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 The information may have been taken offline because it is outdated.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

Lyceum
Ancient Athenian gymnasium and garden, with covered walks, where the philosopher Aristotle taught. It was southeast of the city and named after the nearby temple of Apollo Lyceus. ...

Lycia
Ancient coastal district of southwestern Asia Minor, between Caria and Pamphylia. The Lycians feature in Homer's Iliad as allies of Troy. Lycia was colonized by Greeks at an early date. It was under...

Lycomedes
In Greek mythology, a king of Skyros. Achilles was sent to his court, disguised as a girl, by his mother in an attempt to prevent him going to the Trojan War. Here Achilles became the father of...

Lycophron
(lived 4th century BC) Greek poet and scholar, born at Chalcis in Euboea. He was commissioned by Ptolemy Philadelphus to arrange the works of the comic poets in the museum of the Library of Alexandria, and while thus...

Lycurgus
(c. 390-324 BC) Athenian orator. As one of the Attic orators he supported the policies of Demosthenes against Macedonia. Lycurgus administered the finances of Athens 338-326, and during this time he increased its...

Lycurgus
Spartan lawgiver. He was believed to have been a member of the royal house of the ancient Greek city-state of Sparta, who, while acting as regent, gave the Spartans their constitution and system...

Lyddite
British explosive used for filling artillery shells in World War I. Actually molten and cast picric acid, the name was adopted in order to conceal the nature of the substance and taken from the...

Lydgate, John
(c. 1370-1449) English poet. He was a Benedictine monk and later prior. His numerous works, including poems, moral tales, legends of the saints, and histories, were often translations or adaptations. His chief...

Lydia
Ancient kingdom in Anatolia (7th-6th centuries BC), with its capital at Sardis. The Lydians were the first Western people to use standard coinage. Their last king, Croesus, was defeated by the...

Lyly, John
(c. 1553-1606) English dramatist and author. His romance Euphues, or the Anatomy of Wit (1578), with its elaborate stylistic devices, gave rise to the word euphuism for a mannered rhetorical style. It was followed...

Lyman, Theodore
(1833-1897) US zoologist and soldier. He was one of the first trustees of the Museum of Comparative Zoology and he pursued his studies both at home and abroad. He volunteered during the Civil War and was...

Lyme Park
House in Disley, Cheshire, England. It is partly Elizabethan with 18th- and 19th-century additions by Giacomo Leoni (c. 1686-1746) and Lewis Wyatt (1814-17). The house stands in 530 ha/1309...

Lynceus
In Greek mythology, a son of Aegyptus and husband of Hypermestra. See Danaüs. ...

Lynch, Charles
(1736-1796) US soldier and judge. He commanded volunteers under Nathanael Greene during the American Revolution. Lynch had a reputation for high-handedness and extralegality in dealing with Tories, especially...

Lynch, Jack (John Mary)
(1917-1999) Irish politician, Taoiseach (prime minister) 1966-73 and 1977-79, and leader of Fianna Fáil 1966-79. Lynch entered the Dáil (lower chamber of the Irish parliament) in 1948 and served in...

lynching
Killing of an alleged offender by an individual or group having no legal authority. In the USA it originated in 1780 with creation of a `committee of vigilance` in Virginia; it is named after a...

Lynd, Robert
(1879-1949) Northern Irish essayist and critic. His intimate, witty essays covered a wide range of topics, and were collected in several volumes, including The Art of Letters 1920, The Blue Lion 1923, and In...

Lyndsay, David
Alternative spelling of David Lindsay, Scottish poet. ...

Lüneburg Heath
Low, sandy area in Lower Saxony, Germany, between the Elbe and Aller rivers and southeast of Hamburg; area 200 sq km/77 sq mi. The chief city on it is Lüneburg. It was here that more than a million...

Lynedoch, Thomas Graham, 1st Baron
(1748-1843) British general. He was aide-de-camp to Sir John Moore in Sweden and in Spain, and was present at the Corunna retreat. His most memorable victory was the defeat of the French at Barossa in March...

