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 The information may have been taken offline because it is outdated.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

Plough and the Stars, The
Tragedy by Sean O'Casey 1926. In the Easter Rising of 1916 Nora Clitheroe loses both her husband Jack and her baby, as the violence embraces both men and women in the tenements of Dublin. ...

Plowright, Joan Ann
(1929) English stage and screen actor. A leading classical actor of the UK stage, she has also enjoyed a lengthy film career, making her screen debut in Moby Dick (1956). She has worked in both US and UK...

Plumer, William
(1759-1850) US senator and governor. He was a Federalist when he served New Hampshire in the US Senate (1802-07), but he became a Democratic-Republican by the time he served as New Hampshire's governor...

Plummer, Henry
(1837-1864) US bandit who became a legendary Wild West figure. Born in Maine, Plummer became the marshal of Nevada City, California (1856), but turned to banditry after he murdered a man there. He organized a...

Plunkett, Oliver
(1629-1681) Catholic archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland. He was executed, along with 30 or more other victims, in panic surrounding the fictitious Popish Plot to murder Charles II, burn London, and put...

pluralism
In philosophy, the belief that reality consists of several different elements, not just two - matter and mind - as in dualism. ...

pluralism
In political science, the view that decision-making in current liberal democracies is the outcome of competition among several interest groups in a political system characterized by free...

Plutarch
(c.AD 46-c. 120) Greek biographer and essayist. He is best remembered for his Lives, a collection of short biographies of famous figures from Greek and Roman history arranged in contrasting pairs (for example,...

Pluto
In Greek mythology, lord of Hades, the underworld and also his original name. His Roman counterpart was Dis (also Orcus). He was the son of the Titans Kronos and Rhea; and brother of Zeus, Poseidon,...

Plymouth Brethren
Fundamentalist Christian Protestant sect characterized by extreme simplicity of belief, founded in Dublin in about 1827 by the Reverend John Nelson Darby (1800-1882). The Plymouth Brethren have no...

PM
Abbreviation for prime minister. ...

Pnyx
Meeting place for the Athenian citizens' assembly, the ecclesia, on a slope about 455 m/500 yd east of the Acropolis. On the northeastern slope of the hill is a double terrace (120 m/130 yd by 65...

Po Chü-i
Alternative transliteration of Bo Zhu Yi, Chinese poet. ...

poaching
Illegal hunting of game and fish on someone else's property. Since the creation of hunting grounds in the early Middle Ages, poaching has attracted heavy punishments. Deterrents have included...

Pocahontas, Matoaka
(c. 1595-1617) American Indian alleged to have saved the life of the English colonist John Smith when he was captured by her father, the Indian chief Powhatan. She was kidnapped in 1613 by an Englishman, Samuel...

pocket borough
A borough in the UK before the Reform Act of 1832, where all the houses were owned by one man, whose vote returned two members of Parliament. An example was Gatton in Surrey....

podesta
In the Italian communes, the highest civic official, appointed by the leading citizens, and often holding great power. ...

Podlaski, Ron
(1946) US veteran and social activist. Born in New York, New York, into a single-parent welfare family with seven siblings, he joined the US Army in 1966, and as a volunteer Green Beret, conducted...

Poe, Edgar Allan
(1809-1849) US writer and poet. His short stories are renowned for their horrific atmosphere, as in `The Fall of the House of Usher` (1839) and `The Masque of the Red Death` (1842), and for their acute...

Poel, William
(1852-1934) English actor and producer. He formed the Elizabethan Stage Society in 1895, whose productions influenced the work of other actors and producers. He favoured a bare stage, fine verse speaking, and a...

poet laureate
Poet of the British royal household or of the USA, so called because of the laurel wreath awarded to eminent poets in the Greco-Roman world. Early UK poets with unofficial status were John...

pogrom
Unprovoked violent attack on an ethnic group, particularly Jews, carried out with official sanction. The Russian pogroms against Jews began in 1881, after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, and...

Poher, Alain
(1909-1996) French politician. President of the Senate from October 1968. By the terms of the constitution of the Fifth Republic he became interim president on the resignation of Charles de Gaulle in 1969. He...

Pohl, Frederik
(1919) US writer and editor. He published a steady stream of short stories and novels, often coauthoring works with other science fiction writers under joint pen-names. A pioneer in `sociological...

Poincaré, Raymond Nicolas Landry
(1860-1934) French moderate republican politician and president 1913-20. He served as prime minister and foreign minister 1912-13, 1922-24 (when he ordered the occupation of the German Ruhr in lieu of...

