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

Asquith, Herbert Henry
(1852-1928) British Liberal politician, prime minister 1908-16. As chancellor of the Exchequer, he introduced old-age pensions in 1908. He limited the powers of the House of Lords and attempted to give...

Assad, Hafez al
(1930-2000) Syrian Ba'athist politician, president 1971-2000. He became prime minister after a bloodless military coup in 1970. The following year he became the first president to be elected by popular vote....

assassination
Murder, usually of a political, royal, or public person. The term derives from the order of the Assassins, a Muslim sect that, in the 11th and 12th centuries, murdered officials to further its...

Assassins, order of the
Militant offshoot of the Islamic Isma'ili sect 1089-1256, founded by Hassan Sabah (c. 1045-1124). Active in Syria and Persia, they assassinated high officials in every Muslim town to further...

assault
Intentional act or threat of physical violence against a person. In English law it is both a crime and a tort (a civil wrong). The kinds of criminal assault are common (ordinary); aggravated (more...

assault ship
Naval vessel designed to land and support troops and vehicles under hostile conditions. ...

Asselyn, Jan
(1610-1652) Dutch landscape and animal painter. He worked for some time in Italy and was one of the most noteworthy of the Dutch landscape painters who worked in an Italianate manner. His The Angry Swan...

assemblage
In the visual arts, any three-dimensional work of art constructed of various, and often unusual, materials, or found objects. The term was first used in the 1950s by French painter Jean assemblage
A collection of artefacts that can be considered a single analytic unit, occurring in archaeology, together at a particular time and place. ...

Asser
(died c. 909) Welsh monk and scholar who became the mentor and friend of Alfred the Great, King of Wessex. His biography of the king, De rebus gestis Aelfredi magni, which follows Alfred's career from his birth...

Asser, Tobias M(ichael) C(arel)
(1838-1913) Dutch jurist and professor of international law. He shared the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1911 with Austrian pacifist Alfred Fried for his work in creating the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The...

asset
In accounting, anything owned by or owed to the company that is either cash or can be turned into cash. The term covers physical assets such as land or property of a company or individual,...

asset stripping
Sale or exploitation by other means of the assets of a business, often one that has been taken over for that very purpose. The parts of the business may be potentially more valuable separately than...

assignat
During the French Revolution, a bond issued by the Constituent Assembly on the security of the confiscated landed property of the clergy. The object in issuing assignats was not only to obtain the...

assisted area
Region that is receiving some help from the central government, usually in the form of extra funding, as part of a regional policy. Most policies concentrate on identifying and then assisting...

assize
In medieval Europe, the passing of laws, either by the king with the consent of nobles, as in the Constitutions of ...

Associated State of the UK
Status of certain Commonwealth countries that have full power of internal government, but where Britain is responsible for external relations and defence. ...

Association of Caribbean States
Association of 25 states in the Caribbean region, formed in 1994 in Colombia to promote social, political, and economic cooperation and eventual integration. Its members include the states of the...

Association, Freedom of
Principle laid down in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (see Human Rights, Universal Declaration of) that (1) everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association and (2)...

Association, the
League formed by Parliament in 1696 to protect William III against `popish plots`, as a result of an assassination plot against him. ...

Assur
Alternative spelling of Ashur, Assyrian god. ...

assurance
Form of long-term saving where individuals pay monthly premiums, typically over 10 or 25 years, and at the end receive a large lump sum. For example, a person may save £50 a month and at the...

Assyria
Empire in the Middle East c. 2500-612 BC, in northern Mesopotamia (now Iraq); early capital Ashur, later Nineveh. It was initially subject to Sumer and intermittently to Babylon. The Assyrians...

Astarte
In Canaanite and Syrian mythology, a goddess of sexual passion (equivalent to the Babylonian and Assyrian goddess Ishtar). As goddess of maternity and fertility, she was associated with Tammuz or...

Asteria
In Greek mythology, a goddess who took the form of a quail (ortyx) when Zeus tried to rape her, and threw herself from heaven into the sea. Here she was changed into the island of Asteria (which had...

Astérix the Gaul
The belligerent, wing-helmeted Belgian comic-strip character who first appeared in 1959. Written originally by René Goscinny (1926-1977) with artwork by Albert Uderzo (1925), it appears...

Astley, Jacob
(1579-1652) English Royalist commander in the Civil War. He took part in several Civil War battles, including those of Edgehill and Naseby. ...

