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

Vanzetti, Bartolomeo
(1888-1927) Italian anarchist. Vanzetti emigrated to the USA in 1908, finding work as a fish peddlar. In 1920 he was accused, with Nicola Sacco, of murdering two men while robbing a shoe factory in...

Varanasi
City in Uttar Pradesh, India, one of the seven holy cities of Hinduism, on the River Ganges; population (2001 est) 1,211,700. There are 1,500 golden shrines, and a 5 km/3 mi frontage to the Ganges...

Varangian
Member of the Byzantine imperial guard founded in 988 by Vladimir of Kiev (955-1015), which lasted until the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The n ...

Vardar, Battles of
Two battles in World War I (October 1915 and September 1918) between Serbian forces backed by Allied troops and the Bulgarians, both part of the larger Allied operation surrounding Salonika. The...

Vargas Llosa, (Jorge) Mario (Pedro)
(1936) Peruvian novelist and politician. He wrote La ciudad y los perros/The Time of the Hero (1963) and La guerra del fin del mundo/The War at the End of the World (1982). In the course of his political...

Vargas, Getúlio Dornelles
(1883-1954) Brazilian president 1930-45 and 1951-54. Following his presidential election failure in 1930, he overthrew the republic and in 1937 set up a totalitarian, profascist state known as the Estado...

Vargas, Luis de
(1502-1568) Castilian painter. He spent almost 30 years in Italy, where he was deeply influenced by the work of Giorgio Vasari. On returning to Spain about 1550, he introduced the art of fresco painting to...

Varius Rufus, Lucius
(lived 1st century BC) Roman poet. Maecenas was his patron, and he was a friend of Horace and Virgil. His tragedy Thyestes, performed in 29 BC, was highly esteemed, being compared to Greek tragedy. He also wrote epics,...

varna
Term meaning social category or class when referring to the caste system of India. The hierarchy of the caste system is entered by birth and permeates all of Indian life, religious and social,...

Varnashrama
System of social division in Vedic culture that characterizes traditional Hindu society. The four varnas (orders) are the Brahman, or priests; the Kshatriya, warriors and rulers; the Vaisya,...

Varnedoe, (John) Kirk (Train)
(1946) US museum curator and teacher. He headed the department of painting and sculpture of the Museum of Modern Art, and in addition to his numerous articles and lectures on art topics, he became known...

Varnhagen von Ense, Carl August
(1785-1858) German writer. His main works are biographies, such as lives of Goethe 1823 and General von Bülow 1853, and the five-volume Biographische Denkmäle 1824-30. In 1814 he married Rahel Levin, who...

varnish
In art and crafts, a transparent solution of resins or resinous gums dissolved in linseed oil, turpentine, or other solvents, or the synthetic equivalents. It is used to protect the surface of...

Varro, Marcus Terentius
(116 BC-27 BC) Roman author and scholar. He is known to have written about 70 works on a wide range of subjects and 150 Menippean satires (in the style of the Greek satirist Menippos). Of these, apart from...

Varuna
In early Hindu mythology, the sky god and king of the universe. Varuna may be equated with the Graeco-Roman sky god Ouranos/Uranus and with Orion. ...

varve analysis
Method of archaeological dating using annual varve (glacial deposit) thickness patterns formed in lakes near the edge of a glacier's retreat. A hot summer results in a thick varve, owing to a...

Vasa dynasty
Swedish royal house founded by Gustavus Vasa. He liberated his country from Danish rule 1520-23 and put down local uprisings of nobles and peasants. By 1544 he was secure enough to make his title...

Vasarely, Victor
(1908-1997) Hungarian-born French artist. He was one of the leading exponents of op art. In the 1940s he developed precise geometric compositions, full of visual puzzles and effects of movement, which he...

Vasari, Giorgio
(1511-1574) Italian art historian, architect, and painter. He is best known for Le vite de' più eccelenti architetti, pittori, et sculteri italiani/The Lives of the Most Excellent Italian Architects, Painters,...

