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

Weöres, Sándor
(1913-1989) Hungarian writer and translator. Weöres, one of Hungary's foremost modern lyric poets, constantly explored and expanded the possibilities of poetry. His technically accomplished works reflect an...

whale island
In popular legend, a huge fish mistaken for an island by voyagers. The Irish abbot St Brendan and Sinbad in the Arabian Nights were both said to have landed on whale islands. ...

Wharton, Edith Newbold
(1862-1937) US novelist. Her work, known for its subtlety and form and influenced by her friend Henry James, was mostly set in New York society. It includes The House of Mirth (1905), which made her reputation;...

Wharton, William H
(1802-1839) US Texas Revolution leader. He was president of the convention in 1833 that wrote a preliminary Texas constitution. He was named judge-advocate of the separatist army in 1835, but resigned and...

Wheatley, Dennis Yates
(1897-1977) English thriller and adventure novelist. His works include a series dealing with black magic and occultism, but he also wrote crime novels in which the reader was...

Wheatley, Francis
(1747-1801) English painter. He was popular for scenes of everyday life, into which he infused some of the artificial charm of the French painter Jean Baptiste Greuze, and is best known by the series Cries of...

Wheaton, Henry
(1785-1848) US lawyer and diplomat. A graduate of Rhode Island College (now Brown University), he practised in Providence before moving to New York City in 1812, where he edited the National Advocate, a...

wheel and axle
Circular frame or disc rotating on an axle. Early wheels probably evolved from log rollers used to aid the progress of a heavily laden sled or stone block, a slice of log attached solidly to an axle...

wheel of law
Term derived from the title of the Buddha's first sermon after achieving enlightenment:`Setting in motion the wheel of law`. In this address he taught the Four Noble Truths as a set of...

wheel of life
The symbol of life as a wheel, found in many faiths. The wheel can stand for the whole cycle beginning with birth, rising up to the height of a person's power, and then declining again until death...

Wheeler, (Robert Eric) Mortimer
(1890-1976) English archaeologist. After a number of distinguished excavations in Britain, he was director general of archaeology in India 1944-48, and later adviser to the government of Pakistan. He...

Wheeler, Burton K(endall)
(1882-1975) US politician. He was federal district attorney for Montana (1913-18). A Democrat serving Montana, he was elected to the US Senate (1934-47), where he was an outspoken progressive in the 1920s...

Wheeler, Charles Thomas
(1892-1974) English sculptor. Examples of his work are the decorative figures and reliefs on South Africa House and the Bank of England, both in London. ...

Wheeler, Joseph
(1836-1906) US Confederate soldier. Wheeler's cavalry was practically the sole organized Confederate force that contested Gen William Sherman's March to the Sea (1864). He represented Alabama in Congress...

Wheeler, Wayne Bidwell
(1869-1927) US lawyer and activist. As a lawyer, he worked for prohibition through the Anti-Saloon League. Deeply involved all his life in league activities, he became a powerful lobbyist for prohibition. By...

Wheeler, William (Almon)
(1819-1887) US vice-president. Known as a scrupulously honest congressman, he was elected vice-president under Rutherford B Hayes (1877-81) but displayed little enthusiasm for the office. Wheeler was born...

Wheelwright, John Brooks
(1897-1940) US poet. He wrote poetry accompanied by his own prose interpretations and privately printed three volumes of his poems. The Collected Poems of John Wheelwright was published posthumously in 1972....

Wheldon, Huw
(1916-1986) Welsh broadcaster who made a long and lasting contribution to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) as a presenter, editor, producer, and senior executive. He presented the popular Monitor...

Wherry, Kenneth (Spicer)
(1892-1951) US politician. Active in state politics, he was elected to the US Senate as a Republican serving Nebraska (1943-51). A thorough conservative and isolationist, he served as Republican floor leader...

Whewell, William
(1794-1866) English physicist and philosopher who coined the term `scientist` along with such words as `Eocene` and `Miocene`, `electrode`, `cathode`, and `anode`. He produced two works...

Whig Party
In the UK, predecessor of the Liberal Party. The name was first used of rebel Covenanters and then of those who wished to exclude James II from the English succession (as a Roman Catholic). They...