Astley, Philip
(1742-1814) English equestrian and theatre impresario who was the first to introduce the circus as a form of entertainment. Celebrated by many as the best horse-tamer of his day, his original circus of 1798,...

Astor
Prominent US and British family. John Jacob Astor (1763-1848) emigrated from Germany to the USA in 1783, and became a millionaire. His great-grandson Waldorf Astor, 2nd Viscount Astor...

Astor, Brooke
(1902-2007) US socialite, philanthropist, and author. Largely self-educated, she was a magazine journalist and the author of four books. She married three times, and the death of her third husband, Vincent...

Astor, John Jacob
(1763-1848) German-born US merchant who founded the monopolistic American Fur Company in 1808. His subsidiary enterprise, the Pacific Fur Company, was created in 1811 following the US government's Louisiana...

Astor, Nancy
(1879-1964) US-born British Conservative politician, the first woman member to sit in the House of Commons. After marrying into the wealthy Anglo-American Astor family, Nancy Astor entered Parliament in...

Astraea
In Greek mythology, the last goddess to leave the Earth, at the start of the Bronze Age. She is immortalized among the signs of the zodiac as Virgo. She was the daughter of Zeus and Themis. ...

astral body
In theosophy and other spiritual systems of religious thought, one of several normally invisible bodies extending through and beyond the human physical body. It is believed to separate from the...

astral projection
Separation of the hypothetical astral body from the physical body, although remaining attached to it by the astral or etheric cord. In theosophy and similar beliefs, it is said to happen during...

astral spirits
In mythology and ancient religions, spirits associated with the heavenly bodies, believed to cause their movements in the sky and to exercise influence on human affairs. Many of the major older...

astrological diagnosis
Casting of a horoscope to ascertain a person's susceptibility to specific kinds of disease. From statistical evidence that offspring tend to have the same planetary positions in their charts as a...

astrology
Study of the relative position of the planets and stars in the belief that they influence events on Earth. The astrologer casts a horoscope based on the time and place of the subject's birth....

Astyanax
In Greek mythology, the baby son of Hector and Andromache. After the death of all the sons of Priam in battle at the siege of Troy, the child was thrown from the city walls...

asylum, political
In international law, refuge granted in another country to a person who, for political reasons, cannot return to his or her own country without putting himself or herself in danger. A person seeking...

Atahualpa
(c. 1502-1533) Last emperor of the Incas of Peru. He was taken prisoner in 1532 when the Spaniards arrived and agreed to pay a substantial ransom, but he was accused of plotting against the conquistador Pizarro...

Atalanta
In Greek mythology, an Arcadian huntress who challenged each of her suitors to a running race; losers were slain. The goddess ...

Atargatis
Alternative Greek name for the goddess Derceto. ...

Atassi, Hashem al-
(1874-1960) Syrian politician, president 1936-39, 1949-51, and 1954-55. Educated in Istanbul, Turkey, he served as a district governor in Ottoman administration before World War I. In 1920 he was briefly...

Atatürk, Kemal
(1881-1938) Turkish politician and general, first president of Turkey from 1923. After World War I he established a provisional rebel government and in 1921-22...

Atchison, David Rice
(1807-1886) US senator. Atchison was appointed and then elected to the US Senate in 1843. A supporter of slavery, he helped frame the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854). After losing his seat in the Senate, he...

Ate
In Greek mythology, the personification of infatuation or criminal folly (failure to distinguish between good and bad courses of action). She was the daughter...

Atellan farce
Theatre performance popular in ancient Rome (a type of farce). It was an improvised burlesque from low life, but during the last century BC it became fashionable to present it after the performance...

Athabaskan
Language, one of the largest families of American Indian languages; also the collective tribal name of the Athabaskan-speaking people of Alaska and Canada. Athabaskan speakers can be divided into...

Athamas
In Greek mythology, a king of Thessaly. He abandoned his wife Nephele for Ino, who persecuted his children Phryxes and Helle. In revenge, the goddess Athanagild
(died 568) Visigoth king of Spain 534-48. As captain of the Spanish Goths, and with the help of a Roman force sent from Gaul by Emperor Justinian, he defeated and killed King Agila near Seville 534....

Athanasian creed
One of the three ancient creeds of the Christian church. Mainly a definition of the Trinity and Incarnation, it was written many years after the death of Athanasius, but was attributed to him as the...

