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 The information may have been taken offline because it is outdated.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

Potter, Harry
Fictional hero of a series of children's novels. English writer J K Rowling combined the formulaic unhappy English schoolboy, complete with round spectacles, with supernatural elements of magic and...

Potter, Paulus
(1625-1654) Dutch painter and etcher. Active in Delft, The Hague, and Amsterdam, he specialized in rural scenes and animals. His best-known work is his life-size The Young Bull...

Potter, Stephen (Meredith)
(1900-1969) English writer. He wrote humorous studies in how to outwit and outshine others, including The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship, or the Art of Winning Games Without Actually Cheating 1947, Some...

Potteries, the
Home of the china and earthenware industries, in central England. Wedgwood and Minton are factory names associated with the Potteries. The Potteries lie in the upper Trent basin of north...

pottery and porcelain
Ceramics in domestic and ornamental use, including earthenware, stoneware, and bone china (or softpaste porcelain). Made of 5% bone ash and china clay, bone china was first made in the West in...

Poujade, Pierre-Marie
(1920-2003) French entrepreneur and rightwing politician. His `Poujadist` movement made a dramatic entry into French politics in the 1956 parliamentary elections (when the youngest deputy elected on...

poujadist
Member of an extreme right-wing political movement led by Pierre Poujade (1920), which was prominent in French politics 1954-58. Known in France as the Union de Défense des Commerçants...

POUM
A small Spanish anti-Stalinist communist party led by Andrés Nin and Joaquín Maurín, prominent during the Spanish Civil War. Since Republican Spain received most of its external help from the...

pound
British standard monetary unit, issued as a gold sovereign before 1914, as a note 1914-83, and as a circular yellow metal-alloy coin from 1983. The pound is also the name given to the unit of...

Pound, Ezra Loomis
(1885-1972) US poet and cultural critic. He is regarded as one of the most important figures of 20th-century literature, and his work revolutionized modern poetry. His Personae and Exultations (1909)...

Pound, Roscoe
(1870-1964) US jurist. He was the leading exponent of what became known as sociological jurisprudence: the idea that the law must be sufficiently flexible to take into account social realities in order to...

Pounds, John
(1766-1839) British philanthropist. He was crippled by an accident in 1781, and subsequently became a shoemaker, setting up business for himself in 1803. In 1818 he began to teach poor children, becoming famous...

Pourbus
(lived 16th century) Family of Flemish painters specializing in religious and allegorical works and portraits. They were Pieter Gouda (1510-1584), his son Frans the Elder (1545-1581), and Frans's son Frans the...

Pouvana'a a Oopa, Marcel
(1895-1977) Tahitian political leader, campaigner for independence. He was elected to the French National Assembly in 1949, representing French Oceania for the Democratic Rally for the Tahitian People (RDPT),...

poverty
Condition in which the basic needs of human beings (shelter, food, and clothing) are not being met. Over one-fifth of the world's population was living in extreme poverty in 1995, of which around...

poverty cycle
Set of factors or events by which poverty, once started, is likely to continue unless there is outside intervention. Once an area or a person has become poor, this tends to lead to other...

poverty trap
Situation where a person reduces his or her net income by taking a job, or gaining a higher wage, which disqualifies him/her from claiming social security benefits or raises his/her tax liability. ...

Powderly, Terence (Vincent)
(1849-1924) US labour leader and public official. He joined the then secretive Noble Order of the Knights of Labor (1874), and, rising quickly, became its leader (1879-93). His ideal was a union open to all,...

Powdermaker, Hortense
(1896-1970) US cultural anthropologist. A pioneer among women archaeologists for working alone in exotic places, her Life in Lesu, based on research in a Pacific island village, appeared in 1933. She taught at...

Powell
Seminole leader; see Osceola. ...

Powell and Moya
British architectural partnership of A J Philip Powell (1921) and John Hidalgo Moya (1920). They had early success as winners of a competition for Pimlico Churchill Gardens housing...

Powell, (John) Enoch
(1912-1998) British Conservative politician. He was minister of health (1960-63), and contested the party leadership in 1965. In 1968 he made a speech against immigration that led to his dismissal from the...

Powell, Adam Clayton, Jr
(1908-1972) US Democratic politician. A leader of New York's black community, he was elected to the city council in 1941. He was appointed to Congress in 1944, and later became chair of the House Education and...

Powell, Adam Clayton, Sr
(1865-1953) US Protestant clergyman. At the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York, New York, from 1908-37 he preached racial pride and became a leader of the black American community. He helped found the...

