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

Stoker, Bram
(1847-1912) Irish novelist, actor, theatre manager, and author. Born in Dublin, he was educated there at Trinity College, and followed his father into the civil service. His celebrated novel Dracula (1897)...

Stokes mortar
Trench mortar of World War I invented by Sir Wilfrid Stokes 1915; it is the prototype of every mortar designed since. It consisted of a smooth-bore steel barrel with a closed end, resting upon a...

Stokes, Adrian (Durham)
(1902-1972) English art critic, painter, and poet. Developing an approach to art based on the theories of the psychotherapist Melanie Klein, he wrote on a wide range of subjects, but is perhaps best known for...

Stokes, Carl (Burton)
(1927) US mayor and judge. He served as assistant city prosecutor 1958-62, as state representative 1963-68, and as mayor of Cleveland 1968-72, the first African-American mayor of a major US city....

Stokes, Louis
(1925) US representative. An army veteran and lawyer from Cleveland, he served in the US House of Representatives (Democrat, 1963), becoming chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence in 1989. He was...

Stokes, Whitley
(1830-1909) Irish academic and lawyer. Born in Dublin, Stokes was an influential scholar of Celtic and Gaelic philology (the study of the historical development of languages), pursuing his interest while...

Stolberg, Christian, Count
(1748-1821) German poet, brother of Friedrich Leopold Stolberg. The Stolberg brothers were representatives of the idealistic Sturm und Drang movement. They collaborated on the volumes Gedichte/Poems 1779,...

Stolberg, Friedrich Leopold, Count
(1750-1819) German poet, brother of Christian Stolberg. He was the author of the tragedy Timoleon 1784; and produced translations from Greek of Homer's Iliad 1778, of works by Plato 1796-97, and of dramas by...

Stone Age
The developmental stage of humans in prehistory before the use of metals, when tools and weapons were made chiefly of stone, especially flint. The Stone Age is subdivided into the Old or...

stone circle
Prehistoric megalith. The circles were built with standing s ...

stone circles
See henge monuments. ...

Stone, (John) Richard (Nicholas)
(1913-1991) English economist and statistician, awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1984, jointly with English economist James Meade, for pioneering estimates of British national income and expenditure,...

Stone, Barton Warren
(1772-1844) US religious leader and evangelist. He held several Presbyterian pastorates before breaking with that denomination to establish several independent churches in Kentucky and Ohio. His `Christian`...

Stone, Benjamin
(1838-1914) British documentary photographer and politician. He made a systematic photographic record of British folk customs and parliamentary ceremonies and personalities. ...

Stone, Edward Durell
(1902-1978) US architect. More eclectic than innovative, he moved from a modernist style to a more ornamented style, often using grillwork and deliberately echoing the local/cultural environment. He set up his...

Stone, Frank
(1800-1859) English painter. His subjects, such as The Tryst, were conventional sentimental genre scenes strongly disliked by the Pre-Raphaelites. His son, Marcus Stone (1840-1921), was also an artist...

Stone, Harlan Fiske
(1872-1946) US jurist. He was associate justice to the US Supreme Court 1925-41 and chief justice 1941-46 under President Roosevelt. During World War II he authored opinions favouring federal war powers and...

Stone, I(sidor) F(einstein)
(1907-1989) US journalist and publisher. After serving on the New York Post and The Nation 1933-46, he founded the radical journal, I F Stone's Weekly (later, Biweekly), which he edited until 1971; there and...

Stone, Melville Elijah
(1848-1929) US journalist. In 1875 he founded the Chicago Daily News as a one-penny, mass-circulation paper. After selling it in 1888 and serving as a bank president, he became general manager of the...

Stone, Nicholas
(1586-1647) English sculptor and painter. He was appointed master mason for building the new banqueting house of Whitehall, London (1619), and in 1626 master mason of Windsor Castle. His tombs include those of...