Athanasius, St
(296-373) Bishop of Alexandria, Egypt, supporter of the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation. He was a disciple of St Anthony the hermit, and an opponent of Arianism in the great Arian controversy....

atheism
Nonbelief in, or the positive denial of, the existence of a God or gods. A related concept is agnosticism. Like theism, its opposite, atheism cannot be proved or disproved conclusively. Perhaps the...

atheling
Anglo-Saxon title of nobility. It was confined in use by the 8th century to male members of the royal family; that is, kings, and brothers and sons of kings. ...

Athelney, Isle of
Area of firm ground in marshland near Taunton in Somerset, England, the headquarters of King Alfred the Great in 878, when he was in hiding from the Danes. The legend of his burning the...

Athelstan
(895-939) King of England 924-39. The son of Edward the Elder, Athelstan brought about English unity by ruling both Mercia and Wessex. He defeated an invasion by Scots, Irish, and the men of Strathclyde at...

Athena
In Greek mythology, the goddess of war, wisdom, and the arts and crafts (Roman Minerva). She was reputed to have sprung fully-armed and grown from the head of Zeus, after he had swallowed her...

Atherton, Charles Gordon
(1804-1853) US politician. He was elected to Congress in 1836, and in 1838 he introduced the resolution `That all petitions relating to slavery, or its abolition, be laid on the table without debate`, which...

Atherton, Gertrude Franklin
(1857-1948) US novelist. Her novels include The Californians (1898), a historical novel;The Conqueror (1902), a fictional biography of the US statesman Alexander Hamilton;Julia France and Her Times (1912), a...

Athias, Joseph ben Abraham
(died 1700) Dutch printer of Jewish origin from Amsterdam. Athias was renowned for publishing a beautifully produced edition of the Bible in 1661. A second edition appeared in 1667. ...

Athlone, Godart Ginkell
(1630-1703) Dutch general. He accompanied William of Orange (William III) to England 1688, fought in the Battle of the Boyne 1690, and was made commander-in-chief in Ireland 1691, when he took Athlone and...

Atkins, Anna
(1799-1871) English photographer and illustrator. A specialist in scientific illustration, her books of original cyanotype (blueprint) illustrations of plants are particularly remarkable, the first being...

Atkins, Tommy
Popular name for the British soldier; see Tommy Atkins. ...

Atkinson, Brooks
(1894-1984) US journalist and drama critic. Atkinson was the highly influential New York Times theatre critic for over 30 years. In 1947 he won a Pulitzer Prize for his work as correspondent in China and the...

Atkinson, Henry
(1782-1842) US soldier. Atkinson joined the US Army in 1808 and became a colonel after the War of 1812. He led the Yellowstone expedition (1819) and an expedition to the upper Missouri River (1825). He was in...

Atkinson, Katea
(1951) English novelist who won the Whitbread Book of the Year prize with her first novel Behind the Scenes at the Museum (1995). After studying at university in Dundee, Scotl ...

Atkinson, Richard
(1920-1994) British archaeologist who carried out important investigations during the 1950s and 1960s at the major prehistoric monuments of Stonehenge and Silbury Hill, Wiltshire, England; his work set new...

Atkyns, Richard
(1615-1677) English writer on printing and publishing. In his work The Origin and Growth of Printing, 1664, he claimed that printing should be considered a Crown monopoly, and tried unsuccessfully to secure the...

Atlantic Charter
Declaration issued during World War II by the British prime minister Winston Churchill and the US president Franklin D Roosevelt after meetings in August 1941. It stressed their countries' broad...

Atlantic triangle
18th-century trade route. Goods were exported from Britain to Africa where they were traded for slaves, who were then shipped to either Spanish colonies in South America, or British colonies in...

Atlantic Wall
Fortifications built by the Germans in World War II on the North Sea and Atlantic coasts of France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway. They proved largely ineffective against the Allied...

Atlantic, Battle of the
German campaign during World War I to prevent merchant shipping from delivering food supplies from the USA to the Allies, chiefly the UK. By 1917, some 875,000 tons of shipping had been lost. The...

Atlantic, Battle of the
During World War II, continuous battle fought in the Atlantic Ocean by the sea and air forces of the Allies and Germany, to control the supply routes to the UK. It is estimated that the Allies...

Atlantis
In Greek mythology, an island continent west of the Straits of Gibraltar, said to have sunk following an earthquake. Although the Atlantic Ocean is probably named after it, the structure of the sea...

atlas
Book of maps. The first modern atlas was the Theatrum orbis terrarum (1570); the first English atlas was a collection of the counties of England and Wales by Christopher Saxten (1579). Mercator...

