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

Mohegan
Member of an American Indian people who moved from the upper Hudson River Valley to Connecticut in the 16th century. They were probably originally part of the neighbouring Pequot people, with whom...

Mohenjo Daro
Site of a city about 2500-1600 BC on the lower Indus River, northwestern Pakistan, where excavations from the 1920s have revealed the Indus Valley civilization, to which the city...

Mohican
Member of an American Indian people who occupied the upper Hudson River valley in New York State until the mid-17th century. They are closely related to the Mohegan, and share Algonquian...

Moi, Daniel arap
(1924) Kenyan politician, president 1978-2002. Leader of the Kenya African National Union (KANU), he became minister of home affairs in 1964, vice-president in 1967, and succeeded Jomo Kenyatta as...

Moirai
In Greek mythology, the title of the three Fates; the name refers to the `portions` of life they allotted to each human being, a destiny represented by a thread, although they sometimes appeared...

Moiseiwitsch, Tanya
(1914-2003) English-born set designer. She became associated with the Old Vic, the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, and the Stratford (Ontario) Festival. Born in London, she started...

Moissief, Leon S(olomon)
(1872-1943) Latvian- born bridge engineer. He helped design the Williamsburg, Manhattan, and Queensboro Bridges. As an independent consulting engineer (1915-40), he was involved with suspension-bridge...

Mojave
Member of an American Indian people who live on the lower Colorado River in Arizona and California. Their language belongs to the ...

moksha
In Hinduism, liberation from the cycle of reincarnation and from the illusion of maya; in Buddhism, liberation from samsara, the cycle of rebirth. ...

Mola Vidal, Emilio
(1887-1937) Spanish general and co-leader of the military rising against the Second Republic which initiated the Civil War of 1936-39. Anti-Falangist and anti-monarchist in his sympathies, he posed a...

Molay, Jacques de
(1243-1314) Last of the grand masters of the Templars. When in Cyprus he was summoned by Pope Clement V to Paris after all the Templars there were arrested. Molay was imprisoned and put on trial, but refused to...

Moldavian
Member of the majority ethnic group living in Moldova, comprising almost two-thirds of the population; also, inhabitant of the Romanian province of Moldavia. The Moldavian language is a dialect of...

Moldova
Country in east-central Europe, bounded north, south, and east by Ukraine, and west by Romania. Government The 1994 constitution provides for a president and a 104-member national assembly, both...

mole
Person working subversively within an organization. The term has come to be used broadly for someone who gives out (`leaks`) secret information in the public interest; it originally meant a...

Molenaer
Two Dutch painters, husband and wife. Both painted genre scenes in the style of Frans Hals. In his early paintings, Jan Molenaer was influenced both by Hals and by Hals's younger brother Dirck, but...

Moleschott, Jakob
(1822-1893) Dutch physiologist and metaphysician. He denied any vital principle, regarded life as metabolism between the organic and inorganic worlds, and enclosed his materialism in the formula `Without...

Moley, Raymond (Charles)
(1886-1975) US lawyer and political scientist. An early member of Roosevelt's `brain trust` in 1933, he commuted from New York to Washington while helping draft New Deal legislation. A contributing edi ...

Molière
(1622-1673) French satirical dramatist and actor. Modern French comedy developed from his work. After the collapse of the Paris-based Illustre Théâtre (of which he was one of the founders), Molière...

Molina Barraza, Arturo Armando
(1928) El Salvadorean soldier and politician, member of the conservative-reformist National Conciliation Party (PCN), president 1972-77. His administration promoted agrarian reform and improvements in...

Molina, Luis
(1535-1600) Spanish Jesuit theologian. He attempted to reconcile human free will with predestination, which gave rise to disputes with the Thomist school of theology (based on the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas),...

Molina, Tirso de
See Tirso de Molina, Spanish dramatist. ...

Molinier, Guilhem
Provençal writer. He was one of the founders in 1353 of the Toulouse literary academy, the Consistori del Gay Saber, of which he became chancellor. On behalf of the academy he composed a lengthy...

Molinos, Miguel de
(1640-1697) Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic priest. He settled in Rome and wrote several devotional works in Italian, including the Guida spirituale/Spiritual Guide (1675), which aroused the hostility of the...

Mollet, Guy Alcide
(1905-1975) French socialist politician, post-war leader of the Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO) 1946-69, and prime minister 1956-57. He launched the Anglo-French Suez expedition...

Mollison, James Allan
(1905-1960) Scottish aviator. He made a number of long-distance record flights in the 1930s, including Newfoundland to Croydon in 13 hr 16 min in 1936. He married the English aviator Amy Johnson...