Poindexter, John Marlane
(1936) US rear admiral and Republican government official. In 1981 he joined the Reagan administration's National Security Council (NSC) and became national security adviser in 1985. As a result of the...

Poindexter, Miles
(1868-1946) US representative and senator. Although he began as a Progressive, he opposed President Woodrow Wilson's international policies and became leader of the anticommunist `Red Scare` of 1919. He was...

Poinsett, Joel Roberts
(1779-1851) US cabinet member and diplomat. President Madison sent him as a special agent to observe and deal with independence movements in Latin America (1810-15). He was a member of the US House of...

pointillism
Method of oil painting developed in the 1880s by the French neo-Impressionist Georges Seurat. He used small dabs of pure colour laid side by side that, when viewed from a distance, blend...

Poiré, Emmanuel
Real name of French illustrator Caran d'Ache. ...

Poirier, Richard
(1925) US literary critic, educator, and writer. A professor at Rutgers (1963) and author of studies of Henry James, Norman Mailer and Robert Frost, he cofounded the Library of America (1979), an ongoing...

poison pill
In business, a tactic to avoid hostile takeover by making the target company unattractive. For example, a company may give a certain class of shareholders the right to h ...

Poitevin
In English history, relating to the reigns of King John and King Henry III. The term is derived from the region of France south of the Loire (Poitou), which was controlled by the English for most of...

Poitiers, Battle of
During the Hundred Years' War, victory for Edward the Black Prince on 13 September 1356 over King John II of France. King John, his son Philip, and 2,000 knights were taken prisoner, and about 3,000...

Pokanoket
Alternative name for a member of the American Indian Wampanoag people. ...

Pokrovsky, Mikhail Nikolaevich
(1868-1932) Russian historian and politician. In 1905 he joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party, and in 1909 the left-wing Bolshevik sub-faction Forward led by...

Pol Pot
(c. 1925-1998) Cambodian politician and leader of the Khmer Rouge communist movement that overthrew the government in 1975. After widespread atrocities against the civilian population, his regime was deposed by a...

Poland
Country in eastern Europe, bounded north by the Baltic Sea, northeast by Lithuania, east by Belarus and Ukraine, south by the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic, and west by Germany. Government...

Poland, Luke (Potter)
(1815-1887) US representative and senator. A brilliant, self-taught lawyer, he was a Whig Supreme Court justice in Vermont (1848-65), Republican senator (1865-67), and congressman (1867-75) who revised...

Polanyi, Michael
(1891-1976) Hungarian chemist, social scientist, and philosopher. As a scientist, he worked on thermodynamics, X-ray crystallography, and physical adsorption. As a philosopher and social scientist, he was...

polar exploration
See Arctic Exploration and Antarctic Exploration. ...

Pole
People of Polish culture from Poland and the surrounding area. There are 37-40 million speakers of Polish (including some in the USA), a Slavic language belonging to the Indo-European family....

Pole, Reginald
(1500-1558) English cardinal from 1536 who returned from Rome as papal legate on the accession of Mary I in order to readmit England to the Catholic Church. He succeeded Cranmer as...

Polesden Lacey
Villa near Dorking, Surrey, England. Originally an elegant 1820s villa, the house was extensively remodelled after 1906, and bequeathed to the National Trust in 1942, with 365 ha/902 acres, by the...

Polglase, Van Nest
(1898-1968) US movie art director. Arriving in Hollywood in 1919, he designed sets for countless movies, from Stage Struck (1925) and Top Hat (1935), to The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), and his masterpiece,...

police
Civil law-and-order force. In the UK, it is responsible to the Home Office, with 56 separate police forces, generally organized on a county basis; mutual aid is given between forces in...

Police Complaints Authority
In the UK, an independent group of a dozen people set up under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 to supervise the investigation of complaints against the police by...

polio
Viral infection of the central nervous system affecting nerves that activate muscles. The disease used to be known as infantile paralysis since children were most often affected. Two kinds of...

polis
In ancient Greece, a city-state, the political and social centre of most larger Greek communities. Membership of a polis as a citizen, participation in its cults and festivals, and the protection...

Polish Corridor
Strip of land designated under the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 to give Poland access to the Baltic. It cut off East Prussia from the rest of Germany. Germany resented this partition and one of the...

Polish Home Army
Clandestine Polish resistance force in World War II, which began forming as soon as the invasion of Poland ended in September 1939. Properly organized into districts and commands, at its maximum it...

Polish literature
A vernacular literature that began to emerge in the 14th century and enjoyed a golden age in the 16th and 17th centuries under Renaissance influences, particularly apparent in the poetry of Jan...

