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

Vyshinsky, Andrei Yanuaryevich
(1883-1954) Soviet politician. As commissar for justice, he acted as prosecutor at Stalin's treason trials 1936-38. He was foreign minister 1949-53 and often represented the USSR at the...

Vysotsky, Vladimir Semenovich
(1938-1980) Russian ballad singer and actor famous during the 1970s for his popular songs, circulated privately since he was forbidden to publish the words. The satirical ballads he wrote and performed told of...

Wa&lsla;&ecedil;sa, Lech
(1943) Polish trade union leader, president of Poland 1990-95. One of the founding members of the Solidarity free-trade-union movement, which emerged to challenge the communist government during...

Wace, Robert
(c. 1100-c. 1175) Anglo-Norman poet and chronicler of early chivalry. His major works, both written in Norman French, were Roman de Brut (also known as Geste des Bretons) 1155, containing material relating to the...

Wacha Dinshaw Edulji
(1844-1936) Indian politician. A member of the Bombay legislative council and the Imperial legislative council, he worked for the peaceful development of his country...

Waddell, James (Iredell)
(1824-1886) US naval officer. He served in the US navy 1841-62 and then the Confederate States navy 1862-65, during the American Civil War. He commanded the Confederate raider Shenandoah on a 93,340...

Waddell, Martin
(1941) British writer of books for young children, including the best-selling picture book Can't You Sleep Little Bear (1988) (illustrated by Barbara Firth). Books include Owl Babies, Sam Vole and His...

Waddesdon Manor
Late Victorian Renaissance-style house in Buckinghamshire, England, 8 km/5 mi northwest of Aylesbury. It was built for Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, and was bequeathed to the National Trust in...

Waddington, David Charles
(1929) British Conservative politician, home secretary 1989-90. He trained as a barrister, and was MP for Nelson and Colne 1968-74 and for Clitheroe (Ribble Valley since 1983) 1979-91. A Conservative...

Wade, Benjamin Franklin
(1800-1878) US lawyer and public official. As a US senator (Whig, Ohio, 1851-56; Republican, 1856-69), he joined with congressional Radical Republicans to press for the emancipation of slaves and, after the...

Wade, George
(1673-1748) Hanoverian soldier. As Hanoverian commander-in-chief in Scotland from 1724-38, he built roads and bridges to assist military communications and formed a Highland militia which later became the...

Wade, Leigh
(1897-1991) US aviator. He became a pioneer test pilot, participating in many air races and international competitions during the 1920s. He was a member of the army's first round-the-world flight in 1924,...

Wadsworth, Edward Alexander
(1889-1949) English artist. Associated with the Vorticists, he first produced brightly coloured linear abstracts and made a remarkable series of semi-abstract woodcuts from 1913 to 1914. By the 1920s he had...

Wafd
The main Egyptian nationalist party between World Wars I and II. Under Nahas Pasha it formed a number of governments in the 1920s and 1930s. Dismissed by King Farouk in 1938, it was reinstated by...

Waffen SS
Military arm of the SS, by the end of 1944 the...

Wagenfeld, Wilhelm
(1900-1990) German architect and industrial designer. A graduate of the Bauhaus design school in Weimar, Germany, Wagenfeld went on to become one of the country's leading proponents of the machine style (a...

Wagley, Charles (Walter)
(1913-1991) US social anthropologist. He worked among the descendants of the Maya in Guatemala in the 1930s; in the 1940s he was among the first Americans to work in the South American lowlands, beginning the...

Wagner, Otto
(1841-1918) Viennese architect. Initially working in the art nouveau style, for example the Vienna Stadtbahn 1894-97, he later rejected ornament for rationalism, as in the Post Office Savings Bank, Vienna,...

Wagner, Robert
(1910-1991) US Democratic politician, mayor of New York City 1954-65. He demolished slum areas, built public housing, and was instrumental in introducing members of ethnic minorities into City Hall. ...

Wagner, Robert F(erdinand)
(1877-1953) US Democratic senator 1927-49, a leading figure in the development of welfare provision in the USA, especially in the New Deal era. He helped draft much new legislation, including the National...