Molloy, M(ichael) J(oseph)
(1917-1994) Irish folk-dramatist. Born in Milltown, County Galway, Molloy was greatly influenced by the work of J M Synge, a leading figure of the early 20th-century Gaelic revival. His drama is essentially...

Molly Maguires, the
In US history, a secret Irish coalminers' organization in the 1870s that staged strikes and used violence against coal-company officials and property in the anthracite fields of Pennsylvania,...

Molnár, Ferenc
(1878-1952) Hungarian novelist and playwright. His most successful play, Liliom 1909, is a study of a circus barker (a person who calls out to attract the attention of members of the public), adapted as the...

Moloch
In the Old Testament, a Phoenician deity worshipped in Jerusalem in the 7th century BC, to whom live children were sacrificed by fire. ...

Molotov cocktail
Home-made weapon consisting of a bottle filled with petrol, plugged with a rag as a wick, ignited, and thrown as a grenade. Resistance groups during World War II named them after the Soviet...

Molotov, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich
(1890-1986) Soviet communist politician. He was chair of the Council of People's Commissars (prime minister) 1930-41 and foreign minister 1939-49 and 1953-56. He negotiated the 1939 non-aggression...

Molteno, John Charles
(1814-1886) South African politician. In 1854 he became first member for Beaufort in the legislative assembly, and in 1872 was appointed first prime minister of Cape Province. He retired from...

Moltke, Helmuth Johannes Ludwig von
(1848-1916) German general (nephew of Count von Moltke, the Prussian general), chief of the German general staff 1906-14. His use of General Alfred von Schlieffen's (1833-1913) plan for a rapid victory on...

Molyneaux, Jim
(1920) Northern Ireland Unionist politician, leader of the Official Ulster Unionist Party (the largest Northern Ireland party) 1979-95. A member of the House of Commons from 1970, he temporarily...

Molyneux, William
(1656-1698) Irish philosopher, political writer, and scientist. Born in Dublin, Molyneux was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and the Middle Temple. An important philosophical presence in t ...

Molza, Francesco Maria
(1489-1544) Italian poet. His Ninfa Tiberina (1538) has a place in the history of pastoral poetry. ...

MOMA
Acronym for the Museum of Modern Art, New York in New York City. ...

Momaday, N(avarre) Scott
(1934) US writer of Kiowa descent. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel House Made of Dawn (1968) about a young American Indian alienated from both white and his ancestral society. In his second novel,...

Mombert, Alfred
(1872-1942) German poet and critic. He wrote many lyrics, mostly in a Symbolistic vein. Early conventional verses were collected in Tag und Nacht/Day and Night 1894; those which followed became more...

Momoh, Joseph Saidu
(1937-2003) Sierra Leone soldier and politician, president 1985-92. An army officer who became commander in 1983 with the rank of major general. He succeeded Siaka Stevens as president when Stevens retired;...

Momoyama
In Japanese history, the period 1568-1616 or 1573-1603. During this time three great generals, Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582), Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who invaded Korea in 1592, and Tokugawa Ieyasu,...

Momper, Joos (Jodocus) de
(1564-1635) Flemish landscape painter. Like his immediate predecessor Pieter Brueghel the Elder, he often gave his landscapes a high viewpoint, his panoramas inspired by his journeys through Switzerland and...

Mon
A minority ethnic group living in the Irrawaddy delta region of lower Myanmar (Burma) and Thailand. The Mon founded the city of Bago in 573 and established kingdoms in the area in the 7th century,...

Mona Lisa, the
Oil painting by Leonardo da Vinci (1503-05; Louvre, Paris), a portrait of the wife of a Florentine official, Francesco del Giocondo, which, according to Vasari, Leonardo worked on for four years....

Monaco
Small sovereign state forming an enclave in southern France, with the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Government Under the 1911 constitution, modified in 1917 and largely rewritten in 1962, Monaco...

monad
Philosophical term deriving from the work of Gottfried Leibniz, suggesting a soul or metaphysical unit that has a self-contained life. The monads are independent of each other but coordinated by a...

Monagas, José Tadeo
(1784-1868) Venezuelan president 1847-51 and 1855-58, a hero of the independence movement. Monagas wanted to create a separate state in eastern Venezuela called Oriente, leading an uprising against...