Lyon, Nathaniel
(1818-1861) US soldier. A West Point graduate of 1841, he served in the Mexican War. The North's first hero of the Civil War, his prompt action as commander of the garrison in St Louis saved the city for the...

Lyonesse
In British legend, a fertile country between Land's End, Cornwall, and the Isles of Scilly, which disappeared beneath the sea. It was the birthplace...

Lyons, Francis Stewart Leland
(1923-1983) Irish historian, a noted authority on the nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell. He was professor of history at the University of Kent 1964-74 and provost of Trinity College, Dublin...

Lyotard, Jean François
(1924-1998) French philosopher, one of the leading theorists of postmodernism. His central concern is the role of knowledge in contemporary society. A member of Marxist groups in the 1950s and 1960s, he became...

Lyric Theatre
Theatre in London's West End. Designed by English theatre architect C J Phipps (1835-1897) and opened in 1888, it is Shaftesbury Avenue's oldest surviving theatre. It holds 967...

Lyric Theatre Hammersmith
Theatre in Hammersmith, London, opened in 1895, with 540 seats. Under the management of Nigel Playfair 1918-33, the standard of performances was raised to compete with the West End...

Lysander
(died 395 BC) Spartan politician and admiral. He brought the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta to a successful conclusion by capturing the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami in 405 BC, and by starving Athens...

Lysimachus
(360-281 BC) Macedonian general under Alexander the Great, and later king of Thrace. He was one of a number of generals who struggled for power in the Wars of the Diadochi which followed the death of Alexander...

Lysippus (or Lysippos)
(lived 4th century BC) Greek sculptor. He made a series of portraits of Alexander the Great (Roman copies survive, including examples in the British Museum and the Louvre) and also sculpted the Apoxyomenos, an athlete...

Lysistrata
Greek comedy by Aristophanes, produced 411 BC. The women of A ...

Lyte, Henry Francis
(1793-1847) British cleric, author of the hymns `Abide with me` and `Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven`. ...

Lytes Cary
Medieval manor house in Somerset, England, 10 km/6 mi north of Yeovil. Additional buildings were added to the house in almost every century from the 14th. Walter Jenner designed the...

Lyttelton, Alfred
(1857-1913) British politician and athlete. He was secretary of state for the colonies 1903-05, when he was much criticized for his conduct of African affairs. He was a famous athlete in his day, playing...

Lytton, (Edward) Robert Bulwer
(1831-1891) British colonial administrator. As viceroy of India 1876-80, he pursued a controversial `Forward` frontier policy. Only son of the novelist Bulwer Lytton, he was himself a poet under the...

Lytton, Henry
(1867-1936) English actor. He made his debut at the age of 17 and was promoted after three years to the Savoy Company, and from there to the D'Oyly Carte Company. He delighted audiences with his appearances in...

Lützen, Battle of
In the Napoleonic Wars, disastrous surprise attack on Napoleon Bonaparte by a joint Prussian and Russian army under Count Wittgenstein 2 May 1813. Napoleon was moving toward the Elbe with about...

Lützen, Battle of
In the Thirty Years' War, Swedish victory 16 November 1632 over an Imperial army under Albrecht von Wallenstein 45 km/28 mi west of Leipzig, Germany. The Swedish army, about 19,000 troops was led by...

Ma Yuan
(c. 1190-1224) Chinese landscape painter. He worked in the lyrical tradition of the southern Song court. His paintings show a subtle use of tone and gentler brushwork than those of his contemporary...

Maastricht Treaty
Treaty establishing the European Union (EU). Agreed in 1991 and signed in 1992, the treaty took effect on 1 November 1993 following ratification by...

Maat
Egyptian goddess of truth and justice. The souls of the dead were weighed against the feather of truth (her symbol), or against her statue. The Egyptians believed that all things were governed by...

Maathai, Wangari Muta
(1940) Kenyan environmentalist and politician. She founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental grassroots organization, in 1977. In 1971 she became the first female black African to gain a PhD and...