Wagram, Battle of
During the Napoleonic Wars, decisive French victory 6 July 1809 over the Austrians led by the Archduke Charles near Wagram, an Austrian village 18 km/11 mi northeast of Vienna. Austria was forced to...

Wagstaff, Sam(uel J, Jr)
(1921-1989) US fine art curator and collector. He worked as a curator at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut 1961-68 and at the Detroit Institute of Arts 1968-71. Beginning in 1973, he assembled a...

Wahabi
Puritanical Saudi Islamic sect founded by Muhammad ibn-Abd-al-Wahab (1703-1792), which regards all other sects as heretical. By the early 20th century it had spread throughout the Arabian...

Wahid, Abdurrahman
(1940) Indonesian religious leader and president 1999-2001; chair, from 1984, of the Nahdlatul Ulama Islamic Group, Indonesia's largest Islamic organization with 34 million followers in 1998. He was a...

Wailing Wall
The remaining part of the Temple in Jerusalem, a sacred site of pilgrimage and prayer for Jews. Midrash tradition holds that this portion of wall avoided destruction in AD 70 because the Holy Spirit...

Wain, John (Barrington)
(1925-1994) English poet and novelist. His first novel, Hurry on Down (1953), expresses the radical political views of the Angry Young Men of the 1950s. He published several volumes of witty and ironic verse,...

Wainewright, Thomas (Griffiths)
(1794-1847) British-born Australian artist, considered one of the finest early Australian portraitists. His subjects were often the wives of colonial officials living in Australia, after he was sent to Van...

Wainwright, Alfred
(1907-1991) English walker and author of guidebooks. His first articles appeared in 1955 in a local paper and he eventually produced over 40 meticulously detailed books, including volumes on the Lake District,...

Waitangi, Treaty of
Treaty negotiated in New Zealand in 1840 between the British government and the indigenous Maori. The treaty guaranteed the Maori their own territory and gave them British citizenship. The British...

Waite, Morrison Remick
(1816-1888) US lawyer and chief justice of the USA from 1874, appointed by President Grant. He presided over constitutional challenges to Reconstruction 1865-77, but is best remembered for his decisions...

Waite, Terry
(1939) English religious adviser to the archbishop of Canterbury (then Dr Robert Runcie) 1980-87. As the archbishop's special envoy, Waite disappeared on 20 January 1987 while engaged in secret...

Waiting for Godot
Tragicomedy by Samuel Beckett (1955). Vladimir and Estragon wait on a country road for the arrival of...

wake
Watch kept over the body of a dead person during the night before their funeral; it originated in Anglo-Saxon times as the eve before a festival. In the north of England, wakes week is the week...

Wakefield, Battle of
In the Wars of the Roses, battle 30 December 1460 in which a superior Lancastrian force defeated and killed Richard, Duke of York, who was besieged at Sandal Castle, near Wakefield. Richard was...

Wakefield, Edward Gibbon
(1796-1862) British colonial administrator. He was imprisoned 1826-29 for abducting an heiress, and became manager of the South Australian Association, which founded a colony 1836. He was an agent for the New...

Wakhan Salient
Narrow strip of territory in Afghanistan bordered by Tajikistan, China, and Pakistan. It was effectively annexed by the USSR in 1980 to halt alleged arms supplies to Afghan guerrillas...

Walachia
Alternative spelling of Wallachia, part of Romania. ...

Walch, Jacob
Italian painter and engraver; see Jacopo de' Barbari. ...

Walcott, Derek Walton
(1930) St Lucian writer, poet, and playwright. His work fuses Caribbean and European, classical and contemporary elements, and deals with the divisions within colonial society and his own search for...

Waldemar (I) the Great
(1131-1182) King of Denmark from 1157, who defeated rival claimants to the throne and overcame the Wends on the Baltic island of Rügen in 1169. ...

Waldemar (II) the Conqueror
(1170-1241) King of Denmark from 1202. He was the second son of Waldemar the Great and succeeded his brother Canute VI. He gained control of land north of the River Elbe (which he later lost), as well as much...

