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

autocannon
French air defence weapon of World War I, consisting of a modified 75 mm field gun fitted to a special high-angle mounting and carried on a De Dion Bouton motor lorry. It became the standard...

autochthon
The first inhabitants of a country or area of land. In Greek mythology, the autochthons were supposed to have sprung from the rocks and trees. ...

autocracy
Form of government in which one person holds absolute power. The autocrat has uncontrolled and undisputed authority. Russian government under the tsars was an autocracy extending from the mid-16th...

Autolycus
In Greek mythology, an accomplished thief and trickster, son of the god Hermes, who gave him the power of invisibility, and grandfather of Odysseus. Notorious for sheep-stealing, he was finally...

automat
Snack bar where food is dispensed through coin-operated machines. Automats were popular in the USA in the 1930s. The first was opened in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1902; the last closed in New...

autonomy
In politics, a term used to describe political self-government of a state or, more commonly, a subdivision of a state. Autonomy may be based upon cultural or ethnic differences and often leads...

autos sacramentales
Spanish drama form, related to the mystery plays in Engl ...

Autry, (Orton) Gene
(1907-1998) US entertainer. His 60-year career included radio, film, television, and rodeo. He was a singing cowboy in the image of Roy Rogers, who discovered him. He is most famous for his songs `Back in...

auxilia
Roman auxiliary troops, including units of cavalry and light infantry. They were recruited from noncitizens in the provinces outside Italy and were often employed as provincial garrisons. Pay was...

auxiliary territorial service
British Army unit of non-combatant women auxiliaries in World War II, formed in 1939. The ATS provided cooks, clerks, radar operators, searchlight operators, and undertook...

Ava
Former capital of Burma (now Myanmar), on the River Irrawaddy, founded by Thadomin Payä in 1364. Thirty kings reigned there until 1782, when a new capital, Amarapura, was founded by Bodaw Payä. In...

Avalanche
In World War II, codename for the Allied landings at Salerno, Italy, September 1943. ...

Avalokiteśvara
In Mahayana Buddhism, one of the most important bodhisattvas, seen as embodying compassion. He is an emanation of Amida Buddha. In China, as Kuan Yin, and Japan, as Kannon, he is confused with his...

Avalon
In Celtic mythology, the island of the blessed or paradise; one of the names of the Welsh Otherworld. In the legend of King Arthur, it is the land of heroes, a fruitful land of youth and health...

Avar
Member of a Central Asian nomadic people who in the 6th century invaded the area of Russia north of the Black Sea previously held by the Huns. They extended their dominion over the Bulgarians and...

avatar
In Hindu mythology, the descent of a deity to earth in a visible form, for example the ten avatars of Vishnu. ...

Ave Maria
Christian prayer to the Virgin Mary, which takes its name from the archangel Gabriel's salutation to the Virgin Mary when announcing that she would be the mother of the Messiah (Luke 11:28). ...

Avebury
Europe's largest stone circle (diameter 412 m/1,350 ft), in Wiltshire, England. This megalithic henge monument is thought to be part of a ritual complex, and contains 650 massive blocks of stone...

Avellaneda, Nicolas
(1837-1885) Argentine politician and academic, president of Argentina 1874-80. During his presidency, the country began to industrialize, but the expeditions he sent into the southern region of Patagonia...

Avenzoar (or Ibn Zuhr)
(1091-1161) Spanish Muslim surgeon. Admired by contemporaries, his work advanced the practice of surgery in both the Muslim and Christian worlds. Avenzoar approached medicine in a practical manner and his works...

average cost
Or unit costtotal cost divided by output. For example, if a firm has total costs of 10 million with an output of 1 million units, the average cost is 10. If long-run average cost falls as output...

average revenue
Total revenue divided by output. For example, if a firm has a total revenue of 3 million with an output of 1 million units, the average revenue is 3. ...

Averescu, Alexandru
(1858-1938) Romanian soldier and politician, three times prime minister of Romania 1918, 1920-21, and 1926-27. In World War I, he commanded the Romanian Army of the Danube in Transylvania and was later...

Averroës
(1126-1198) Arabian philosopher who argued for the eternity of matter and against the immortality of the individual soul. His philosophical writings, including commentaries on Aristotle and on Plato's Republic,...

Avery, Milton
(1893-1965) US painter. His early work was inspired by Matisse, portraying subjects in thin, flat, richly coloured strokes. His later work, although still figurative, shows the influence of Mark Rothko and...

Avery, Samuel Putnam
(1822-1904) US art connoisseur and philanthropist. One of the founders of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, Avery also endowed and built the Avery Architectural Library at Columbia College in 1891. ...

Avia
Czechoslovakian aircraft of World War II. The Avia B-534 was a fast biplane single-seat fighter which was considered to be probably the best of its type when it was first produced 1934. Three...