Mab, Queen
Queen of the fairies and Oberon's wife, according to the Nymphidia of Michael Drayton and the Hesperides of Robert Herrick. Shakespeare, in A Midsummer Night's Dream, gives the honour to Titania. ...

Mabillon, Jean
(1632-1707) French historian. He joined the Benedictines (1653). From 1664 he edited huge numbers of manuscripts at the abbey of St Germain-des-Prés in Paris. The result was Acta Sanctorum ordinis Sancti...

Mabinogion, The
Collection of medieval Welsh myths and folk tales put together in the mid-19th century and drawn mainly from two manuscripts:The White Book of Rhydderch (1300-25) and The Red...

Mabuse, Jan
(c. 1478-c. 1533) Flemish painter. His visit to Italy in 1508 started a new vogue in Flanders for Italianate ornament and classical detail in painting, including sculptural nude figures, as in his Neptune and...

Mac Liammóir, Mícheál
(1899-1978) Irish actor, artist, and writer. After establishing a reputation as a painter and designer, Mac Liammóir founded the Gate Theatre Company in Dublin in 1928 with his partner Hilton Edwards...

Macapagal, Diosdado
(1911-1997) Filipino centrist politician, president 1962-65. Representing the centrist Liberal Party, he launched a fight against poverty, unemployment, and corruption, but was constrained because the...

MacArthur, Arthur
(1845-1912) US soldier. After seeing extensive combat with a Wisconsin infantry regiment during the Civil War, he served for many years on garrison duty in the West. He led combat forces in the Philippines...

MacArthur, Charles
(1895-1956) US playwright, screenwriter, and film director. After working as a reporter, he collaborated with Ben Hecht on the classic newspaper play, Front Page (1928), and then on Twentieth Century (1932),...

MacArthur, Douglas
(1909-1997) US diplomat. He was a State Department counsellor and ambassador to Japan (1957-61) where he negotiated a second security pact between Japan and the USA. He was ambassador to Belgium (1961-65),...

MacArthur, Douglas
(1880-1964) US general in World War II, commander of US forces in the Far East and, from March 1942, of the Allied forces in the southwestern Pacific. After the surrender of Japan he commanded the Allied...

Macaulay, (Emilie) Rose
(1881-1958) English novelist. The serious vein of her early novels changed to light satire in Potterism (1920) and Keeping up Appearances (1928). Her later books include The World My Wilderness (1950) and The...

Macaulay, Herbert Samuel Heelas
(1864-1946) Nigerian surveyor and leader of Nigeria's first political party. In 1893 he joined the colonial service, experiencing injustice at first hand when he was paid less than his British counterparts....

Macaulay, Thomas Babington
(1800-1859) British historian, essayist, poet, and politician, secretary of war 1839-41. His History of England in five volumes (1849-61) celebrates the Glorious Revolution of 1688 as the crowning...

Macbeth
(c. 1005-1057) King of Scotland from 1040. The son of Findlaech, hereditary ruler of Moray and Ross, he was commander of the forces of Duncan I, King of Scotland, whom he killed in battle in 1040. His reign was...

Macbeth
Tragedy by William Shakespeare, first performed in 1605-06. Acting on a prophecy by three witches that he will be king of Scotland, Macbeth, egged on by Lady Macbeth, murders King Duncan and...

Macbeth, George Mann
(1932-1992) Scottish poet and novelist. His early poetry, such as A Form of Words (1954), often focused on violent or macabre events. The Colour of Blood (1967) and Collected Poems 1958-1970 (1971) show...

MacBride, Seán
(1904-1988) Irish revolutionary, politician, lawyer, and peace campaigner. He became chief of staff of the IRA in 1936 but left the movement after the 1937 constitution, and broke with it completely over its...

Maccabee
Member of an ancient Hebrew family founded by the priest Mattathias (died 166 BC) who, with his sons, led the struggle for independence against the Syrians in the 2nd century BC. Judas (died 161)...

MacCaig, Norman
(1910-1996) Scottish poet. He began as a poet in revolt against the influence of W H Auden in Far Cry (1943); in The Inward Eye (1946) there was a change to a poetic, metaphysic standpoint. He compensated for...