Waldemar IV
(1320-1375) King of Denmark from 1340, responsible for reuniting his country by capturing SkÃÂ¥ne (southern Sweden) and the island of Gotland in 1361. However, the resulting conflict with the Hanseatic League...

Walden
A classic literary work of 19th-century US individualism and political radicalism, published in 1854. It is the record kept by Henry David Thoreau of his attempt to `front the essential facts of...

Walden, (Alastair) Brian
(1932) English journalist and current affairs broadcaster. A Labour member of Parliament 1964-77, he became disillusioned with party politics and cut short his parliamentary career to present the...

Waldenses
Protestant religious sect, founded in about 1170 by Peter Waldo, a merchant of Lyons. They were allied to the Albigenses. They lived in voluntary poverty, refused to take oaths or take part in war,...

Waldheim, Kurt
(1918-2007) Austrian politician and diplomat, president 1986-92. He was secretary general of the United Nations 1972-81, having been Austria's representative there 1964-68 and 1970-71. He was elected...

Wales Office
UK government department, established as the Welsh Office in 1965, which was responsible until 1999 for administration in Wales of policies on agriculture, education, health and social services,...

Wales, Church in
The Welsh Anglican Church, independent from the Church of England. The Welsh church became strongly Protestant in the 16th century, but in the 17th and 18th centuries declined from being led by a...

Wales, Prince of
Title conferred on the eldest son of the UK's sovereign. Prince Charles was invested as 21st prince of Wales at Caernarfon in 1969 by his mother, Elizabeth II. The conferment is sometimes...

Waley, Arthur
(1889-1966) English orientalist. He translated from both Chinese and Japanese, including Chinese lyrics, such classics as the Japanese The Tale of Genji (by Murasaki) 1925-33 and The Pillow-book of Sei...

wali
Honorific title in Islam, given to a saint or wise and holy person, especially to the Sufi masters. It is also used in Shiite teaching to indicate close companionship with Muhammad, as in the case...

walkabout
Australian Aboriginal term for a nomadic ritual return into the bush by an urbanized Aboriginal; also used more casually for any similar excursion. ...

Walker, (Addison) Mort(imer)
(1923) US cartoonist. In 1940 he created the popular newspaper comic strip, Beetle Bailey, featuring a shiftless soldier and his friends. He also created...

Walker, Alan (Cyril)
(1938) English-born US physical anthropologist. His extensive field research on the evolutionary implications of Kenyan fossils includes his discoveries of a 1.6-million-year-old Homo erectus in...

Walker, David
(1785-1830) US merchant and abolitionist. Born a free black, in 1829 he issued Walker's Appeal, an antislavery pamphlet that urged slaves to rise up against their oppressors, and slaveholders to repent. It...

Walker, George
(1646-1690) Irish clergyman and military commander. In 1688-89, Walker raised a regiment at Dungannon to garrison Londonderry for its successful resistance to...

Walker, Horatio
(1858-1938) Canadian artist. His subjects were chiefly Canadian landscapes and farm scenes, composed in a broad and simple manner showing the influence of the French painter Millet. ...

Walker, James Cooper
(1761-1810) Irish antiquarian. Born in Dublin, Walker was a founder-member of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA), Dublin, and worked with Gaelic enthusiasts such as Charlotte Brooke and Charles Vallancey. Most...

Walker, Jimmy (James John)
(1881-1946) US public official; mayor of New York City 1925-32. Although he made great improvements to the city's infrastructure and was a popular figure, he was charged with corruption and forced to resign...

Walker, Joseph Reddeford
(1789-1876) US explorer, mountain man, and guide. His journeys helped to open up California to the east. Walker engaged in extensive fur trapping and trading in the upper Missouri region in the 1820s and 1830s,...

Walker, Kenneth N
(1898-1943) US aviator. An early advocate of bombing as a prime strategic weapon, Walker was killed leading a raid on Japanese shipping at Rabaul, New Britain, and was a posthumous winner of the Congressional...