Powell, Anthony Dymoke
(1905-2000) English novelist and critic. He wrote the series of 12 volumes A Dance to the Music of Time (1951-75) that begins shortly after World War I and chronicles a period of 50 years in the lives of...

Powell, Colin Luther
(1937) US general, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 1989-93, and US secretary of state 2001-04. A Vietnam War veteran, he first worked in government in 1972 and was national security adviser...

Powell, Dilys
(1901-1995) English writer, broadcaster, and film critic. She wrote for the Sunday Times and served as a governor of the British Film Institute from 1948 to 1952. She was appointed CBE in 1974. Powell was...

Powell, Lawrence Clark
(1906-2001) US librarian, author, and critic. A recognized expert on the works of poet (and fellow Occidental College graduate) Robinson Jeffers, he wrote hundreds of articles and reviews and more than a dozen...

Powell, Lewis Franklin, Jr
(1907-1998) US jurist. He was associate justice of the US Supreme Court 1971-87 under President Nixon. A conservative, Powell voted to restrict Fifth Amendment guarantees against self-incrimination and for...

power of attorney
In law, legal authority to act on behalf of another, for a specific transaction, or for a particular period. From 1986 powers of attorney may, in certain circumstances, remain valid when the person...

Power, Effie Louise
(1873-1969) US children's librarian and author. In 1926 in Cleveland, she introduced the `Book Caravan`, a forerunner of the bookmobile. She lectured on children and libraries throughout the country; she...

Powers, Hiram
(1805-1873) US sculptor. Originally a sculptor in wax, Powers created many portrait busts of figures such as President Andrew Jackson and Chief Justice John Marshall. In 1843 he completed his life-size marble...

Powers, J(ames) F(arl)
(1917) US writer. His major interest in fiction became the realistic, often wryly ironic depiction of priests' lives and conflicts, as in his prize-winning novel Morte d'Urban (1962) and in Wheat that...

Powerscourt
Country house at Enniskerry, County Wicklow, Republic of Ireland, built in 1731 by Richard Castle for the Wingfield family, the Viscounts Powerscourt. Its gardens, among the last formal gardens to...

Powhatan
(c. 1550-1618) Pamunkey Powhatan chief. He inherited the chieftainship of the so-called Powhatan Confederacy from his father, and greatly extended it until, by the arrival of the English (1607), it was an...

Powicke, Frederick Maurice
(1879-1963) British historian. A brilliant medievalist, Powicke's influence at Oxford University did much to maintain and increase a keen interest in medieval history in that university. His Henry III and the...

Powis Castle
Medieval castle in Welshpool, Powys, Wales, owned by the National Trust. The late 13th-century walls and bastions remain, but the castle was adapted in Elizabethan times and again in the latter...

Powys, House of
Ancient kingdom in Wales, bordering England in the east. It was frequently threatened from the east, and lands in the present English counties of Herefordshire, Worcestershire, and Shropshire were...

Powys, John Cowper
(1872-1963) English novelist. His mystic and erotic books include Wolf Solent (1929) and A Glastonbury Romance (1933);Owen Glendower (1940) is the most successful of his historical novels. He was one of six...

Powys, Llewelyn
(1884-1939) English essayist and novelist. He was the brother of John Cowper Powys...

Powys, Theodore Francis
(1875-1953) English novelist. He uses Dorset village life as a setting to describe the struggle between good and evil in allegorical terms. Mr Weston's Good Wine 1927 is considered his finest work. He was the...

Poynings's Law
Irish statute of 1494, introduced by Lord Deputy Edward Poynings (1459-1521), that decreed that all bills and amendments introduced in the Irish parliament must first be approved by the English...

Poynter, Edward John
(1836-1919) English painter. First engaged in decorative design, he later produced decorous nudes, mosaic panels for Westminster Palace (1870), and scenes from ancient Greece and Rome, as in Visit to...

Pozières
Crest in northern France held in World War I by the Germans; it was on rising ground which gave them a command of the Somme battlefield. It was captured by Australian troops during the Battle of the...

Pozsgay, Imre
(1933) Hungarian socialist politician, presidential candidate for the Hungarian Socialist Party from 1989. Influential in the democratization of Hungary 1988-89, he was rejected by the electorate in the...

Pozzo, Fra Andrea
(1642-1709) Italian baroque painter. He was skilled in illusionist church decoration, and the ceiling 1691-94 of the Jesuit church of S Ignazio, Rome, is a remarkable work. He went to Vienna 1702, becoming...

PPP
Abbreviation for purchasing-power parity. ...