Avianus
(lived c.AD 400) Roman fable writer. Written in elegiac couplets, his fables number 42 in total. ...

Avicenna
(979-1037) Iranian philosopher and physician. He was the most renowned philosopher of medieval Islam. His Canon Medicinae was a standard work for many centuries. His philosophical writings were influenced by...

avidya
In Hinduism and Buddhism, a lack of understanding of the true nature of reality. In Buddhism it also means a lack of understanding of the Four Noble Truths. In its wider sense it denotes the root of...

Avitus, Marcus Maecilius
(died AD 456) Roman emperor from AD 455, a native of the Auvergne. He was prefect of Gaul and waged war successfully against the Huns and the Vandals. He was ambassador at the court of Theodoric, king of the...

Avksent'yev,, Nikolai Dmitriyevich
(1878-1943) Russian politician, leader of the right wing of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. After the February Revolution of 1917, he became chair of the peasants' deputies at the All-Russian Congress of...

Avondale House
18th-century house, 2 km/1 mi south of Rathdrum, County Wicklow, Republic of Ireland. It was built in 1779 for Samuel Hayes and possibly designed by James Watt, although Hayes himself was an...

Avram, Henriett D (Davidson)
(1919) US librarian. Avram worked in private industry and in government; holding important positions at the Library of Congress. An information systems specialist, she brought expertise to cataloguing and...

AVRE
British tank designed during World War II to defeat various types of obstacle. Based on the Churchill tank, it was armed with a special short-range mortar firing a heavy demolition charge, for use...

Avvakum, Archpriest
(1621-1682) Russian Orthodox cleric and writer. He was a key figure in the religious and literary history of Russia. Avvakum was the leader of the `Old Believers`, those who rejected the church reforms...

AWACS
Acronym for Airborne Warning And Control System, surveillance system that incorporates a long-range surveillance and detection radar mounted on a Boeing E-3 Sentry aircraft. It was used with...

Awdry, W(ilbert) V(ere)
(1911-1997) English author and Church of England clergyman. His railway stories for young people, especially those featuring `Thomas the Tank Engine`, delighted generations of children. The first Thomas...

Awolowo, Obafemi
(1909-1987) Nigerian politician, premier of the Western Region 1954-59. He was co-founder of the Action Group, a party based on the Yoruba of western Nigeria, which he led from 1951 until the party was...

axe
Weapon or tool with a stone or metal head. In archaeology, it denotes the stone and bronze axeheads used by the prehistoric peoples of Europe. More generally, the term `axe` or battle-axe is...

axe factories
Neolithic and later (c. 3500-1400 BC) sites of volcanic rock where axe-heads were shaped. Some 550 axe factories have been identified in the Lake District of Cumbria, and it is thought that...

Axis
Alliance of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy before and during World War II. The Rome-Berlin Axis was formed in 1936, when Italy was being threatened with sanctions because of its invasion of...

axonometric projection
Three-dimensional drawing of an object, such as a building, in which the floor plan provides the basis for the visible elevations, thus creating a diagram that is true to scale but incorrect in...

Axthelm, Walther von
(1893-1961) German Luftwaffe general in World War II. He was appointed inspector general of anti-aircraft artillery 1942, with considerable responsibility for the air defences of Germany. In 1944 he was in...

Axum
Variant spelling of Aksum, a kingdom that flourished in the 1st-6th centuries AD. ...

Ayala, Adelardo López de
(1828-1879) Spanish dramatist and politician. He was president of the chamber under Alfonso XII. His chief dramas are the historical tragedy Un hombre de estado 1851, the satire El nuevo Don Juan 1863, and the...

ayatollah
Honorific title awarded to Shiite Muslims in Iran by popular consent, as, for example, to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1900-1989). ...

Aycock, Charles Brantley
(1859-1912) US governor. As Democratic governor of North Carolina, 1901-05, Aycock established a literacy test to remove black voters from the electoral rolls, while funding new school construction and...

Ayenbite of Inwit
Prose translation of a popular French treatise, Somme des vices et des vertus. Completed in 1340 by an Augustinian monk, Dan Michel of Northgate, C ...

Ayer, A(lfred) J(ules)
(1910-1989) English philosopher. He wrote Language, Truth and Logic (1936), an exposition of the theory of `logical positivism`, presenting a criterion by which meaningful statements (essentially truths of...

Ayer, Edward Everett
(1841-1927) US book collector. Ayer donated his personal collection to the Newberry Library in Chicago in 1911. He was one of the founders of the Field Natural History Library, and he became its first president...

Ayer, Francis Wayland
(1848-1923) US advertising agent. He founded the advertising firm N W Ayer & Son in 1869, and transformed advertising into a respected profession. His pioneering advocacy of advertisers' interests, use of...