Atlas
In Greek mythology, one of the Titans who revolted against the gods; as punishment, he was compelled to support the heavens on his head and shoulders. Growing weary, he asked Perseus to turn him...

atman
In Hinduism, the individual soul or the true self, which never changes. The atman is as one with Brahman, the eternal supreme being and impersonal world soul. Hindus believe that each person has a...

atomic absorption spectrometry
Technique used in archaeology to determine quantitatively the chemical composition of artefactual metals, minerals, and rocks, in order to identify raw material sources, to relate artefacts of the...

atomic bomb
Bomb deriving its explosive force from nuclear fission as a result of a neutron chain reaction, developed in the 1940s in the USA into a usable weapon. Research began in the UK in 1940 and was...

Aton
In ancient Egypt, the invisible power of the sun, represented by the Sun's disc with arms. It was an emblem of the single sun god whose worship was promoted by Akhenaton in an attempt to replace the...

atonement
In Christian theology, the doctrine that Jesus suffered on the cross to bring about reconciliation and forgiveness between God and humanity. Atonement is an action that enables a person separated...

Atonement, Day of
Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. ...

atrebate
Member of a people of Belgic Gaul, whose capital was Nemetacum. They formed a confederacy with the Nervii against Julius Caesar, by whom they were defeated on the Sambre. A branch of them settled in...

Atrebates
Belgic tribe which settled in southeast England about 80 BC and predominated in that area prior to the arrival of the Romans. They maintained contact with their continental counterparts so that in...

Atreus
In Greek mythology, the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus (the Atridae); son of King Pelops; brother of Thyestes, with whom he contested the throne of Mycenae. At a banquet held to confirm the...

Atridae, legend of the
In Greek mythology, the story of the dynastic rivalry between the houses of Atreus and Thyestes, sons of Pelops, king of Pisa in Elis. The feud later centred on the struggle for control of the...

atrium
In architecture, an open inner courtyard. An atrium was originally the central court or main room of an ancient Roman house, open to the sky, often with a shallow pool to catch rainwater. ...

Atropos
In Greek mythology, the eldest of the Fates, who cut the thread of human life. Her attributes are scissors, scales, or a sundial. ...

ATS
See auxiliary territorial service. ...

attainder, bill of
Legislative device that allowed the English Parliament to declare guilt and impose a punishment on an individual without bringing the matter before the courts. Such bills were used intermittently...

Attalid dynasty
(lived 282-133 BC) Greek rulers of the ancient Greek city of Pergamum in northwestern Asia Minor. The Attalids pursued an active cultural policy, with the aim of making Pergamum a successor to Athens in architecture...

attempt
In law, a partial or unsuccessful commission of a crime. An attempt must be more than preparation for a crime; it must involve actual efforts to commit a crime. In...

Atterbom, Per (Daniel Amadeus)
(1790-1855) Swedish poet and critic. His works include two poetic dramas, the incomplete FÃÂ¥gel BlÃÂ¥/The Blue Bird and Lycksalighetens Ãâ€`/The Isle of Bliss (1824-27), and a series of lyrics Blommorna/The...

Atterbury, Francis
(1662-1732) English Anglican cleric and Jacobite politician. He enjoyed royal patronage and was made bishop of Rochester 1713. However, his Jacobite sympathies prevented his further rise, and in 1722 he was...

Attic orators
The ten leading Attic orators recognized by Alexandrian scholars from the period 450-300 BC. These were Antiphon, Andocides, Lysias, Isocrates, Isaeus, Lycurgus, Aeschines, Demosthenes, Hyperides,...

Atticus, Titus Pomponius
(109-32 BC) Roman literary patron, financier, and publisher. His was a close friend of the orator Cicero, whose correspondence with him (68-43 BC) is an invaluable record of the times. Atticus was originally...

Attila
(c. 406-453) King of the Huns in an area from the Alps to the Caspian Sea from 434, known to later Christian history as the `Scourge of God`. He twice attacked the Eastern Roman Empire to increase the...

Attila Line
Line dividing Greek and Turkish Cyprus, so called because of a fanciful identification of the Turks with the Huns. ...

Attingham Park
Late 18th-century house near Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England. It stands in a 1620-ha/4000-acre estate acquired in 1953 by the National Trust under the will of the 8th Lord Berwick. The house...