
Probably a Sabine earth goddess. In late Roman mythology she was identified with the nymph Lara, who told Juno of Jupiter's love for the nymph Juturna. The god deprived her of speech and sent her to...

Las Casas, Bartolomé de
(1474-1566) Spanish missionary, historian, and colonial reformer, known as the Apostle of the Indies. He was one of the first Europeans to call for the abolition of Indian slavery...

lascar
East Indian sailor. The word derives from the Persian lashkar (`army`), and lascars were originally a class of sepoy (Indian soldier). ...

Lascaux
Cave system near Montignac-sur-Vezère in the Dordogne, southwestern France, with prehistoric wall art, discovered in 1940. It is richly decorated with realistic and symbolic paintings of...

Lasdun, Denys Louis
(1914-2001) English modernist architect. Many of his designs emphasize the horizontal layering of a building, creating the effect of geological strata extending into the surrounding city or landscape. This...

laser mass spectroscopy
Forensic technique whereby a laser beam is used to scan a minute sample of evidence - such as particles of paint or hair. The beam releases a gas of charged ions, each of which can be identified...

Lasker-Schuler, Else
(1869-1945) German writer and poet. She was closely connected with many leading expressionist intellectuals. Her vivid imagination and ecstatic language emerged in the dream and fantasy world of Die Nachte Tino...

Lasker, Gabriel W(ard)
(1912-2002) English physical anthropologist. He compared the physical characteristics of Chinese, Mexicans, and Peruvians, and wrote extensively on population genetics in Britain as traced by surnames. Lasker...

Laski (or a Lasco), Jan
(1499-1560) Polish religious reformer, who tried to win Poland over to the cause of the Protestant Reformation in the mid-16th century. While in exile in England, he was an associate...

Laski, Harold Joseph
(1893-1950) English political theorist. Professor of political science at the London School of Economics from 1926, he taught a modified Marxism and was active in the Socialist League during the 1930s. He...

Laski, Marghanita
(1915-1988) English writer and broadcaster. Her first novel was Love on the Supertax (1944), which was followed by, among others, Tory Heaven (1948), Little Boy Lost (1949), The Victorian Chaise-Longue...

Lassalle, Ferdinand
(1825-1864) German socialist. He was imprisoned for his part in the revolutions of 1848, during which he met the philosopher Karl Marx, and in 1863 founded the General Association of German Workers ( later the...

Lassaw, Ibram
(1913-2003) Egyptian-born US sculptor. He specialized in architectural sculpture and abstract welded wire works, as in Galactic Cluster &hash;1 (1958). In 1936 he cofounded and later became president...

Lasseter's Reef
Legendary location of a rich gold-bearing area in Rawlinson Range, Western Australia, allegedly discovered in 1897 by H B Lasseter (1880-c. 1931); neither he nor anyone else could...

Lasswell, Harold D(wight)
(1902-1978) US political scientist. His behavioural approach to politics included work on decision-making processes, or `policy sciences,` that incorporated psychology, political science, and sociology....

Last Judgement, The
Fresco in the Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Rome, painted by...

Last Supper, The
Fresco by Leonardo da Vinci 1495-98 in the refectory of the Dominician friary of Sta Maria delle Grazie, Milan. Here he applied the principles he had developed in a treatise on painting, carefully...

Lastman, Pieter Pietersz.
(1583-1633) Dutch painter and engraver. He painted mainly religious and mythological subjects, his style strongly influenced by early baroque painting in Rome and also by Adam Elsheimer, especially in his...

Lateran Treaties
Series of agreements that marked the reconciliation of the Italian state with the papacy in 1929. They were hailed as a propaganda victory for the fascist regime. The treaties involved recognition...

latifundium
In ancient Rome, a large agricultural estate designed to make maximum use of cheap labour, whether free workers or slaves. In present-day Italy, Spain, and South America, the term latifondo refers...

Latimer, Hugh
(c. 1485-1555) English bishop. After his conversion to Protestantism in 1524 during the Reformation he was imprisoned several times but was protected by cardinal Thomas Wolsey and Henry VIII. After the accession...

Latin American Economic System
International coordinating body for economic, technological, and scientific cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean, aiming to create and promote multinational enterprises in the region and...

Latin League
Federation of cities of ancient Latium (modern Lazio, west central Italy). When the Roman Republic was established (traditionally 509 BC), the cities of Latium, other than Rome, formed the Latin...

Latin literature
Literature written in the Latin language. Early literature Only a few hymns and inscriptions survive from the earliest period of Latin literature before the 3rd century BC. Greek influence began...

Latini, Brunetto
(c. 1220-1294) Italian man of letters and public affairs. He was attached to the Guelph party (see Guelph and Ghibelline) and held some of the most important offices in the republic. His most noted work is an...

Latitudinarian
In the Church of England from the 17th century, a member of a group of priests, which included J R Tillotson (1630-1694, archbishop of Canterbury) and Edward Stillingfleet (1635-1699, bishop of...

Latium
Latin name for Lazio, a region of west central Italy surrounding Rome. ...

Latrobe, Benjamin Henry
(1764-1820) English-born US architect. He was appointed surveyor of the US Capitol (1803-17) and supervised its construction, following William Thornton's plans, and making his own interior alterations....

Latsis, John
(1910-2003) Greek multimillionaire shipping tycoon who, in addition to a tanker and cargo fleet, had oil and construction interests. His donation of £2 million to the UK Conservative Party drew renewed...