Vasco da Gama
Portuguese navigator; see Gama. ...

Vasilevsky, Alexandr M
(1895-1977) Soviet general, Marshal of the Soviet Union. Appointed Chief of Staff 1942 he was responsible for planning most major Soviet operations of World War II, including...

Vásquez, Horacio
(1860-1936) Dominican Republic politician, president in 1899, 1902-03, and 1924-30. He rose to power after the assassination of dictator Ulises Heureaux in 1899, and dominated politics until overthrown by...

Vassa
Three-month period of retreat for Theravada Buddhist monks and nuns during the rainy season. It begins at the festival of Asalha in June/July, which marks the Buddha's first sermon, and ends at...

vassal
In medieval Europe, a person who paid feudal homage to a superior lord (see feudalism), and who promised military service and advice in return for a grant of land. The term was used...

Vassar, Matthew
(1792-1868) British-born US entrepreneur and educational philanthropist. A proponent of higher education for women, he endowed Vassar Female College in Poughkeepsie, New York, 1861. The school opened 1865...

Vassiliou, Georgios Vassos
(1931) Greek-Cypriot politician and entrepreneur, president of Cyprus 1988-93. A self-made millionaire, he entered politics as an independent and in 1988 won the presidency, with Communist Party...

VAT
Abbreviation for value-added tax. ...

Vatican Bank
Bank of the Vatican City State, officially known as the Institute of Religious Works (IOR). In 1982 Roberto Calvi, known as `God's banker` because of his ties with the Vatican, was found hanged...

Vatican City State
Sovereign area within the city of Rome, Italy. Government The pope, elected for life by the Sacred College of ...

Vatican Council
Either of two Roman Catholic ecumenical councils called by Pope Pius IX 1869 (which met 1870) and by Pope John XXIII 1959 (which met 1962). These councils deliberated over...

Vatutin, Nikolai A
(1901-1944) Soviet general. Appointed commander of the Southwest Front 1942 he took part in the action at Stalingrad; he attempted an offensive but was soundly defe ...

Vauban, Sébastien le Prestre de
(1633-1707) French marshal and military engineer. In Louis XIV's wars he conducted many sieges and rebuilt many of the fortresses on France's east frontier. ...

Vauclain, Samuel (Matthews)
(1856-1940) US engineer and inventor. He perfected a series of improvements to locomotives and became a world authority on locomotive design. As president (from 1919) and later board chairman (from 1929) of the...

vaudeville
Stage entertainment popular in the USA from the 1890s to the 1920s, featuring a variety of acts such as comedy sketches, song-and-dance routines, and so on. Vaudeville is in the same tradition...

Vaughan, Henry
(1846-1917) US architect, of English origin. He led the `Boston Gothicists`, designing primarily churches and schools. His late American Gothic Revival influenced Ralph Adams Cram, among others. Vaughan was...

Vaughan, Henry
(1622-1695) Welsh metaphysical poet. He published several volumes of religious verse and prose devotions. His best-known work, Silex Scintillans: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (1650), contains the...

Vaughan, Herbert Alfred
(1832-1903) English Roman Catholic cleric who, as archbishop of Westminster 1892-1903, was responsible for the construction of Westminster Cathedral, which beg ...

Vaughan, Stevie Ray
(1954-1990) US rock musician. A virtuoso guitarist, in 1981 he formed `Double Trouble`, a blues-rock trio, and performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, attracting widespread acclaim. He...

Vaughan, Thomas Wayland
(1870-1952) US geologist, palaeontologist, and oceanographer. Educated at Harvard (AB, AM, PhD), he was an authority on marine sediments, fossil and recent corals, and American Tertiary stratigraphy. He was a...

vault
In architecture, a continuous arch of brick, stone, or concrete, forming a self-supporting roof over a building or part of a building; also a vaulted structure, for example...