Prado
Spanish art gallery containing the national collection of pictures. The building was designed as a natural history museum and begun in 1785; it became an art gallery in 1818 under Ferdinand VII. It...

Pradon, Nicolas
(1632-1698) French dramatist. He had a public feud with the French playwright Racine and the writer Nicolas Boileau. ...

Praed, Winthrop Mackworth
(1802-1839) English poet. Though he wrote a considerable amount of serious poetry, he is remembered chiefly as the supreme master of society verse, elegant and witty trifles depicting men and women of the...

praemunire
Three acts of the English Parliament passed 1353, 1365, and 1393, aimed to prevent appeal to the pope against the power of the king, and therefore an early demonstration of independence from Rome....

praetor
In ancient Rome, a magistrate, elected annually, who assisted the consuls (the chief magistrates) and presided over the civil courts. After a year in office, a praetor would act as a provincial...

Praetorian Guard
Body of troops established as the imperial bodyguard of ancient Rome in 27 BC by Augustus. It consisted of up to 16,000 men and was consolidated by the Roman emperors...

pragmatism
Philosophical tradition that interprets truth in terms of the practical effects of what is believed and, in particular, the usefulness of these effects. The US philosopher Charles Peirce is often...

Prague School
Group of linguists, including the Russian-born Roman Jakobson and the Russian Nicolai Trubetzkoy (1890-1938), who were active in Prague in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Their theory of...

Prague Spring
The 1968 programme of liberalization, begun under a new Communist Party leader in Czechoslovakia. In August 1968 Soviet tanks invaded Czechoslovakia and entered the capital Prague to put down the...

Prague, Battle of
During the Seven Years' War, victory of Frederick the Great over an Austrian army led by Charles of Lorraine on 6 May 1757 outside Prague. Prague, then in Bohemia, was held by Charles with 75,000...

Praise of Folly, The
A prose satire written in Latin by Erasmus and published in 1511. In a fashion of which Lucian would have been proud, Erasmus damns by praising many forms of human folly, not even sparing...

praise poem
Genre of traditional African literature which has influenced modern African poetry. Oral poets, particularly among southern African peoples such as the Xhosa, Tswana, Zulu, Sotho, and Shona, would...

Pramoedya Ananta Toer
(1925) Indonesian novelist. His books, written in everyday Javanese and in a rich prose, depict rural Javanese life and culture under Dutch rule and during the Revolution. In 1962 he joined...

prana
The life force, or airs, within the body, divided by Hindu philosophy into ten classifications beginning with the breath, and including the air of digestion, of evacuation, of relaxation, of opening...

Prasad, Rajendra
(1884-1963) Indian politician. He was president of the Indian National Congress several times between 1934 and 1948 and India's first president after independence 1950-62. Prasad...

prasada
In Hinduism, consecrated food, normally vegetarian, that is prepared for the deity either in the temple or in the home, and then distributed to the faithful as a blessing. The...

Pratt, Benjamin
(1710-1763) US judge. A successful lawyer with political interests, he represented Boston in the Massachusetts General Court from 1757 to 1759. He served briefly as chief justice of New York, a post a political...

Pratt, Edwin John
(1882-1964) Canadian poet. His traditional narrative verse deals with grand themes and mighty conflicts. Collected Poems appeared in 1944, followed by several other volumes. The Complete Poems in two volumes...

pravachan
Sermon or talk based on the Hindu scriptures. ...

Praxiteles
(lived mid-4th century BC) Greek sculptor. His Aphrodite of Cnidus of about 350 BC is thought to have initiated the tradition of life-size free-standing female nudes in Greek sculpture. It was destroyed by fire in AD 475,...

prayer
Address to divine power, ranging from a ritual formula to attain a desired end, to selfless communication in meditation. Within Christianity,...

prayer wheel
Revolving wheel or cylinder on which written prayers, mantras, or scriptures are inscribed or fastened by Tibetan Buddhists. As the wheels spin clockwise, the prayers are `repeated`. Prayer...

pre-Columbian architecture
The architecture of the Central and South American civilizations that existed prior to the arrival of European colonizers in the 16th century. Central American architecture Little evidence remains...

pre-Columbian art
Art of the Central and South American civilizations that existed prior to the arrival of European colonizers in the 16th century. Pre-Columbian art thrived over a wide timescale, from 1800 BC to...

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
Group of British painters (1848-53); Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and Holman Hunt- at this time young students at the Royal Academy - were the leading figures among the seven...

pre-Socratic philosophy
The ideas of the usually speculative ancient Greek cosmologists who mainly preceded Socrates (469-399 BC). The pre-Socratics range from Thales (640-546 BC) to Democritus (c. 460-361 BC). The...

