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

Moran, Thomas
(1837-1924) English-born painter. His spectacular panoramic paintings, such as the famous Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (1893-1901), brought him critical acclaim. Born in Bol ...

Morandi, Giorgio
(1890-1964) Italian painter and etcher. He was influenced by metaphysical painting. He concentrated on still lifes, his studies of bottles and jars, which explore subtle relationships of a limited range of...

Moravia, Alberto
(1907-1991) Italian novelist. His first successful novel was Gli indifferenti/The Time of Indifference (1929), but its criticism of Mussolini's regime led to the government censoring his work until after World...

Moravian
Member of a Christian Protestant sect, the Moravian Brethren. An episcopal church that grew out of the earlier Bohemian Brethren, it was established by the Lutheran Count Z ...

Moray
Another spelling of Murray, regent of Scotland 1567-70. ...

Morcar
(lived 1065-1087) Earl of Northumbria, brother of Edwin, Earl of Mercia. He became Earl of Northumbria in 1065, on the expulsion of Tostig. When Tostig invaded England from Norway in 1066 Edwin and Morcar resisted...

Mordred
In Arthurian legend, nephew and final opponent of King Arthur. What may be an early version of his name (Medraut) appears with Arthur in annals from the 10th century, listed under the year AD 537. ...

Mordvin
Member of a Finnish people inhabiting the middle Volga Valley in western Asia. They are agriculturalists, known to have lived in the region since the 1st century AD. Although nominally Christian,...

More, (St) Thomas
(1478-1535) English politician and author. From 1509 he was favoured by Henry VIII and employed on foreign embassies. He was a member of the privy council from 1518 and Lord Chancellor from 1529 but resigned...

More, Hannah
(1745-1833) English author. In 1774 she went to London and made the acquaintance of Dr Johnson, Edmund Burke, and the leaders of the bluestocking coterie. She wrote two plays for David Garrick, Percy 1777, an...

More, Henry
(1614-1687) English philosopher, theologian, and member of the Cambridge Platonists. He denied RenéDescartes's division of mind and matter (Cartesian dualism), maintaining that mind or spirit had extension in...

More, Paul Elmer
(1864-1937) US scholar, writer, and editor. His publications include Platonism 1917, Hellenistic Philosophie 1923, The Demon of the Absolute 1928,...

Moréas, Jean
(1856-1910) Greek-born French poet and novelist. His acquaintance with Paul Verlaine inclined him in earlier work such as Le Pèlerin passionné/The Passionate Pilgrim 1891 to the Symbolist school....

Moreau, Gustave
(1826-1898) French painter. A leading Symbolist, he created a strange, exotic world - of biblical or mythological scenes haunted by images of dangerous, seductive women - painted in rich, jewel-like...

Moreau, Hégésippe
(1810-1838) French poet. His death in a workhouse heightened interest in Le Myosotis 1838, a posthumously published collection of poems. Some of his finest pieces are his `Ode à la faim` and the elegy...

Moreau, Jean Victor Marie
(1763-1813) French general in the Revolutionary Wars who won a brilliant victory over the Austrians at Hohenlinden in 1800; as a republican he intrigued against Napoleon...

Morellet, L'Abbé André
(1727-1819) French writer. He wrote many of the articles on theology and metaphysics in the Encyclopédie from 1751 onwards. Some of his writings were collected in Mélanges...

Morelos, José María
(1765-1815) Mexican priest and revolutionary. A mestizo (person with Spanish American and American Indian parents), Morelos followed independence campaigner Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, intending to be an army...

mores
(Latin) the customs and manners of a society. ...

Moresby, John
(1830-1922) British naval explorer and author. He was the first European to visit the harbour in New Guinea, now known as Port Moresby. ...

Moreto y Cabana, Agustín
(1618-1669) Spanish dramatist. Most of his comedies are accomplished, conventional pieces featuring stock characters and situations, as in El desdén con el desdén and El lindo Don Diego. Some of his work...