Monarchianism
Form of belief in the Christian Trinity that emphasizes the undifferentiated unity of God. It was common in the early 3rd century. ...

monarchy
Government in which a single person holds a varying degree of legislative (law-making) and executive (administrative) power. Where such government has no constitutional checks or limits, it is...

monastery
An abbey, priory, or convent for monks, friars, or nuns. An abbey (as the name implies) is under the rule of an abbot or abbess; similarly a priory is ruled by a prior or prioress. In cathedral...

monastic life, medieval
In the Middle Ages, the monastic life attracted many men and women, who took vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity and entered monasteries or convents. The Rule of St Benedict, founder of...

monasticism
Devotion to religious life under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, known to Judaism (for example Essenes), Buddhism, and other religions, before Christianity. In Islam, the Sufis formed...

Monboddo, James Burnett
(1714-1799) Scottish judge and anthropologist. He was made judge in the Court of Session in 1767. In Origin and Progress of Language (1773) and Ancient Metaphysics (1779-99), he argued the case for human...

Monck, George
(1608-1670) English soldier. During the English Civil War he fought for King Charles I, but after being captured changed sides and took command of the Parliamentary forces in Ireland. Under Oliver Cromwell he...

Mondale, Walter Frederick
(1928) US Democrat politician, unsuccessful presidential candidate in 1984. He was a senator 1965-77 for his home state of Minnesota, and vice president to Jimmy Carter 1977-81. After losing the 1984...

Mondell, Frank (Wheeler)
(1860-1939) US representative. In the US House of Representatives (Republican, Wyoming; 1895-97, 1899-1923) he advocated rapid expansion in the West and opposed the conservation efforts of the Forest...

Mondlane, Eduardo
(1920-1969) Mozambican nationalist, first president of Frelimo 1962-69, the group aiming to achieve independence for Mozambique from the Portuguese. He was assassinated by unknown assailants. As a student at...

Monet, Claude
(1840-1926) French painter. He was a pioneer of Impressionism and a lifelong exponent of its ideals; his painting Impression, Sunrise (1872) gave the movement its name. In the 1870s he began painting the same...

Monet, Jan
(c. 1480-c. 1550) Flemish sculptor. Monet's chief works were alabaster altarpieces, such as those at Halle (1533) and Brussels (1538-41). These works were the first Renaissance sculptural altarpieces in the...

Moneta, Ernesto T(eodoro)
(1833-1918) Italian traveller, soldier and political activist, editor, and publisher. Moneta was a militant pacifist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1907 with French law professor Louis monetarism
Economic policy that proposes control of a country's money supply to keep it in step with the country's ability to produce goods, with the aim of controlling monetary policy
Economic policy aimed at controlling the amount of money in circulation, usually through controlling the level of lending or credit. Increasing interest rates is an example of a contractionary...

money
Any common medium of exchange acceptable in payment for goods or services or for the settlement of debts; legal tender. Money is usually coinage (invented by the Chinese in the second millennium BC)...

money market
Institution that deals in gold and foreign exchange, and securities in the short term. Long-term transactions are dealt with on the capital market. There is no physical marketplace, and many deals...

money supply
Quantity of money in circulation in an economy at any given time. It can include notes, coins, and clearing-bank and other deposits used for everyday payments. Changes in the quantity of lending...

Monge Alvárez, Luis Alberto
(1925) Costa Rican social-democratic politician, president 1982-86. He concentrated on making economies in government spending and maintaining good relations with the USA, but refused to join it in an...

Mongkut
(died 1868) King of Siam (Thailand) from 1851, known later as Rama IV. During his reign the country was opened to foreign trade by the Bowring Treaty of 1855 between Siam and England, marking the beginning of...

Mongol
Member of any of the various Mongol (or Mongolian) ethnic groups of central Asia. Mongols live in Mongolia, Russia, Inner Mongolia (China), Tibet, and Nepal. The Mongol language belongs to the...

Mongol Empire
Empire established by Genghis Khan, a loosely constructed federation of tribal groups extending from Russia to northern China; see Mongol., History:. Genghis became khan of the Mongol tribes in...

Mongolia
Country in east-Central Asia, bounded north by Russia and south by China. Government The 1992 constitution provides for a 76-member parliament, the People's Great Hural (assembly), elected by a...

Mongoloid
Former racial classification, based on physical features, used to describe people of East Asian and North American origin, including the American Indians, Polynesians, and the Eskimos and Aleuts....

Monica, St
(c. 331-387) The mother of St Augustine of Hippo. She was the wife of Patricius, a pagan magistrate of Tagaste (now Souk-Ahras in Algeria), and converted both...

monism
In philosophy, the theory that reality is made up of only one substance. This view is usually contrasted with dualism, which divides reality into two substances, matter and mind. The Dutch...

Monitor
British class of armoured warship, used during World War I for operations in shallow waters. They were slow and were equipped with a limited number of very large guns but had a low freeboard (the...

monk
Man belonging to a religious order under the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and living under a particular rule; see monasticism. ...