Vaux-Fossoy, Battle of
In World War I, unsuccessful German attempt July 1918 to take the villages of Vaux and Fossoy in northern France which were held by the US 3rd division. A German attack against Vaux 15 July was held...

Vaux, Calvert
(1824-1895) US landscape designer and architect, of English origin. A pioneer in the public parks movement, he worked with Frederick Law Olmsted 1857-72, and together they produced the winning design for New...

Vaux, James Hardy
(born 1782) English-born convict, three times transported to Australia for robbery. During his second period in New South Wales 1810-29, he wrote an autobiography Memoirs of James Hardy Vaux which was...

Vaux, Roberts
(1786-1836) US penology reformer and philanthropist. He helped found Philadelphia's free public school system, the Eastern Penitentiary, the Frankford Asylum, institutions for the blind and deaf, the Linnaean...

VE Day
Anniversary of the surrender of Germany at the end of World War II, 8 May 1945. The day is celebrated as a commemoration of the victory of the Allied powers in the European theatre. The war...

Veblen, Oswald
(1880-1960) US mathematician. His greatest contribution to mathematics was to geometry, particularly the development of analysis situs. Known for developing the school of mathematics at the Institute for...

Vecchietta, Lorenzo di Pietro
(1413-1480) Italian painter and sculptor. In painting he followed Stefano di Sassetta and had considerable influence on the development of the art of Siena, where he was active. He was a pupil of Jacopo della...

Vecellio, Francesco
(1483-1560) Italian painter. He worked at first as an assistant and later alone in the provinces. His works include a Nativity in the Church of S Guiseppe in Belluno, Ecce Homo (Gemäldegalerie Alter Meister,...

Veda
The most sacred of the Hindu scriptures, hymns written in an old form of Sanskrit; the oldest may date from 1500 or 2000 BC. The four main collections are: the Rig...

Vedanta
School of Hindu philosophy that developed the teachings of the Upanishads. One of its teachers was Samkara, who lived in southern India in the 8th century AD and is generally regarded as a...

Vedda
Member of any of the aboriginal peoples of Sri Lanka, who occupied the island before the arrival of the Aryans about 550 BC. Formerly cave-dwelling hunter-gatherers, they have now almost died...

Veen, Otto van
(1558-1629) Flemish painter. Producing historical and religious subjects and portraits, he worked in Liège, Brussels, and Antwerp. He also worked in Italy in the studio of Federigo Zuccaro, becom ...

Vega, Lope Felix de (Carpio)
(1562-1635) Spanish poet and dramatist. He was one of the founders of modern Spanish drama. He wrote epics, pastorals, odes, sonnets, novels, and over 500 plays (of which 426 are still in existence), mostly...

Vegetius
(lived 5th century) Roman writer, author of Epitoma Rei Militaris in four books. The material, on military matters, is chiefly borrowed from earlier authorities, and the style is worthless. However, Vegetius is the...

Veil, Simone
(1927) French centrist politician, the first woman to hold a full cabinet post under the Fifth Republic, as Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's minister for health 1974-79. A survivor of Hitler's concentration...

Veiller, Lawrence Turner
(1872-1959) US social worker and housing expert. He rose to national prominence as secretary of the New York State Tenement House Commission (1900-01), and transformed the nation's housing reform movement...

Velasco Ibarra, José Maria
(1893-1979) Ecuadorean politician; president five times between 1934 and 1968. He dominated political life in Ecuador in the post-war era, gaining presidential election five times (1934-35, 1944-47,...

Velcro
System of very small hooks and eyes used for fastening clothing, and attaching other surfaces temporarily. It was developed and patented in 1945 by Swiss inventor Georges de Mestral (1902-1990)...

Vélez de Guevara, Luis
(1578-1645) Spanish dramatist and novelist. His fantastic novel El diablo cojuelo/The Crippled Devil 1641 is the basis of Alain-RenéLe Sage'sLe Diable boîteux/The Devil upon Two Sticks 1707. His numerous...