Politburo
Contraction of `political bureau`, the executive committee (known as the Presidium 1952-66) of the Supreme Soviet in the USSR, which laid down party policy. It consisted of about 12 voting and...

Politian
(1454-1494) Italian poet, playwright, and exponent of humanist ideals. He was tutor to Lorenzo de Medici's children, and professor at the University of Florence from 1480. He was one of the greatest masters of...

political action committee
In the USA, any lobbying organization that raises funds for political candidates and in return seeks to commit them to a particular policy. PACs also spend money on changing public opinion through...

political art
In the visual arts, work that contains political subject matter, takes a stand on an issue, addresses a public concern, or awakens viewer sensitivity. Artists throughout history have been called...

political party
Association of like-minded people organized with the purpose of seeking and exercising political power. A party can be distinguished from an interest or pressure group, which seeks to influence...

political science
The study of politics and political life. Originally it concentrated on the state and how it was organized, but more recently it has come to include the analysis of all those institutions and groups...

political theory
The philosophical questioning of the assumptions underlying political life; for example, the grounds on which an individual is obliged to obey the state. It also attempts to formulate theories of...

politics
Ruling by the consent of the governed; an activity whereby solutions to social and economic problems are arrived at and different aspirations are met by the process of discussion and compromise...

Poliziano, Angelo
Italian pen-name of writer and humanist Angelo Ambrogini, known as Politian. ...

Polk, George
(1913-1948) US journalist. Having worked on various papers including the Herald Tribune, he became CBS's chief Middle East correspondent (1948). Married to a Greek woman, and based in Athens, that May he set...

Polk, James Knox
(1795-1849) 11th president of the USA 1845-49, a Democrat. Presiding over a period of westward expansion, he allowed Texas admission to the Union, and forced the war on Mexico that resulted in the annexation...

Polk, Sarah
(1803-1891) US first lady. She married James K Polk in 1824. Well-educated, she served as Polk's personal secretary. Polk died two months after his presidency, but she remained admired and respected by both...

poll tax
Tax levied on every individual, without reference to income or property. Being simple to administer, it was among the earliest sorts of tax (introduced in England in 1379), but because of its...

Pollaiuolo
Two Italian artists, brothers. They ran an artistic workshop in their hometown Florence and later in Rome. Both were painters, sculptors, goldsmiths, engravers, and designers. Antonio, widely...

Pollard, Albert Frederick
(1869-1948) British historian. He was professor of English history at the University of London from 1903-27 and worked indefatigably to develop there a considerable and distinguished history school. He...

Pollard, Alfred William
(1859-1944) British bibliographer. He worked in the Department of Printed Books at the British Museum (1883-1924), and was a keeper from 1919-24. He was director of the Early English Text Society and was...

pollen analysis
The study of fossil and living pollen and spores, utilized in palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatic reconstruction, identifying natural and humanly induced vegetation changes, and developing...

Pollitt, Harry
(1890-1960) British politician. A boilermaker by trade, he joined the Independent Labour party in 1909 and the Communist Party of Great Britain on its foundation in 1920. He led the party for many years, being...

Pollock, (Paul) Jackson
(1912-1956) US painter. He was a pioneer of abstract expressionism and one of the foremost exponents of action painting. His style is characterized by complex networks of swirling, interwoven lines of great...

Pollock, Frederick
(1845-1937) English jurist. He was called to the Bar in 1871. Pollock was professor of jurisprudence at University College, London (1882-83), Corpus professor of jurisprudence at Oxford University...

Pollux
In Greek mythology, the twin brother of Castor (see Castor and Pollux). ...

Polo, Marco
(1254-1324) Venetian traveller and writer. He joined his father (Niccolo) and uncle (Maffeo), who had travelled to China as merchants (1260-69), when they began a journey overland back to China (1271). Once...

poltergeist
Unexplained phenomenon that invisibly moves objects or hurls them about, starts fires, or causes other mischief. Identical phenomena attributed to poltergeists have been reported from all parts of...

Polybius
(c. 200-c. 118 BC) Greek politician and historian of Rome. He was a senior politician of the Achaean League against the Romans and, following the defeat of the Macedonians at Pydna in 168 BC, he was taken, together...

Polycarp, St
(c. 69-c. 155) Christian martyr allegedly converted by St John the Evangelist. As bishop of Smyrna (modern Izmir, Turkey), he carried on a vigorous struggle against various heresies for over 40 years. He was...

Polyclitus of Argos
Greek sculptor. Several copies of his figures of male athletes exist, such as the Doryphoros/Youth with Javelin (Museo Nazionale, Uffizi, and the Vatican Museum), and the Diskophoros/Youth with a...