MacCarthy, Desmond
(1877-1952) English writer and literary critic. He became literary editor of the New Statesman in 1920 and later its drama critic, and had a wide influence on intellectual and literary life. In 1928 he took...

Macchiaioli
Group of Italian painters active from the 1850s to the 1880s. Their works, which are mostly landscapes, are characterized by sharp tonal contrasts and by...

MacColl, Dugald Sutherland
(1859-1948) Scottish artist, art critic, and author. As art critic of the Spectator 1890-95 he became a vigorous supporter of avant-garde artists, including the French Impressionists, James Whistler, and...

MacColla, Fionn
(1906-1975) Scottish writer. His novels and philosophical studies include The Albannach 1932, And the Cock Crew 1945, Scottish Noel 1958, Ane Tryall of Heretiks 1962, At the Sign of the Clenched Fist 1967, and...

MacCormac, Richard Cornelius
(1938) English architect. His work shows a clear geometric basis with a concern for the well-made object reminiscent of the Arts and Crafts tradition. The residential build ...

MacCurdy, George Grant
(1863-1947) US anthropologist. He earned a PhD at Yale University, where as professor of prehistoric archaeology and curator of anthropological collections at the Peabody Museum (1898-1931) he wrote widely on...

MacDiarmid, Hugh
(1892-1978) Scottish poet. A nationalist and Marxist, he was one of the founders in 1928 of the National Party of Scotland. His works include `A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle` (1926) and the collections...

Macdonald, Dwight
(1906-1982) US essayist and critic. Entering journalism after graduating from Yale, he eventually became a staff writer for the New Yorker (1951-71). His essays and political, social, and literary criticism,...

Macdonald, Flora
(1722-1790) Scottish heroine. She rescued Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, after the Jacobite defeat at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. Disguising him as her maid, she escorted him from her...

Macdonald, George
(1824-1905) Scottish novelist and children's writer. David Elginbrod (1863) and Robert Falconer (1868) are characteristic novels but his children's stories, including At the Back of the North Wind (1871) and...

Macdonald, Hector Archibald
(1852-1903) British soldier, known as `Fighting Mac`. At 18 he enlisted in the Gordon Highlanders. He was taken prisoner at Majuba in the first Boer war (1881), but Joubert returned him his sword on account...

Macdonald, Malcolm John
(1901-1981) British administrator. An MP from 1929-45, he entered Parliament as a Labour member, but sat as National Labour member from 1931-35, and a National Government member from 1936-45. He held a...

MacDonald, Peter
(1937) US Navajo leader. A trained aerospace engineer, he served as tribal chairman in 1970, 1974, 1978, and 1986, stressing self-sufficiency and tribal enterprise. He worked to extend tribal control...

MacDonald, Ranald
(1824-1894) US adventurer. Of half-Indian, half-white descent, he ran away to sea at age 17. He `shipwrecked` himself in Japan in 1848, and during his year-long imprisonment, he was the first teacher...

Macdonald, Ross
(1915-1983) US writer. He is credited with turning the detective novel genre into a literary form, with a series of books featuring the hardboiled detective Lew Archer. Millar won many awards for such work as...

MacDonald, Thomas Douglas
Real name of Scottish writer Fionn MacColla. ...

MacDonald, Trevor
(1939) Trinidadian-born newsreader. He was the main presenter of News at Ten for Independent Television (ITV) until the programme was dropped in March 1999. He now presents the ITV Evening News. He was...

Macdonell, Archibald Gordon
(1895-1941) Scottish novelist. He published a humorous satire on English country life, England, Their England 1933; other satirical novels are Lords and Masters 1936 and The Autobiography of a Cad 1939. He also...

MacDonough, Thomas
(1783-1825) US naval officer. He entered the navy in 1800 and served in the Tripolitan War. During the War of 1812, he built and commanded a small fleet on Lake Champlain. He won a decisive victory against a...