Latter-day Saint
Member of the Christian sect known as the Mormons. ...

Lattimore, Richmond (Alexander)
(1906-1984) US classicist and poet. His many translations from Greek into English, notably Pindar (1947) and the Iliad (1951), made him the best-known and most highly regarded translator of his day. With...

Lattre de Tassigny, Jean de
(1889-1952) French general. He served in World War I, and in World War II commanded the 14th Division during the German invasion 1940. He was imprisoned by the Germans after the armistice but escaped to the UK...

Latvia
Country in northern Europe, bounded east by Russia, north by Estonia, north and northwest by the Baltic Sea, south by Lithuania, and southeast by Belarus. Government Latvia is a multiparty...

Latvian literature
Religious works were composed in the 16th century or earlier but an ancient heritage of oral folk song survived to be a major influence on the literature of the mid-19th-century national...

Laubach, Frank (Charles)
(1884-1970) US missionary and pioneer educator. A Protestant missionary sent to evangelize the Moro tribespeople of the Philippines (1915-36), he began to combat illiteracy by devising his own system of...

Laube, Heinrich
(1806-1884) German novelist and playwright, born at Sprottau, Silesia. In spite of a career interrupted by political involvement (he was a leader of the `Young Germany` movement), his output of dramas and...

Laud, William
(1573-1645) English priest; archbishop of Canterbury from 1633. Laud's High Church policy, support for Charles I's unparliamentary rule, censorship of the press, and persecution of the Puritans all aroused...

Laugerud Garcia, Kjell Eugenio
(1930) Guatemalan soldier and right-wing politician, president 1974-78. Standing as the candidate of the right-wing, army-backed Movement of National Liberation (MLN), he was elected president in...

Laughing Cavalier, The
Painting by the Dutch artist Frans Hals 1624 (Wallace Collection, London). It represents a military officer of...

Laughlin, James
(1914-1997) US publisher. In 1936, drawing on his family's fortune, derived from the Jones and Laughlin Steel Co, he founded New Directions Press, which specialized in publishing quality literary works deemed...

launderette
Premises containing coin-operated washing machines for public use. The first launderette, called a washetaria, was opened in Fort Worth, Texas in 1934; they were introduced in London by the Bendix...

Laurana, Francesco
(c. 1430-c. 1502) Dalmatian sculptor and medallist who worked in Naples, Provence, and Sicily. His work includes a series of portrait busts of women connected with the royal house of Naples, including those of...

Laurana, Luciano
(c. 1422-1479) Dalmatian architect. A relative of the sculptor Francesco Laurana, he worked in Italy, in particular designing part of the ducal palace of Urbino for Federigo da Montefeltro. It was later completed...

Laurance, John
(1750-1810) English-born US politician. He served as judge advocate general of the Continental Army during the American Revolution and presided over the trial of Major John André. He was a member of the...

Laurence, (Jean) Margaret
(1926-1987) Canadian writer. Her novels include The Stone Angel 1964 and A Jest of God 1966, both set in the Canadian prairies, and The Diviners 1974. She also wrote short stories set in Africa, where she lived...

Laurencin, Marie
(1885-1956) French painter and graphic artist. She became popular in the 1920s for stylized portraits in pale pinks and blues, often of girls with oval faces and large eyes, the features...

Laurens, Henri
(1885-1954) French sculptor. Although his early works show the influence of Auguste Rodin, he became, with Jacques Lipchitz, the leading cubist sculptor, creating multiplaned geometric forms, often using...

Laurens, Henry
(1724-1792) US Revolutionary politician. A wealthy businessman, he entered the second Continental Congress in 1777 and served as its second president (1777-78). In 1780 he was captured by the British while on...

Laurentum
At one time the capital of the ancient region of Latium, Italy. Under the empire, its inhabitants joined with those of nearby Lavinium, and Laurentum ceased to exist as a separate community. ...

Laurenziana, Bibliotheca
Library in Florence, opened in 1571. It was built to house the valuable collection of books and manuscripts founded by Cosimo de' Medici and enlarged by other members of the Medici family in the...

Laurier, Wilfrid
(1841-1919) Canadian politician, leader of the Liberal Party 1887-1919 and prime minister 1896-1911. The first French Canadian to hold the office, he encouraged immigration into Canada from Europe and the...

Lausanne, Treaty of
Peace settlement in 1923 between Greece and Turkey after Turkey refused to accept the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920, which would have made peace with the western Allies. It involved the...

Lauterpacht, Hersch
(1897-1960) Polish-born lawyer who settled in England and became an eminent figure in international law. As a member of the British War Crimes Executive 1945-46 he helped institute the Nuremberg Trials of...

Laval, Pierre
(1883-1945) French extreme-rightwing politician, he gravitated between the wars from socialism through the centre ground (serving as prime minister and foreign secretary 1931-32 and again 1935-36) to the...

lavatory
Another name for a toilet. ...

Lave, Camara
(1928-1980) Guinean writer, one of the first sub-Saharan African writers to win an international reputation. He won wide acclaim for his first book L'Enfant noir/An African Child (1953) (known in the USA as...

Lavelle, Patrick
(1858-1886) Irish Catholic priest, who was closely associated with the National Brotherhood of St Patrick, a front organization for the Fenians. Following papal censure Lavelle became parish priest of Cong,...