Ayesha
(611-678) Third and favourite wife of the prophet Muhammad, who married her when she was nine. Her father, Abu Bakr, became caliph on Muhammad's death in 632. She bitterly opposed the later succession to the...

Aylmer, Felix Edward
(1889-1979) English actor. Although termed a `character actor`, his range was extensive, whether typifying the folly of age as Polonius in Lawrence Olivier's Hamlet or the wisdom of experience as Sir...

Aylmer, Matthew Whitworth
(1775-1850) Governor general of Canada 1831-35. Aylmer had had a distinguished military career but no administrative experience. As governor general he introduced a series of measures that profoundly altered...

Aymara
The American Indian people of Bolivia and Peru, builders of a great culture, who were conquered first by the Incas and then by the Spaniards. Today 1.4 million Aymara farm and herd llamas and...

Ayme, Marcel
(1902-1967) French writer. He wrote numerous novels, including La Jument verte/The Green Mare (1933), Le Chemin des écoliers (1946), Uranus (1948), and Les Tiroirs de l'inconnu (1960); short stories; three...

Aymer de Valence
(died 1260) French cleric. He was a half-brother of the English king Henry III, who obtained for him the position of bishop of Winchester. He repudiated the barons' constitution at the Parliament of Oxford in...

Aymer de Valence
(c. 1265-1324) English politician. He was appointed guardian of Scotland 1305 by Edward I; he defeated the Scots that year at Methven, but was defeated by Robert Bruce (see Robert I) at Loudon Hill in 1307. In...

Ayrer, Jakob
(1540-1605) German dramatist. His works comprise 36 humorous pieces and 30 dramas. Many of his plays are in the Fastnachtspiel tradition of Hans Sachs, whereas others are dramatized romances and histories. He...

Ayres, Gillian
(1930) English painter. Her free, abstract style, with its emphasis on colour and the active properties of paint, was influenced by the work of US painter Jackson Pollock. During the 1980s she introduced...

Ayres, John
(lived 17th century) English calligrapher. He ran a writing school in the City of London. He published A Tutor to Penmanship, or the Writing Master: a Copy Book showing all the Variety of Penmanship and Clerkship, as...

Ayrton, Michael
(1921-1975) English painter, sculptor, illustrator, and writer. From 1961, he concentrated on the Daedalus myth, producing bronzes of Icarus and a fictional autobiography of Daedalus, The Maze Maker 1967. He...

Ayscough, William
(died 1450) English cleric, Bishop of Salisbury 1438-50. Ayscough enjoyed great influence at the court of Henry VI, and became the king's confessor. After celebrating mass at Edington, he was seized by the...

Ayscue, George
(died 1671) English admiral of the Commonwealth period. He had been knighted by Charles I, but became a Parliamentarian and commanded the fleet in the Irish Sea 1649, being then appointed admiral. In 1651 he...

Aytoun (or Ayton), Robert
(1569-1638) Scottish poet. He was employed by James VI and I and wrote songs and courtly verse. Aytoun is the reputed author of the lines on which Robert Burns based `Auld Lang Syne`. Aytoun was one of the...

Aytoun, W(illiam) E(dmonstoune)
(1813-1865) Scottish poet and satirist. He is remembered for A Book of Ballads (1845), written under the pseudonym Bon Gaultier with the...

Ayub Khan, Muhammad
(1907-1974) Pakistani soldier and president 1958-69. He served in the Burma Campaign 1942-45, and was commander-in-chief of the Pakistan army in 1951. In 1958 Ayub Khan assumed power after a bloodless...

Azad, Maulana Abul Kalam
(1888-1958) Indian Muslim scholar, author, journalist, and politician. During World War I he advocated a programme of non-cooperation with the British, which influenced Mahatma Gandhi and for which he was...

Azaña, Manuel
(1880-1940) Spanish politician, prime minister 1931-33 and 1936. He was the first prime minister of the second Spanish republic, and the last president of the republic during...

Azande
Member of a Sudanic-speaking people living in southwestern Sudan, northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), and southeastern Chad. The Azande state is an amalgam of many small...

Azcona del Hoyo, José Simon
(1927-2005) Honduran politician, president 1986-90. A moderate conservative, he signed the American Peace Accord of 1987 despite his government's quiet acceptance of the presence in Honduras of Nicaraguan...

Azerbaijan
Country in western Asia, bounded south by Iran, east by the Caspian Sea, west by Armenia and Georgia, and north by Russia. Government There is (since 1991) an interim 50-seat national assembly,...

Azeri
Native of the Azerbaijan region of Iran (population 5,500,000) or of the Republic of Azerbaijan (formerly a Soviet republic) (population 7,145,600). Azeri is a Turkic language belonging to the...

Azhar, El
Muslim university and mosque in Cairo, Egypt. Founded in 970 by Jawhar, commander-in-chief of the army of the Fatimid caliph, it is claimed to be...