Macedonia
Landlocked country in southeast Europe, bounded north by Serbia, west by Albania, south by Greece, and east by Bulgaria. Government Macedonia has a democratic multiparty parliamentary system. Under...

Macedonian
People of Macedonian culture from the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and the surrounding area, especially Greece, Albania, and Bulgaria. Macedonian, a Slavic language belonging to the...

Macedonski, Alexandru
(1854-1920) Romanian poet. His review Literatorul, founded in 1880, adopted the ideas of Symbolism...

MacFadden, Bernarr
(1868-1955) US publisher. In 1899 he founded Physical Culture magazine to promote his ideas on self-help, fitness, and healthy living. He built a publishing empire that included the first confessions...

MacGill, Patrick
(1890-1963) Irish novelist and poet. Born into a poor farming family in the Glenties, County County Donegal, MacGill was sold into servitude by his parents, but esc ...

MacGreevy, Thomas
(1893-1967) Irish poet and art critic. His works include Poems (1934) and numerous articles and studies of influential writers and artists such as T S Eliot and Jack Butler Yeats. Born in Tarbert, County Kerry,...

MacGregor, Sue
(1941) English radio presenter. She hosted BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour (1972-87), and also worked on Tuesday Call (1973-86). Her own radio series, Conversation Piece began in 1978, and she has...

Mácha, Karel Hynek
(1810-1836) Czech romantic poet. He is chiefly remembered for his patriotic and influential lyrical epic Máj/May 1836. ...

Machado de Assis, Joaquim Maria
(1839-1908) Brazilian writer and poet. He is generally regarded as the greatest Brazilian novelist. His sceptical, ironic wit is well displayed in his 30 volumes of novels and short stories, including Epitaph...

Machado y Morales, Gerardo
(1871-1939) Cuban Liberal Party politician and revolutionary, dictator-president 1925-33. The leader of the centrist Liberal Party from 1920, he defeated Mario Menocal in the 1924 presidential election....

Machado, Antonio
(1875-1939) Spanish poet and dramatist. He was inspired by the Castilian countryside in his lyric verse, collected in Soledades/Solitudes (1902) - enlarged as Soledades, galerías y otros poemas/Solitudes,...

Machado, Manuel
(1874-1947) Spanish writer. He arranged plays by Lope de Vega, produced poetic dramas in collaboration with his brother Antonio Machado, including La Lola se va a los puertos/Lola Heads for the Ports 1930, and...

MacHale, John
(1791-1881) Irish cleric. He was lecturer in theology at Maynooth College. He controversially opposed the coeducation of Roman Catholics and Protestants. In 1820 he began a series of letters signed...

Machar, Josef Svatopluk
(1864-1942) Czech poet and essayist. With Masaryk, he was the instigator of the Czech realist movement. Here Roses Should Grow...

Machaut, Guillaume de
(1300-1377) French poet and composer. Born in Champagne, he was in the service of John of Bohemia for 30 years and, later, of King John the Good of France. He gave the ballade and rondo forms a new...

Machel, Samora Moises
(1933-1986) Mozambique nationalist leader, president 1975-86. Machel was active in the liberation front Frelimo from its conception...

Machen, Arthur
(1863-1947) Welsh writer. His stories of horror and the occult include The Great God Pan 1894 and The Terror 1917. Partly autobiographical, The Hill of Dreams 1907 is an early example of the Machen, John Gresham
(1881-1937) US Protestant theologian. A graduate of Johns Hopkins University (1901) and Princeton Theological Seminary (1905), he taught at Princeton and was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1914. He served...

machine gun
Rapid-firing automatic gun. The Maxim (named after its inventor, US-born British engineer H S Maxim (1840-1916)) of 1884 was recoil-operated, but some later types have been gas-operated...

Machine Gun Corps
British regiment in World War I, formed in 1915 and disbanded after the war. The unit was a consolidation of infantry machine gun companies into a separate, specialist unit, reflecting the growing...

machine knitting
Method of knitting using a machine to loop and knot yarn, rather than doing so by hand, using knitting needles. Machine knitting is used for a high proportion of fabrics, especially for clothing...