Stone, Robert Anthony
(1937) US novelist and journalist. His writing often explores the corrupting influences of politics and the horrors of violence in modern culture. His Dog Soldiers (1974; National Book Award) is a classic...

Stonehenge
Megalithic monument on Salisbury Plain, 3 km/1.9 mi west of Amesbury in Wiltshire, England. The site developed over various periods from a simple henge (earthwork circle and ditch), dating from...

Stonehouse, John Thomson
(1925-1988) British Labour Party politician. An active member of the Cooperative Movement, he entered Parliament in 1957 and held junior posts under Harold Wilson before joining his cabinet in 1967. In 1974 he...

stoneware
Very hard, opaque, water-resistant pottery made of non-porous (non-absorbent) clay with feldspar and a high silica content. It is fired at high temperatures (1,200-1,280°C/2,192-2,336°F)...

Stopford, Montagu George North
(1892-1971) British general in World War II. He commanded an infantry brigade in France and Belgium 1940 and was given command of 33 Corps in India 1943. With this corps he relieved Kohima and Imphal 1944 and...

Stoph, Willi
(1914-1999) East German politician. The leading economist in the ruling East German party after World War II, he became a member of its central committee in 1950 and of East Germany's Politburo in 1953. He also...

Stoppard, Miriam
(1937) English physician, writer, and broadcaster. She made her debut as a television doctor in Don't Ask Me (1974-78), and appeared in the long-running series Baby & Co (1984-87). Her publications...

Stoppard, Tom
(1937) Czech-born British dramatist. His works use wit and wordplay to explore logical and philosophical ideas. He enjoyed wide success with the absurdist Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1967),...

Storer, Maria Longworth Nichols
(1849-1932) US ceramicist and arts patron. Impressed by the Japanese pottery she saw at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition (1876), she began to experiment with making pottery. In 1880 she established...

Storey, David Malcolm
(1933) English dramatist and novelist. His works often focus on the struggles of men to free themselves from societal pressures and conventions. His plays include In Celebration (1969), Home (1971), Early...

Storm, Theodor Woldsen
(1817-1888) German poet and writer of short stories. He published his first literary works, Gedichte/Poems and the story `Immensee`, in 1852. His final novella, `Der Schimmelreiter` 1888, is a finely...

Stormont
Suburb 8 km/5 mi east of Belfast, Northern Ireland. It is the site of the new Northern Ireland Assembly, elected as a result of the Good Friday agreement in 1998 and functioning from 1999 when some...

Storting
The Norwegian parliament, which consists of 165 representatives, elected every four years. ...

Story, Joseph
(1779-1845) US jurist and associate justice of the US Supreme Court 1811-45 under President Madison. He wrote several decisions defining the role of federal courts in admiralty law. The most notable was...

Stoss, Veit
(c. 1450-1533) German sculptor and painter. He was active in Nuremberg and Poland. He carved a wooden altarpiece with high relief panels in St Mary's, Kraków, a complicated design with numerous figures that...

Stothard, Thomas
(1755-1834) English painter and illustrator. His painting of The Canterbury Pilgrims was particularly popular. He illustrated the novels of Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollett, Laurence Sterne,...

Stourhead
House in Wiltshire, England, 13 km/8 mi south of Frome. Henry Hoare, the banker, commissioned Colen Campbell to build the house in 1722,...

Stout, Rex (Todhunter)
(1886-1975) US writer. He had a long and successful writing career. His first mystery novel, Fer-de-Lance (1934), introduced Nero Wolfe, a fat, brilliant, orchid-loving detective, and Archie Goodwin, his...

Stoutt, Hamilton Lavity
(1929-1995) British Virgin Islands centre-right politician, chief minister 1967-71, 1979-83, and 1986-95. He became leader of the Virgin Islands' Party (VIP) and the territory's first chief minister in...

Stoyanov, Petar
(1952) Bulgarian politician, member of the Union of Democratic Forces, president 1997-2001. In 1992 he became deputy minister of justice, and served as a member of parliament 1994-96. Educated at Sofia...