Polycrates
Tyrant of Samos c. 540-522 BC. He established an effective navy of over 100 ships and was master of the Aegean basin. He was also a promoter of ambitious building projects, and patron of poets...

Polygnotus
(c. 500-c. 440 BC) 5th-century BC Greek painter. He is famous for developing the art of large-scale narrative painting, his most famous works being the Sack of Troy (Athens) and Ulysses in the Underworld (Delphi)....

polygyny
Marriage between one man and two or more women. Polygyny is practised in nearly 70% of all societies. In Islamic countries a man may have up to four wives by Koranic law. The Mormons...

Polyhymnia
In Greek mythology, the Muse of sacred song. In art she was depicted in an attitude of thoughtful reflection. ...

Polykleitos (or Polyclitus)
(lived 5th century BC) Greek sculptor. His Spear Carrier (450-440 BC; only Roman copies survive) exemplifies the naturalism and harmonious proportions of his work. He created the legendary colossal statue of Hera in...

Polynesian
Any of the seafaring peoples of Polynesia. They migrated by canoe from South Asia in about 2000 BC, peopling the islands of the South Pacific for about 2,000 years, and settling Hawaii last, from...

Polynices
In Greek mythology, son of Oedipus and Jocasta. Denied his share in the kingship of Thebes by his brother Eteocles, he induced his father-in-law, Adrastus of Argos, to lead the expedition of the...

Polyphemus
In Greek mythology, a Cyclops (one-eyed giant) and son of Poseidon, dwelling on the west coast of Sicily. He imprisoned Odysseus and his 12 companions in his cave on their homeward journey, and...

polyptych
Painting or bas relief consisting of more than three panels, either hinged together or set in an architectural frame, and commonly used as an altarpiece. The polyptych developed from the diptych. ...

polytheism
The worship of many gods, as opposed to monotheism (belief in one god). Examples are the religions of ancient Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, and Mexico. Modern Hinduism, while worshipping God in many...

polytych
In art, a single screen made up of several painted panels, usually of wood. The outer panels in the group are frequently hinged so that they can be folded onto the centre pieces. Polytychs were...

Pomare, Maui Wiremu Pita Naera
(1876-1930) New Zealand Maori leader. He was elected to the house of representatives in 1911 and served under William Massey as minister of health and of the interior. He helped reorganize New Zealand's mental...

Pomeroy bullet
Incendiary machine gun bullet developed for use in World War I against Zeppelins, and adopted by the British air force. It was filled with phosphorus which would ignite the hydrogen gas escaping...

Pomeroy, Marcus Mills
(`Brick`) (1833-1896) US newspaper editor, publisher, and propagandist. At the New York Democrat (1876-80), he worked for the Greenback cause, organized, promoted, and was president of the Atlantic-Pacific Railway...

Pomona
In Roman mythology, a wood nymph and the goddess of fruit trees. She is often depicted in art holding a cornucopia, symbolizing the fruits of the earth. Vertumnus, a satyr, was besotted by the nymph...

Pompeii
Ancient city in Italy, near the volcano Vesuvius, 21 km/13 mi southeast of Naples. In AD 63 an earthquake destroyed much of the city, which had been a Roman port and pleasure resort; it was...

Pompeius Strabo, Gnaeus
(c. 130-87 BC) Roman general, father of Pompey the Great. In the Social War 91-87 BC between Rome and its Italian allies, he was a successful commander in the north. He was elected consul for 89 BC and carried a...

Pompey the Great
(106-48 BC) Roman soldier and politician. From 60 BC to 53 BC, he was a member of the First Triumvirate with Julius Caesar and Marcus Livius...

Pompey's Pillar
Monolith of red granite in Alexandria, Egypt. It was erected in the Serapeum (the temple of the god Serapis) to commemorate the Roman emperor Diocletian's remission of part of the corn tribute after...

Ponce de León, Juan
(c. 1460-1521) Spanish soldier and explorer. He is believed to have sailed to the Americas with Christopher Columbus in 1493, and served in Hispaniola 1502-04. He conquered Puerto Rico in 1508, and was made...

Ponge, Francis
(1899-1998) French poet. His works include Le Parti pris des choses/The Voice of Things (1942), the prose-poems Proèmes (1948), Le Peintre à l'étude (1948), La Seine/The Seine (1950), La Rage de...

Ponsard, François
(1814-1867) French dramatist. He was the leader of a movement (the école du bon sens) reacting against Romanticism in the French theatre and advocating a return to something...