Walker, Maggie
(1867-1934) US businesswoman and African-American activist. In 1903 she founded the St Luke Penny Savings Bank in Richmond, Virginia, becoming the first woman president of a bank in the USA; it gradually...

Walker, Peter Edward
(1932) British Conservative politician, energy secretary 1983-87, secretary of state for Wales 1987-90. He was made a life peer in 1992. As energy secretary from 1983, he managed the government's...

Walker, Sebastian
(1942-1991) English publisher. Formerly a sales representative, Walker worked his way up to director of the Chatto and Windus publishing house 1977-79, and founded Walker Books Ltd 1978. Walker Books produce...

Walker, Thomas
(1715-1794) US physician, explorer, and legislator. He was a guardian for Thomas Jefferson and, as a member of the Virginia Committee of Safety in 1776, took an active role in...

Walker, Thomas Barlow
(1840-1928) US businessman, art collector, and philanthropist. He used his fortune to benefit art, religious, and charity institutions. Among other philanthropic projects, he established what became...

Walker, Timothy
(1802-1856) US legal scholar. In 1833 he founded a private law school which later affiliated with Cincinnati College in 1835. His book, Introduction to American Law (1837), was highly acclaimed and published in...

Walker, Walton (Harris)
(1889-1950) US soldier. A combat veteran of both World War I and World War II, he commanded United Nations ground forces in Korea in 1950. He directed the defensive battle of the Pusan Perimeter, then led the...

Walker, William
(1824-1860) US adventurer who for a short time established himself as president of a republic in northwestern Mexico, and was briefly president of Nicaragua 1856-57. He was eventually executed and is now...

Walkowitz, Abraham
(c 1878-1965) Russian-born US graphic artist and painter. A modernist, he was influenced by the French artists known as fauvists (see fauvism). Noted for his ability to use line to convey motion, he did...

wall
Artificial barrier of brick or stone. Walls are normally built to protect property, but in upland areas they frequently replace hedges or fences as field boundaries. ...

Wall Street
The financial centre of the USA, a street on lower Manhattan Island, New York City, on which the New York Stock Exchange is situated; also a synonym for stock dealing in the USA. Office skyscrapers...

Wall Street Crash, 1929
Panic selling on the New York Stock Exchange following an artificial boom from 1927 to 1929 fed by speculation. On 24 October 1929, 13 million shares changed hands, with further heavy selling on 28...

Wall, Mervyn Eugene Welply
(1908-1997) Irish writer. Born in Dublin, he was educated in Germany and at University College, Dublin. His writing is a combination of serious fiction and burlesque drama; his best-selling The Unfortunate...

Wallace Collection
Collection of paintings and art objects on display in Hertford House, Manchester Square, London. The works were collected by Richard Wallace (1818-1890), and donated to the nation in 1897. It is...

Wallace, (Richard Horatio) Edgar
(1875-1932) English writer of thrillers. His prolific output includes The Four Just Men (1905) and The Mind of Mr J G Reeder (1925); stories such as those in Sanders of the River (1911), set in Africa, and...

Wallace, (William Roy) De Witt
(1889-1981) US publisher. Working as a book salesman, he developed his idea for a magazine that printed digests of other publications' articles. The first issue of the pocket-sized magazine, Reader's Digest,...

Wallace, George Corley
(1919-1998) US politician; governor of Alabama 1963-67, 1971-79, and 1983-87. Wallace opposed the integration of black and white students in the 1960s. He contested the presidency in 1968 as an...

Wallace, Henry Agard
(1888-1965) US politician and journalist. Appointed secretary to the Treasury by Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, he served as vice president during Roosevelt's third term 1941-45. He later broke with Truman and,...

Wallace, Henry Cantwell
(1866-1924) US journalist and cabinet member. A farmer and professor of dairying at Iowa State Agricultural College, he published, with his family, Wallace's Farmer (1894-1924). His political and scientific...

Wallace, Irving
(1916-1990) US novelist. He was one of the most popular writers of the 20th century. He wrote 17 works of non-fiction and 16 novels; they include The Chapman...