Velikovsky, Immanuel
(1895-1979) US physician, psychoanalyst, cosmologist, and writer, of Russian origin. He lectured widely and wrote articles and books - including Ages in Chaos (1952) and Oedipus and Akhnaton: Myth and History...

vellum
Type of parchment, often rolled in scrolls, made from the skin of a calf, kid, or lamb. It was used from the late Roman empire and Middle Ages for exceptionally important documents and the finest...

velvet
Fabric of silk, cotton, nylon, or other textile, with a short, thick pile. Utrecht in the Netherlands and Genoa, Italy, are traditional centres of manufacture. It is woven on a double loom, then cut...

Vendée, Wars of the
In the French Revolution, a series of peasant uprisings against the republican government that began in the Vendée département of western France in 1793, and later spread to other areas of the...

vendetta
Any prolonged feud, in particular one in which the relatives of a dishonoured or murdered person seek revenge on the wrongdoer or members of the family. The tradition is Mediterranean, known in...

Vendler, Helen (Hennessy)
(1933) US literary critic and educator. A professor at Boston University (1966-85) and Harvard (1981), she became the New Yorker's poetry critic (1978); through her numerous reviews there and in the New...

veneer
Thin layers of fine wood applied to the surface of furniture made with a coarser or cheaper wood. Veneer has been widely used from the second half of the 17th century. ...

Veneman, Ann M
(1949) US Republican politician, secretary of agriculture from 2001. She was deputy secretary of agriculture under President George H W Bush 1991-93 and California's secretary of food and agriculture...

Venezia Giulia e Zara
Former region of northeast Italy which comprised the provinces of Carnaro, Gorizia, Istria, and Zara; area 8,950 sq km/3,456 sq mi. At the end of World War II, by the peace treaty signed in Paris on...

Veneziano, Agostino
(lived 16th century) Italian engraver. He was a pupil and assistant of Marcantonio Raimondi, and engraved many works, chiefly after Raphael. A collection of his works is in the British Museum, London. ...

Veneziano, Domenico
Italian painter; see Domenico Veneziano. ...

Venezuela
Country in northern South America, on the Caribbean Sea, bounded east by Guyana, south by Brazil, and west by Colombia. Government Venezuela is a federal republic of 23 states, a federal district...

venial sin
In Christianity, a less serious sin, or a sin that causes only a partial loss of grace, as opposed to mortal sin, which brings eternal damnation unless repented of...

venite
Music based on the text of Psalm 95, Venite, exultemus Domino (Latin `O come let us sing unto the Lord`). It is sung at Anglican
Venizelos, Eleuthérios Kyriakos
(1864-1936) Greek politician born in Crete, leader of the Cretan movement against Turkish rule until the union of the island with Greece in 1905. He later became prime minister of the Greek state on five...

Ventris, Michael George Francis
(1922-1956) English architect. Deciphering Minoan Linear B, the language of the tablets found at Knossos and Pylos, he showed that it was a very early form of Greek, thus revising existing views...

Ventura, Jesse
(1951) US professional wrestler, actor, and politician. After a career as a Navy SEAL, professional wrestler, and actor, he was unexpectedly elected governor of Minnesota in 1998 as the candidate of the...

venture capital
Money provided by professional investors to aid the development of young fast-growing companies, or to expand existing ones. In return for their investment they receive a share of the company's...

Venturi, Adolfo
(1856-1941) Italian art historian. He is remembered for his monumental survey of Italian art, Storia dell'arte italiana/The Story of Italian Art, published in 25 volumes 1901-39. ...

Venturi, Lionello
(1885-1961) Italian art historian. He wrote on a wide range of art history subjects, though with a particular interest in Italian art. One of his best-known books is Italian Painting: The Creators of the...

Venturi, Robert Charles
(1925) US architect. He pioneered postmodernism through his books Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1967), for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1991, and Learning from Las Vegas (1972). He...