Monk, Maria
(c. 1817-1850) US writer. She published The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk 1836, alleging that she had escaped from a Montréal nunnery. The book contained tales of misconduct in Catholic convents. Her story was...

Monkhouse, Allan
(1858-1936) English journalist, dramatist, and novelist. He became a drama critic and leader writer for the Manchester Guardian, later contributing to it the weekly article `A Bookman's Notes`. He wrote a...

Monkhouse, Bob
(1928-2003) English comedian, actor, writer, and entertainer whose long and varied career on British television began in 1954 and has included being host of the long-running quizzes The Golden Shot (1967) and...

Monkhouse, William Cosmo
(1840-1901) English poet and art critic. His poems include Corn and Poppies 1890, Dead March, and The Christ upon the Hill 1895. As an art critic he is remembered for his Life of Turner 1879, The Italian...

Monmouth, Battle of
Engagement on 28 June 1778 at Monmouth Court House, New Jersey, by the Americans under George Washington over the British under Henry Clinton. It was a stand-off, with American general Charles Lee...

Monnet, Jean
(1888-1979) French economist. The originator of Winston Churchill's offer of union between the UK and France 1940, he devised and took charge of the French modernization programme under Charles de Gaulle 1945....

Monnoyer, Baptiste
(1634-1699) French baroque painter. He specialized in the painting of fruit and flowers. He was employed by Charles Le Brun to decorate the palace of Versailles, and was invited to England, where he decorated...

monochrome painting
In art, painting in grey or neutral tones, also called grisaille. Monochrome has two basic uses in painting: to provide the foundation (underpainting) and...

monolith
Single isolated stone or column, usually standing and of great size, used as a form of monument. Some are natural features, such as the Buck Stone in the Forest of Dean, England. Other monoliths may...

monologue
One person speaking, though the term is generally understood to mean a virtuoso, highly skilful solo performance. Literary monologues are often set pieces in which a character reveals his or her...

Monophysite
Member of a group of Christian heretics of the 5th-7th centuries who taught that Jesus had one nature, in opposition to the orthodox doctrine (laid down at the Council of Chalcedon in 451) that he...

Monopolies and Mergers Commission
UK government body re-established in 1973 under the Fair Trading Act and, since 1980, embracing the Competition Act. Its role is to investigate and report when there is a risk of creating a...

monopoly
In economics, the domination of a market for a particular product or service by a single company, which can therefore restrict competition and keep prices high. In practice, a company can be said to...

monotheism
Belief or doctrine that there is only one God; the opposite of polytheism. Monotheism is also opposed to all systems of moral dualism, asserting the ultimate supremacy of good over evil. The Jewish,...

Monothelite
Member of a group of Christian heretics of the 7th century who sought to reconcile the orthodox and Monophysite theologies by maintaining that, while Christ possessed two natures, he had only one...

Monro, Harold Edward
(1879-1932) English poet. He founded the influential Poetry Review 1912 and the Poetry Bookshop in Bloomsbury 1913. He also founded The Monthly Chapbook, of which he was editor 1919-25. Volumes of his verse...

Monroe Doctrine
Declaration by US president James Monroe ...

Monroe, Elizabeth
(1768-1830) First lady. She married James Monroe in 1786. Familiar with European society because of Monroe's diplomatic tours, she was considered too aloof and aristocratic during her period as first lady. She...

Monroe, Harriet
(1860-1936) US poet and critic. She published several volumes of verse, but was better known as the founder and editor of Poetry 1912, the first US magaz ...

Monroe, James
(1758-1831) 5th president of the USA 1817-25, a Democratic Republican. He served in the American Revolution, was minister to France 1794-96, and in 1803 negotiated the Louisiana Purchase. He was secretary...

Mons Badonicus
Battle in about 493-516, probably in southwest England, in which indigenous Britons defeated the Anglo-Saxons and other settlers from the continent. Little else is definitely known, but this...

Mons Graupius, Battle of
Battle fought in Scotland, perhaps near Inverness, in AD 84 by the Roman general Agricola. Agricola's victory pushed the Roman frontier northwards as far as the Firth of Forth. ...

Mons, Battle of
In World War I, German victory over the ...

Monsarrat, Nicholas John Turney
(1910-1979) English novelist. He served with the navy in the Battle of the Atlantic, the subject of his most successful novel The Cruel Sea 1951. Other novels with strong plots include The Story of Esther...

Monster Raving Loony Party
In the UK, an irreverent, anti-establishment political party, founded by Screamin' Lord Sutch (David Sutch, 1940-1999), a pop singer in the group, The Raving Savages. Dressed in a top hat and...