Preble, Edward
(1761-1807) US naval officer. He commanded the Tripoli squadron against the Barbary pirates (1803-04) and authorized the burning of the captured USS Philadelphia. He had virtually defeated the Tripolitans...

precedence
Order or rank in which people should be placed on ceremonial occasions, depending partly upon letters patent and partly upon ancient custom. Questions of precedence are the responsibility of the...

precedent
Common law principle that, in deciding a particular case, judges are bound to follow any applicable principles of law laid down by superior courts in earlier reported cases. ...

Preda, Marin
(1922-1980) Romanian novelist and short-story writer. His novel Morometii/The Morometes 1954 deals with the problems caused by collectivization. Risipitorii/The Squanderers 1962 and Intrusul 1968 look at the...

predella
Base of an altarpiece, often painted with a series of incidents connected with the subjects of the main panels; for example, scenes from a saint's life. ...

predestination
In Christian theology, the doctrine asserting that God has determined all events beforehand, including the ultimate salvation or damnation of the individual human soul. Today Christianity in general...

prefabricated building
In architecture and construction, the manufacture of large elements, such as walls, floors, and roofs, or even entire buildings, for assembly at the site. Prefabrication is widely used for...

prefect
French government official who, under the centralized Napoleonic system 1800-1984, was responsible for enforcing government policy in each département and région. In 1984 prefects were replaced...

preference share
In finance, a share in a company with rights in various ways superior to those of ordinary shares; for example, priority to a fixed dividend and priority over ordinary shares in the event of the...

prehistoric art
Art that predates written records. The history of the fine arts - painting, engraving, and sculpture - begins around 40000 BC in the Palaeolithic period (Old Stone Age). The oldest known rock...

prehistoric medicine
Medicine that predates written records, evolving with the emergence of modern hominids over 2 million years ago. The study of prehistoric medicine is mainly dependent on sources such as skeletons,...

prehistory
Human cultures before the use of writing. The study of prehistory is mainly dependent on archaeology. General chronological dividing lines between prehistoric eras, or history and prehistory, are...

Prelutsky, Jack
(1940) US writer. His imaginative books have caused controversy at times due to their subject matter, but young readers continue to enjoy such works as Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep (1976), and...

Prem Tinsulanonda
(1920) Thai general and politician, prime minister 1980-88. During the military administration of General Kriangsak Chomanam 1977-80, he served as deputy minister of the interior and, from 1979, as...

Premadasa, Ranasinghe
(1924-1993) Sri Lankan right-wing politician, prime minister 1978-88, president from 1988, having gained popularity through overseeing a major house-building and poverty-alleviation programme. He sought...

premier
Alternative term for prime minister. ...

premium price
Difference between the current market price of a security and its issue price (where the current price is the greater). ...

Premium Savings Bond
British government bond introduced in 1956 whose purchaser is eligible for a prize-winning lottery. The prize money is funded from interest payable on the bond. ...

Premonstratensian
Roman Catholic monastic order founded in 1120 by St Norbert (c. 1080-1134), a German bishop, at Prémontré, northern France. Members were known as White Canons. The rule was a stricter version of...

Prendergast, Kathy
(1958) Irish contemporary artist. Using a huge range of media, she deals mainly with issues relating to the female body. She has received a number of awards, including the Carroll's Award at the 1980...

Prendergast, Maurice Brazil
(1859-1924) US painter. He created a decorative style in watercolours and in oils, using small translucent pools of colour. His work was inspired by Impressionism and post-Impressionism. Umbrellas in the...

Presbyterianism
System of Christian Protestant church government, expounded during the Reformation by John Calvin in Geneva, Switzerland, which gives its name to the established Church of Scotland, and is also...

presbytery
In church architecture, the sanctuary, or that part of the choir of the church in which the high altar is placed. The name is sometimes extended to the whole choir. The term presbytery is also used...

Prescott, Edward C
(1940) US economist. He received the 2004 Nobel Prize in Economics for his research on business cycles and time consistency in macroeconomic policy, an award he shared with Norwegian...

Prescott, John Leslie
(1938) British Labour politician, deputy leader from 1994, deputy prime minister from 1997. With his solid working-class background and strong trade-union links, he provided an important bridge between...

Prescott, William Hickling
(1796-1859) US historian, author of History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic 1838, History of the Conquest of Mexico 1843, and History of the Conquest of Peru 1847. Prescott was born at...

prescription
In English law, the legal acquisition of title or right (for example, an easement such as a right of way) by uninterrupted use or possession. ...