Azhari, Ismail
(1902-1969) Sudanese politician, first prime minister of Sudan 1954-56 and president 1964-69. Imprisoned by the British for nationalist agitation, he was elected head of the National Unionist Party in 1952,...

Azikiwe, Nnamdi
(1904-1996) Nigerian politician and president 1963-66. A leading nationalist in the 1940s, he advocated self-government for Nigeria. He was prime minister of Eastern Nigeria 1954-59 and on independence...

Azilian
Archaeological period following the close of the Old Stone (Palaeolithic) Age and regarded as the earliest culture of the Mesolithic Age in Western Europe. It w ...

Azincourt
See Agincourt, Battle of. ...

Aziz, Tariq
(1936) Iraqi politician, deputy prime minister 1979-2003, and foreign minister 1983-91. Saddam Hussein's right-hand man, Aziz was a loyalist who remained staunchly faithful to the Iraqi leader. After...

Aznar, José Maria
(1953) Spanish politician, prime minister 1996-2004. He became premier of the Castile-León region in 1987. Elected leader of the right-of-centre Popular Party (PP) in 1989, Aznar and the PP lost...

Azorín
(1873-1967) Spanish writer. His works include volumes of critical essays and short stories, plays, and novels, such as the autobiographical La voluntad/The Choice (1902), describing the spiritual pessimism of...

Aztec
Member of an American Indian people who migrated south into the valley of Mexico in about 1168. They belonged to the Nahuatl, a Mesoamerican people who remain the largest ethnic group in Mexico...

Aztec art
Art of the Aztecs, an American Indian people who moved south into the valley of Mexico in the AD 1100s, building their capital Tenochtitlán (now Mexico City) from 1325. In the 15th century they...

Aztec-Tanoan
Major American Indian language family of Central America and the western and southwestern USA, with two main branches:Uto-Aztecan and Kiowa-Tanoan. ...

Ba'ath Party
Ruling political party in Iraq and Syria. Despite public support of pan-Arab unity and its foundation in 1943 as a party of Arab nationalism, its ideology has been so vague that it has fostered...

Baader-Meinhof gang
Popular name for the West German left-wing guerrilla group the Rote Armee Fraktion/Red Army Faction, active from 1968 against what it perceived as US imperialism. The three main founding members...

Baader, Andreas
(1943-1977) German radical left-wing political activist. With Ulrike Meinhof (1934-1976) and Gudrun Ensslin (1940-1977), he formed the Rote Armee Fraktion/Red Army Faction (RAF), also known as the...

Baader, Benedict Franz
(1765-1841) German theologian and philosopher. His writings, though mystical and often obscure, led some to consider him the greatest Catholic thinker of modern times. He opposed the claims of ecclesiastic...

Baal
Divine title given to their chief male gods by the Phoenicians, or Canaanites, of the eastern Mediterranean coast about 1200-332 BC. Their worship as fertility gods, often orgiastic and of a...

Baalbek
City of ancient Syria, now in Lebanon, 60 km/36 mi northeast of Beirut. It was originally a centre of Baal worship. The Greeks identified Baal with Helios, the Sun, and renamed Baalbek Heliopolis....

Baasha
Issacharite king of Israel. He killed Nadab, the son of Jeroboam I, at the Philistine town of Gibbethron, and became king (about 909-886 BC), afterwards killing the other members of Jeroboam's...

baba
Title formerly given in Persia and Turkey to members of certain dervish orders. ...

Babangida, Ibrahim
(1941) Nigerian politician and soldier, president 1985-93. He became head of the Nigerian army in 1983, and in 1985 led a coup against President Muhammadu Buhari, assuming the presidency himself. From...

Babbitt
Satirical novel 1922 by Sinclair Lewis about a Midwestern businessman obsessed with commerce, clubs, and material values. `Babbittry` came to mean a type of...

Babbitt, Bruce (Edward)
(1938) US lawyer, governor, and environmentalist, secretary of the interior 1993-2001. A Democrat, Babbit was Arizona's attorney general before becoming a state governor in 1978. He stood,...

Babbitt, Irving
(1865-1933) US scholar and humanist. Babbitt espoused New Humanism, a conservative creed that called for self-discipline, restraint, and for a canon of classic literary authors. ...

Babcock, Orville E
(1835-1884) US Union soldier. An aide-de-camp to General Ulysses S Grant, Babcock was acquitted of fraud charges in the `Whiskey Ring` scandal of the 1870s, largely as a result of Grant's intercession. ...

Babel
Hebrew name for the city of Babylon, chiefly associated with the Tower of Babel which, in the Genesis story in the Old Testament,...

Babel, Isaak Emmanuilovich
(1894-1940) Russian writer. Born in Odessa, he was an ardent supporter of the Revolution and fought with Budyenny's cavalry in the Polish campaign of 1921-22, an experience which inspired Red Cavalry (1926)....