Moretto, Alessandro Bonvicino
(1498-1554) Italian painter. He worked in Brescia, painting primarily portraits, his style based on that of his teacher Giovanni Bellini and his fellow pupil Titian. He also produced church frescoes and a...

Morey, Charles (Rufus)
(1877-1955) US art historian. A specialist in early Christian art, from 1918 he taught at Princeton and in Rome. Born in Hastings, Michigan, Morey studied at the University of Michigan (BA 1899; MA 1900; PhD...

Morgan le Fay
In the romance and legend of the English king Arthur, an enchantress and healer, ruler of Avalon and sister of the king, whom she tended after his final battle. In Le Morte d'Arthur (completed in...

Morgan, Charles Langbridge
(1894-1958) English novelist and playwright. His first novel, The Gunroom 1919, was based on his early naval experiences. Portrait in a Mirror 1929 (Femina Vie Heureuse prize) gained him popular ...

Morgan, Daniel
(1736-1802) US soldier. Having served with the British forces in the French and Indian War and against Pontiac's rebellion (1763-64), he joined the Revolutionary forces on the outbreak of war and fought at...

Morgan, Edmund S(ears)
(1916) US historian. He focused on early New England, pre-Revolutionary, and Revolutionary history. His Roger Williams: The Church and State (1967) emphasizes the interplay between colonial theological...

Morgan, Frederick Edgworth
(1894-1967) British general in World War II. He was appointed Chief of Staff to plan the future invasion of Europe January 1943. His plan was accepted July and with some modifications became the plan for...

Morgan, Henry
(c. 1635-1688) Welsh buccaneer in the Caribbean. He made war against Spain, capturing and sacking Panama in 1671. In 1675 he was knighted and appointed lieutenant governor of Jamaica. ...

Morgan, J(ohn) P(ierpont)
(1837-1913) US financier and investment banker whose company (sometimes criticized as `the money trust`) became the most influential private banking house after the Civil War, being instrumental in the...

Morgan, John Hunt
(1825-1864) US soldier. When the Civil War broke out, he sided with the Confederacy; made a captain, he was assigned a cavalry scouting unit; bold and energetic, he led three daring penetrations from 1862 to...

Morgan, John Pierpont, Jr
(1867-1943) US banker and philanthropist. He became the head of the Morgan banking house after the death of his father, John Pierpont Morgan, Julia
(1872-1957) US architect. Practising independently in her home town of San Francisco, she designed more than 800 buildings, including Hearst's estates at San Simeon (1919-39) and Wyntoon (1931-42), and she...

Morgan, Junius S(pencer)
(1813-1890) US banker, the father of John Pierpont Morgan. Born in West Springfield, Massachusetts, he grew up in Hartford and worked as a clerk in a dry goods house. He joined the London firm of George Peabody...

Morgan, Rhodri
(1939) Welsh Labour politician, first minister and Labour Party leader in the National Assembly for Wales from 2000. He was secretary for economic development from 1999, and became first minister after the...

Morgan, Sydney
(c. 1783-1859) Irish writer. Born at sea, she was educated at the Huguenot school in Clontarf, County Dublin, and accompanied her actor-manager father Robert Owenson on his tours through Ireland. Her volume of...

Morgenstern, Christian
(1871-1914) German poet. His poetry was deeply influenced by his tubercular condition, which gave him the certainty of an early death. He gained great popularity by his grotesque nonsense poems Galgenlieder/The...

Morgenthau Plan
Proposals for Germany after World War II, originated by Henry Morgenthau Jr (1891-1967), US secretary of the treasury, calling for the elimination of war industries in...

Morgenthau, Hans J(oachim)
(1904-1980) German-born political scientist. He emphasized a `realistic approach` to foreign policy, one in which national interests preside over global concerns. He was a fierce critic of US...

Morgenthau, Henry, Jr
(1891-1967) US farmer and cabinet member. One of the founders of the World Bank, as Secretary of the Treasury (1934-45), he drafted the Lend-Lease Act. Born in New York, New York, Morgenthau became a...