Strachey, (Evelyn) John St Loe
(1901-1963) British Labour politician. His controversial period as minister of food 1946-50 included the food crisis of 1947, the unpopular prolongation of rationing,...

Strachey, (Giles) Lytton
(1880-1932) English critic and biographer. He was a member of the Bloomsbury Group of writers and artists. His Landmarks in French Literature was written in 1912. The mocking and witty treatment of Cardinal...

Strada, Jacopo
(1515-1588) Italian antiquary. He was appointed court antiquary by the Holy Roman emperor Ferdinand I and continued in imperial service all his life. A collector of coins and books, Strada produced for his...

straits question
International and diplomatic debate in the 19th and 20th centuries over Russian naval access to the Mediterranean from the Black Sea via the Bosporus. ...

Stralsund, Peace of
In 1369, the peace between Waldemar IV of Denmark and the Hanseatic League (association of northern German trading towns) that concluded the Hanse war 1362-69. Denmark had unsuccessfully attempted...

Strand, Mark
(1934) Canadian-born US poet and writer whose family moved to the USA in 1938. He wrote fiction, criticism, and children's books, and worked as a translator and editor. He is best known, however, for his...

Straparola, Giovanni Francesco
(c. 1480-c. 1557) Italian writer. He is chiefly remembered for his Piacevolinotti. This comprised a series of tales modelled on Boccaccio's Decameron. These provided sources for Shakespeare and Molière, among other...

Strasberg, Lee
(1901-1982) US actor and artistic director of the Actors Studio from 1948. He developed Method acting from Stanislavsky's system; pupils have included Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Julie Harris, Kim Hunter,...

Strassburg, Gottfried von
(lived c. 1210) German poet. He was the author of the unfinished epic Tristan und Isolde, which inspired the German composer Wagner. ...

Strasser, Gregor
(1892-1934) German politician. He took part in Hitler's putsch of 1923. Later he organized the National Socialist party in the Reichstag. He lost favour for his radically anti-capitalist views. Hitler had him...

Strasser, Otto
(1897-1974) German politician. He joined his brother, Gregor, in the Nazi party and directed its Berlin publishing house from 1926-30. He then founded the Black Front, which was suppressed when Hitler came to...

Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
Series of US-Soviet discussions 1969-79 aimed at reducing the rate of nuclear-arms build-up (as opposed to disarmament, which would reduce the number of weapons, as discussed in Strategic Arms Reduction Talks
Phase in peace discussions dealing with disarmament, initially involving the USA and the Soviet Union, from 1992 the USA and Russia, and from 1993 Belarus and the Ukraine. It began with talks in...

Strategic Defense Initiative
US programme (1983-93) to explore the technical feasibility of developing a comprehensive defence system against incoming nuclear missiles, based in part outside the Earth's atmosphere. The...

strategic islands
Islands (Azores, Canary Islands, Cyprus, Iceland, Madeira, and Malta) of great political and military significance likely to affect their stability; they held their first...

Strategic Rail Authority
Organization responsible for giving a strategic direction to Britain's privatised railway system. Set up in July 1999 as the Shadow Strategic Rail Authority (SSRA), it became the Strategic Rail...

strategy, military
The planning of warfare. Grand strategy requires both political and military input and designs the overall war effort at national level. Planning for a campaign at army-group level or above is...

Stratemeyer, Edward L
(1862-1930) US writer and book syndicate operator. From 1906 onwards he supplied the characters, plots, and authors' pen-names to a team of writers who over the years wrote more than 800 books under some 60...

Stratemeyer, George Edward
(1890-1969) US pilot. During the interwar period he held staff and operational posts, and in 1943 he became commander of air forces in the India-Burma theatre. He later directed air operations in China. He...