Venus
In Roman mythology, the goddess of love and beauty, equivalent to the Greek Aphrodite. The patricians of Rome claimed descendance from her son, the Trojan prince Aeneas, and she was consequently...

Venus of Urbino
Oil painting by Titian 1538 (Uffizi, Florence), in which a nude woman reclines luxuriously on a bed, accompanied by symbols of love and fidelity. Titian used thin layers of paint to achieve a...

Venusberg
Cavernous court of Venus in late medieval German legend, supposedly visited by Tannhäuser, who then sought absolution from the pope for his sins. ...

Vercingetorix
(died 46 BC) Gallic chieftain. Leader of a revolt of all the tribes of Gaul against the Romans 52 BC; he lost, was captured, displayed in Julius Caesar's triumph 46 BC, and later executed. This ended the Gallic...

Vercors
(1902-1991) French writer. He cofounded the clandestine publishing company Editions de Minuit during the German occupation 1940-44 and published Le Silence de la mer/The Silence of the Sea 1941 and La Marche...

Verde, Cesario
(1855-1886) Portuguese poet. His verse contains charming descriptions of Lisbon seen through the eyes of a countryman, as well as profound insights into modern city life. ...

verdict
In law, a jury's decision, usually a finding of `guilty` or `not guilty`. In Scotland a third option is `not proven` where the jury is not convinced either way. In Britain majority...

Verdon, Gwen
(1926-2000) US stage actor. Remembered for singing and dancing `Whatever Lola Wants (Lola Gets)` in Damn Yankees (1955), she starred in a number of other Broadway musicals. In 1998 she was awarded the...

Verdun
Fortress town in northeast France in the département of the Meuse, 280 km/174 mi east of Paris. During World War I it became a symbol of French resistance and was the centre of a series of bitterly...

Vere, Francis
(1560-1609) English soldier who spent almost his whole adult life (1585-1604) in active military service, mainly against the Spanish in the Netherlands. Vere played a gallant part in the defence of Sluys...

Vere, Horace, Baron Vere of Tilbury
(1565-1635) English soldier, brother of Sir Francis Vere. He commanded English forces in Holland in 1604, where he succeeded in capturing Sluys. As leader of the English expedition sent to help Frederick V,...

Vereschchagin, Vasily Vasilyevich
(1842-1904) Russian painter and war correspondent. He travelled widely in Asia and the Middle East. Many of his pictures expose the horrors of war, such as Apotheosis of War 1871 (Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow), a...

Verga, Giovanni
(1840-1922) Italian novelist. He realistically described the life of Sicilian peasants and fisherfolk in such works as La vita dei campi/Life in the Fields 1880, I Malavoglia/The House by the Medlar Tree 1881,...

Vergil
Alternative spelling of Virgil, Roman poet. ...

Vergil, Polydore
(c. 1470-1555) Italian humanist author from Urbino. Sent to England in 1502 as a papal tax collector, Vergil began writing Anglica Historia/English History (completed in 1532); for his efforts he received Henry...

Verginia
In Roman mythology, a girl who was killed by her father to protect her from the lust of a Roman magistrate. Her death prompted a revolution, concluded by the publication of a law code, the Twelve...

Vergniaud, Pierre Victurnien
(1753-1793) French revolutionary orator, co-leader (with Jacques-Pierre Brissot) of the moderate republican Girondin party. He and Brissot were guillotined during the Reign of...

Verhaeren, Emile
(1855-1916) Belgian poet. The influence of the French Symbolists on his work was profound, yet his poetry is often distinctly Flemish in inspiration; for example, Les Flamandes 1883. His compassionate response...

Verhofstadt, Guy
(1953) Belgian politician, prime minister 1999-â€Æ`. A Flemish Liberal, Verhofstadt headed a `rainbow` coalition after his centre-right party made substantial gains in general elections held in June...

verifiability
In logic and philosophy, the feature of a proposition that enables us to check that it is true. A verifiable proposition has to be contingent; that is, it must be possible...