Morgenthau, Robert M(orris)
(1919) US government attorney. Serving as the district attorney of Manhattan beginning in 1975, he prosecuted numerous important cases and provided extraordinary training for trial lawyers. Morgenthau was...

Mori Ogai
(1862-1922) Japanese novelist, poet, and translator. From an aristocratic samurai family, he initiated the Japanese vogue for autobiographical revelation with works such as his story of unhappy love Maihime/The...

Mori, Yoshiro
(1937) Japanese prime minister 2000-2001. He took office in April 2000 after Keizo Obuchi was incapacitated by a stroke from which he did not recover. Mori retained his predecessor's cabinet and sought...

Móricz, Zsigmond
(1879-1942) Hungarian writer of realist novels, short stories, and plays. By describing the harsh existence of the peasantry and the decadence of the landed gentry, he put paid to the romanticized image of...

Morin, Jean
(1591-1650) French theologian and writer. He edited the Paris Polyglot (1645), which includes the Samaritan Pentateuch (first five books of the Bible) and the Targum (ancient Aramaic version of the Old...

Morisco
A Spanish Moor or his descendants who accepted Christian baptism. They were all expelled from Spain in 1609. ...

Morison, Samuel Eliot
(1887-1976) US historian and naval officer. An expert in research and writing on naval, colonial, and exploration history, he wrote more than 25 books, including two that won Pulitzer Prizes, Admiral of the...

Morison, Stanley
(1889-1967) English typographical expert and bibliographer. As adviser to the Monotype Corporation from 1923, where he initiated a programme in type design, and in similar positions at the Cambridge University...

Morisot, Berthe Marie Pauline
(1841-1895) French painter, the first woman to join the Impressionist movement. Taught by Corot, she was also much influenced by Manet...

Morland, George
(1763-1804) English painter. Strongly influenced by Dutch and Flemish painters of everyday life, he specialized in picturesque rural subjects painted in a fluent easy style, a good example being Inside of a...

Morley-Minto reforms
Measures announced in 1909 to increase the participation of Indians in their country's government. Introduced by John Morley (1838-1923), secretary of state for India, and Lord Minto...

Morley, Christopher Darlington
(1890-1957) US novelist, poet, and essayist. His novels include the fantasies Where the Blue Begins 1922 and Thunder on the Left 1925, and Kitty Foyle 1939, about a modern young woman. He published many volumes...

Morley, John
(1838-1923) British Liberal politician and writer. He entered Parliament in 1883, and was secretary for Ireland in 1886 and 1892-95. As secretary for India 1905-10, he prepared the way...

Morley, Malcolm
(1931) English painter; active in New York from 1964. He coined the term `superrealism` (equivalent to photorealism) for his work in the 1960s, which was characterized by intense, photographic realism...

Morley, Sylvanus Griswold
(1883-1948) US archaeologist. After 1914 he conducted annual excavations for nearly 40 years, notably at Copán, Honduras; Petén, Guatemala; and (1924-34) Chichén Itzá, Mexico. Morley also wrote important...

Mormon
Member of a Christian sect, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, founded at Fayette, New York, in 1830 by Joseph Smith. According to Smith, who had received visions and divine...

Morny, Charles Auguste Louis Joseph
(1811-1865) French politician. He was the illegitimate son of Hortense Bonaparte and the comte de Flahaut, and was a staunch supporter of Napoleon III, his half-brother. He cooperated in the coup d'etat of...

Moro
Ethnological group who live on Mindanao and other southern Philippine islands. Converted to Islam in the 15th century, the Moros were traditionally sea...

Moro, Aldo
(1916-1978) Italian Christian Democrat politician. Prime minister 1963-68 and 1974-76, he was expected to become Italy's president, but he was kidnapped and shot by Red Brigade urban guerrillas. ...