Stratfield Saye House
House in Hampshire, England, 11 km/7 mi south of Reading. The central portion of the present house was built about 1630. It is the seat of the Duke of Wellington. Wellington chose Stratfield Saye...

stratigraphy
Branch of geology that deals with sedimentary rock layers (strata) and their sequence of formation. Its basis was developed by English geologist William Smith. The basic principle of superposition...

Stratton, `General Tom Thumb`
(1838-183) US celebrity. His parents were of normal height, but he grew to only 40 inches and weighed only 70 pounds. He joined P T Barnum's museum at the age of four; at age six, Barnum took him to Europe...

Straus, Nathan
(1848-1931) German-born merchant and philanthropist who went to the USA in 1854. In 1888 he and his brother Isidor became partners of R H Macy and Company, becoming its sole owners in 1896. He and Isidor also...

Straus, Oscar Solomon
(1850-1926) German-born diplomat and author who went to the USA in 1854. In 1887, he was appointed ambassador to Turkey 1887-89, a post he returned to twice 1898-1900, 1909-10. He was appointed a member...

Straus, William L(ouis), Jr
(1900-1981) US physical anthropologist. He taught at Johns Hopkins (1927-66), where he made detailed anatomical and neuromuscular studies of apes and monkeys. He investigated the evolution...

Strauss, David Friedrich
(1808-1874) German theologian. He became lecturer in philosophy at Tübingen University in 1832 and was later appointed to a chair at the University of Zürich. In 1835 he published his rationalist Life of...

Strauss, Franz Josef
(1915-1988) German conservative politician, leader of the West German Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) party 1961-88, premier of Bavaria 1978-88. Born and educated in Munich, Strauss, after military...

Strauss, Lewis (Lichtenstein)
(1896-1974) US government official. He became an Atomic Energy Commission member 1946-50, later chairman 1953-58, championing the hydrogen bomb and denying Robert Oppenheimer security clearance. Briefly...

Strauss, Robert (Schwartz)
(1918) US lawyer and government official. He served as Democratic Party chairman 1972-77, then was President Carter's Middle Eastern envoy in 1979 and campaign manager in 1980. Respected by Republicans,...

Straw, Jack
(1946) British Labour lawyer and politician, justice secretary and Lord Chancellor from 2007. Situated on the right wing of the Labour party, Straw was home secretary during the Labour government's first...

Strawson, Peter Frederick
(1919-2006) English philosopher who studied the distortions that logical systems impose on ordinary language. He also analysed the ways in which we distinguish individual...

stream of consciousness
Narrative technique in which a writer presents directly the uninterrupted flow of a character's thoughts, impressions, and feelings, without the conventional devices of dialogue and description. It...

streamlining
Popular design style of the 1930s which originated in cars, ships, and aeroplanes and went on to influence domestic appliances such as refrigerators and irons. The bulbous forms linked with...

Streep, Meryl
(1949) US actor. Considered one of the leading character actors of the 1980s and 90s, she has portrayed a wide range of roles with emotionally dramatic intensity, for example a conflicted mother in Kramer...

Street, George Edmund
(1824-1881) English Victorian architect. He travelled widely in Europe, and was a pupil of Gilbert Scott. He practised in Oxford from 1852, where Webb and Morris were among his assistants, before moving to...

Strehler, Giorgio
(1921-1997) Italian stage director. He founded the Piccolo Teatro in Milan in 1947, and specialized in productions of Goldoni with The Servant of Two Masters (1947) influenced by the popular commedia dell'arte;...

Streicher, Julius
(1895-1946) German politician. After World War I, he began a violent anti-Semitic and nationalistic movement at Nuremberg, Germany. He founded a special weekly paper for `the struggle for the truth against...

Strengell, Marianne
(1909-1998) Finnish-born US textile designer who went to the USA in 1937. She taught weaving and design at Cranbrook Academy 1937-61, and 1967-68. As a free-lance designer she developed the Strengell...

Stresa Front
Summit meeting 11-14 April 1935 between the prime ministers of Britain, France, and Italy (Ramsay MacDonald, Pierre Flandin, and Benito Mussolini) with the aim of forming a common front against...