Wallace, Lew(is)
(1827-1905) US general and novelist. During the American Civil War he commanded a division under Gen Ulysses Grant at the Battle of Shiloh (1862), and was credited with saving Washington, DC, from capture by...

Wallace, Lila (Bell) Acheson
(1889-1984) Canadian-born US editor, publisher, art collector, and philanthropist. She married the publisher De Witt Wallace in 1921 and was directly involved in launching the Reader's Digest in 1922. As the...

Wallace, Mike (Myron Leon)
(1918) US broadcast journalist. A University of Michigan graduate, he began his broadcasting career with a Michigan radio station. Hardest-hitting of the adversarial interviewers, he won fame with ABC's...

Wallace, Richard
(1818-1890) English art collector. He inherited a valuable art collection from his father, the Marquess of Hertford, which was given in 1897 by his widow to the UK as the Wallace Collection, containing many...

Wallace, William
(1272-1305) Scottish nationalist who led a revolt against English rule in 1297, won a victory at Stirling, and assumed the title `governor of Scotland`. Edward I defeated him at Falkirk in 1298, and Wallace...

Wallachia
Independent medieval principality, founded in 1290, with allegiance to Hungary until 1330 and under Turkish rule 1387-1861, when it was united with the neighbouring principality of Moldavia to...

Wallance, Donald A
(1909-1990) US designer. In independent practice since the 1940s, he designed auditorium seating for the Lincoln Center, hospital furniture, and household goods such as stainless steel tableware. Wallance was...

Wallas, Graham
(1858-1932) English political scientist, the first professor of political science at the London School of Economics. Wallas was an early member of the Fabian Society and contributed to Fabian Essays in...

Wallenberg, Raoul
(1912-c. 1947) Swedish business executive who attempted to rescue several thousand Jews from German-occupied Budapest in 1944, during World War II. He was taken prisoner by the Soviet army in 1945 and was never...

Waller, Edmund
(1606-1687) English poet and politician. He managed to eulogize both Oliver Cromwell and Charles II. He is now mainly remembered for writing poems to `Sacharissa` (Lady Dorothy Sidney), and for such lyrics...

Waller, Lewis
(1860-1915) British actor and theatre manager. He was a romantic costume actor in such plays as Henry Hamilton's The Three Musketeers, Arthur Conan Doyle's Brigadier Gerard, and Booth Tarkington's Monsieur...

Walling, William English
(1877-1936) US labour reformer and socialist. He cofounded the National Women's Trade Union League (1903). He then spent much of the years 1905-08 in Russia where he got to know leading revoluti ...

Wallington
House and estate in Northumberland, England, 18 km/11 mi west of Morpeth. The 5,250-ha/12,967-acre estate was given to the National Trust by Charles Trevelyan in 1942. The estate includes 16...

Wallis, Alfred
(1855-1942) English naive painter. Having spent much of his life as a sailor, he started painting when he was 70 and living in St Ives in Cornwall, southwest England. Often using household or ship paints and...

Walloon
A French-speaking people of southeastern Belgium and adjacent areas of France. The name `Walloon` is etymologically linked to `Welsh`. ...

Walloon Brabant
Province of Belgium, part of the French-speaking Walloon community and region, bordered by Flemish Brabant to the north and Liége, Namur, and Hainaut to the south; area 1,091 sq km/421 sq mi;...

Walpole, Horace
(1717-1797) English novelist, letter writer and politician, the son of Robert Walpole. He was a Whig member of Parliament 1741-67. He converted his house at Strawberry Hill, Twickenham (then a separate town...

Walpole, Robert
(1676-1745) British Whig politician, the first `prime minister`. As First Lord of the Treasury and chancellor of the Exchequer (1715-17 and 1721-42) he encouraged trade and tried to avoid foreign...

Walpurga, St
(c. 710-c. 779) English abbess who preached Christianity in Germany. Walpurgis Night, the eve of 1 May (one of her feast days), became associated with witches' sabbaths and other superstitions. Her feast...