Moro, Antonio
Dutch portraitist; see Mor, Anthonis. ...

Moroccan Crises
Two periods of international tension in 1905 and 1911 following German objections to French expansion in Morocco. Their wider purpose was to break up the Anglo-French entente of 1904, but both...

Morocco
Country in northwest Africa, bounded to the north and northwest by the Mediterranean Sea, to the east and southeast by Algeria, and to the south by Western Sahara. Government Under the 1992...

Moroni, Giambattista
(1510-1578) Italian painter. His portraits won the praise of Titian; he also painted many religious works. His quiet and straightforwardly realistic style, without formality of pose or deep analysis of...

Morpheus
In Greek and Roman mythology, the god of dreams, son of Hypnos or Somnus, god of sleep. ...

Morpurgo, Michael
English writer of over 50 books for children and young teenagers including Why the Whales Came (1985) which was made into a successful film. ...

Morrigan
In Celtic mythology, a goddess of war and death who could take the shape of a crow. ...

Morrill, Justin Smith
(1801-1898) US representative. Born in Strafford, Vermont, the son of a blacksmith, he ran a general store in Strafford (1831-48), turned to farming, then went to the US House of Representatives (Whig,...

Morris, Estelle
(1952) British Labour politician, secretary of state for education and skills 2001-02. A former teacher in an inner-city comprehensive school in Coventry 1974-92, she was a successful school...

Morris, George Pope
(1802-1864) US journalist and poet. His periodical, the New-York Mirror and Ladies Literary Gazette and its successor, the New Mirror, were vehicles for William Cullen Bryant and other New York writers of the...

Morris, Gouverneur
(1752-1816) American diplomat and politician. Morris originally opposed separation of the colonies from Britain, and attempted to mediate between Loyalists and more radical elements in New York that demanded...

Morris, Jan
(1926) English travel writer and journalist. Her books display a zestful, witty, and knowledgeable style and offer deftly handled historical perspectives. They include Coast to Coast (1956), Venice (1960),...

Morris, Johnny
(1916-1999) Welsh-born broadcaster and entertainer who made the animals talk on the long-running British Broadcasting Corporation children's (BBC) programme Animal Magic (1963-84). Morris was born in...

Morris, Lewis
(1833-1907) Welsh poet. His works include Songs of Two Worlds 1871-75, The Epic of Hades 1876-77, Gwen, a Drama in Monologue 1879, Songs Unsung 1883, Songs of Britain 1887 (containing odes on the queen's...

Morris, Richard (Valentine)
(1768-1815) US naval officer. He commanded the Tripoli Squadron (1802-03). A court of inquiry found, somewhat unjustly, that he had been insufficiently diligent...

Morris, Robert
(1931) US sculptor and mixed media artist. Active as a painter and in improvisatory theatre, he later specialized in minimalist works, earthwork projects, and scatter pieces. Born in Kansas City, Missouri,...

Morris, Robert
(1734-1806) American political leader. A signatory of the Declaration of Independence 1776, he served in the Continental Congress 1775-78. In 1781 he was appointed superintendent of finance and dealt with the...

Morris, Wright (Marion)
(1910-1998) US writer and photographer. Praised by the critics but ignored by the general public, his novels, short stories, and critical essays gained him the reputation of a `writer's writer.` He is also...

Morrison
Dynasty of Irish architects, spanning four generations in the 18th and 19th centuries. Its most eminent members were the Neo-Gothic architect Richard Morrison (1767-1849), author of the...

Morrison, Arthur
(1863-1945) English novelist and writer on art. His realistic novels on poverty in the city, Tales of Mean Streets 1894 and A Child of the Jago 1896, are comparable to George Gissing's work of the same period....

Morrison, Herbert Stanley
(1888-1965) British Labour politician. He was a founder member and later secretary of the London Labour Party 1915-45, and a member of the London County Council 1922-45. He entered Parliament in 1923,...