Stresemann, Gustav
(1878-1929) German politician; chancellor in 1923 and foreign minister 1923-29 of the Weimar Republic. During World War I he was a strong nationalist but his views became more moderate under the Weimar...

stretcher
In art, a wooden frame over which artists' canvas is stretched and tacked for painting. It is usually made from pine wood. ...

Streuvels, Stijn
(1871-1969) Belgian novelist. Streuvels wrote about the west Flemish farm workers, whose character and environment are explored with sympathy, if pessimistically, in such works as Langs de Wegen/The Long Road...

Strickland, William
(1788-1854) US architect and engineer. He launched the Greek Revival in America with a series of Philadelphia public buildings in the 1820s and 1830s, notably t ...

Strigel, Bernhard
(1460-1528) German painter. He worked in Memmingen, Bavaria, as portrait painter to the Viennese Habsburg court and, late in life, as court painter to the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. Sybilla von Freyberg...

Strijdom, Johannes Gerhardus
(1893-1958) South African politician. He was prime minister of the Union of South Africa and leader in chief of the National party (1954-58). Strijdom was member of Parliament for Waterberge (1929-58). He...

strike
Stoppage of work by employees, often as members of a trade union, to obtain or resist change in wages, hours, or conditions. A lockout is a weapon of an employer to thwart or enforce such change by...

Strindberg, (Johan) August
(1849-1912) Swedish dramatist and novelist. His plays are in a variety of styles including historical dramas, symbolic dramas (the two-part Dödsdansen/The Dance of Death (1901)), and `chamber plays` such...

Strode, William
(c. 1599-1645) English Parliamentarian. He entered Parliament in 1624 and retained his seat there until his death. He is remembered as one of the five members whom Charles I attempted to arrest in the Commons in...

Stroessner Matiauda, Alfredo
(1912-2006) Paraguayan military dictator and president 1954-89. As head of the armed forces from 1951, he seized power from President Federico Chávez in a coup in 1954, sponsored by the right-wing ruling...

Strong, Ann (Louise)
(1930) US regional planner and lawyer. A professor of planning at the University of Pennsylvania where she taught from 1959, she specialized in land use management, finding ways to preserve farmlands and...

Strong, Augustus Hopkins
(1836-1921) US Protestant theologian and educator. President of the Rochester Seminary from 1872 to 1912, he produced theological works, including Systematic Theology (1886), that sought a middle ground between...

Strong, Josiah
(1847-1916) US Protestant religious leader. He wrote the highly influential Our Country (1885), in which he proposed religious solutions for social and economic problems. He developed his Social Gospel themes...

Strong, William
(1808-1895) US Supreme Court justice. He served in the US House of Representatives as a Democrat for Pennsylvania 1847-51 then left to practise law. He sat on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court 1850-68, before...

Strong, William D(uncan)
(1899-1962) US archaeologist and anthropologist. An authority on South American Indians, he led many North and South American expeditions and discovered the tomb of the war god Ai apaec in Peru in 1946. He was...

Strongbow
See Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke and Striguil. ...

strophe
In ancient Greek drama, a section or stanza of a choral ode. The strophe was sung by the chorus as they moved in one direction, and followed by the antistrophe when they moved back...

Strossmayer, Josef Georg
(1815-1905) Austrian Roman Catholic bishop. Ordained in 1838, he was shortly afterwards appointed professor at the Diakovar Seminary, and consecrated bishop of Bosnia and Sirmio. He worked for the development...

Strozzi, Bernardo
(1581-1644) Italian painter and engraver. He was active in Venice, working with a Venetian richness of colour. He painted a number of portraits in the style of Michelangeo Merisi Caravaggio. Strozzi was a...

structural functionalism
Anthropological theory formulated by Alfred R ...

structuralism
20th-century philosophical movement that has influenced such areas as linguistics, anthropology, and literary criticism. Inspired by the work of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure,...