Morrison, Toni
(1931) US novelist. Her fiction records African-American life in the South. Beloved, based on a true story of infanticide in Kentucky, won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize and was filmed in 1998. Her other novels...

Morrow, Dwight Whitney
(1873-1931) US diplomat and banker. He was ambassador to Mexico 1927-30, and was successful in bringing to an end the tension between Mexico and the USA. Later he was elected to the US Senate as a Republican...

Morrow, Jeremiah
(1771-1852) US representative, senator, and governor. A self-educated surveyor who promoted Ohio's statehood in 1800, he sponsored legislation for affordable public land sales in Congress (Republican, Ohio;...

Morse, Jedidiah
(1761-1826) US minister and geographer. Morse was known as the `father of geography`, for such texts as The American Geography (1789) and The American Universal Geography (2 volumes 1796). Born in New...

Morse, Wayne (Lyman)
(1900-1974) US politician. He was senator for Oregon 1945-68. Regarded as a political maverick (he began as a Republican senator, was an Independent for a time, and finally became a Democrat), he was a...

Morsztyn, Jan Andrzej
(1620-1693) Polish baroque poet and diplomat. He wrote two collections of poems:Kanikula/Dog Days 1647 and Lutnia/The Lyre 1661. His range includes scurrilous epigrams, love songs, and religious verse. He also...

mortal sin
In Roman Catholicism, those sins that result in damnation unless confessed and forgiven. They are contrasted with venial sins by their seriousness. Whereas venial sins can be confessed privately to...

mortar
Method of projecting a bomb via a high trajectory at a target up to 6-7 km/3-4 mi away. A mortar bomb is stabilized in flight by means of tail fins. The high trajectory results in a high angle...

Morte D'Arthur, Le
Series of episodes from the legendary life of King Arthur by Thomas Malory, completed in 1470, regarded as the first great prose work in English literature. Only the last of the eight books...

mortgage
Transfer of property, usually a house, as a security for repayment of a loan. The loan is normally repaid to a bank or building society over a period of years. ...

mortgage tax relief
Subsidy given to people who have taken out a mortgage. They are allowed to claim the interest on the mortgage as an income tax allowance. If the income tax rate is 25%, it effectively reduces...

Mortimer
Family from the Welsh Marches, who acquired Dunamase in Leinster, Ireland, in 1247 and the lordship of Trim in 1308. Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March (died 1330), served as lieutenant to the...

Mortimer, John Clifford
(1923) English barrister and writer. His works include the plays The Dock Brief (1958) and A Voyage Round My Father (1970), and numerous stories about the fictional barrister Horace Rumpole who first...

Mortimer, Roger de
(c. 1287-1330) English politician and adventurer. He opposed Edward II and with Edward's queen, Isabella, led a rebellion against him in 1326, bringing about his abdication. From 1327 Mortimer ruled England as the...

Mortimer's Cross, Battle of
In Wars of the Roses, victory of Edward, eldest son of Richard, duke of York, over a Lancastrian army on 2 February 1461 at Mortimer's Cross. Herefordshire. Richard had been killed in the battle...

mortmain
Lands held by a corporate body, such as the church, in perpetual or inalienable tenure. In the Middle Ages, alienation in mortmain, usually to a church in return for a ...

Morton, Henry Vollam
(1892-1979) English journalist and travel writer. He was the author of the In Search of .. series published during the 1950s. His earlier travel books include The Heart of London (1925), In the Steps of the...

Morton, J B
(1893-1979) British journalist who contributed a humorous column to the Daily Express 1924-76 under the pen-name Beachcomber. ...

Morton, James Douglas, 4th earl of
(1516-1581) Scottish noble and regent for James VI (1572-78). He headed the Protestant anti-French party under Mary Queen of Scots and was her Lord Chancellor (1563-66) but was instrumental in the murder...

Morton, John
(c. 1420-1500) English prelate, archbishop of Canterbury 1486-1500. He first supported the Lancastrians, but submitted to Edward IV after the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471, and was made master of the rolls in...