Whig Party
In the USA, political party formed in 1832 to oppose the autocratic presidency of Andrew Jackson. Whig candidate presidents include...

whip
In UK politics, the member of Parliament who ensures the presence of colleagues in the party when there is to be a vote in Parliament at the end of a debate. The written appeal sent by the whips to...

Whippet tank
British light tank of World War I. It differed from the other, lozenge-shaped, British tanks in having a low-set track, engine at the front, and an armoured compartment at the rear for the crew...

Whipple, Henry Benjamin
(1822-1901) US Episcopal bishop and American Indian advocate. Ordained in 1850 after a brief career as a merchant, he held rectorships in New York, Florida, and Illinois, before becoming Episcopal bishop of...

Whisky Insurrection
In US history, an uprising in western Pennsylvania 1794 against the imposition by the federal government of the excise law on domestic spirits. The government sent a body of militia who, without...

Whistler, James Abbott McNeill
(1834-1903) US painter and etcher. Active in London from 1859, he was a leading figure in the Aesthetic Movement. Influenced by Japanese prints, he painted riverscapes...

Whistler, Rex (Reginald John)
(1905-1944) English artist, illustrator, and stage designer. He painted fanciful murals, for example In Pursuit of Rare Meats (1926-27) in the restaurant of the Tate Gallery, London. His illustrations include...

Whit Sunday
Another term for the Christian festival of Pentecost. ...

Whitaker, Joseph
(1820-1895) English publisher and founder (in 1858) of the weekly The Bookseller, which developed into the leading journal of the British book trade. In 1869 he brought out the first issue of Whitaker's...

Whitaker, Thomas Kenneth
(1916) Irish civil servant. He was a hugely influential secretary of the Department of Finance 1956-69 and governor of the Central Bank 1969-76. He was later chancellor of the National University of...

Whitbread, Samuel
(1758-1815) English politician, a prominent opponent of William Pitt the Younger and supporter of many reform measures. Whitbread was born at Cardington, Bedfordshire, into the famous London brewing family. He...

Whitby, Synod of
Council summoned by King Oswy of Northumbria in 664, which decided to adopt the Roman rather than the Celtic form of Christianity for Britain. ...

White
Term denoting a counter-revolutionary, especially a member of the anticommunist forces in the Russian Civil War of 1918 to 1821. In this conflict, the Whites were led by former tsarist officers...

White Australia Policy
Australian government policy of immigration restriction, mainly aimed at non-Europeans, which began in the 1850s in an attempt to limit the number of Chinese entering the Australian goldfields and...

white elephant
Any useless and cumbersome gift. In Thailand the monarch would formerly present a white elephant to a person out of favour: being the country's sacred animal, it could not be used for work, and its...

White Horse
Any of 17 hill figures in England, found particularly in the southern chalk downlands. The Uffington White Horse below Uffington Castle, a hill fort on the Berkshire Downs, is 110 m/360 ft long and...

White House
Official residence of the president of the USA, in Washington, DC. It is a plain three-storeyed edifice of grey sandstone, built in Italian Renaissance style 1792-99 to the designs of...

White Island
Island off the eastern shore of Lower Lough Erne, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. Seven primitive stone statues and a mask, dating from between the 7th and 10th centuries, are displayed on the...

white knight
In business, a company invited by the target of a takeover bid to make a rival bid. The company invited to bid is usually one that is already on good terms with the target company. ...

White Minqua
Subgroup of the American Indian Susquehannock. ...

White Paper
In the UK and some other countries, an official document that expresses government policy on an issue. It is usually preparatory to the introduction of a parliamentary bill (a proposed act of...

White Ship
Ship carrying Henry I's only legitimate son, Prince William, and some 300 other passengers which sank 25 November 1120 on its way from Normandy to England. William's death led to a disputed...

White terror
General term used by socialists and Marxists to describe a right-wing counterrevolution: for example, the attempts by the Chinese Guomindang to massacre the communists 1927-31; see White. ...

White, Andrew
(1579-1656) English missionary. A Jesuit theology professor who came under fire for political activities and for his rigidly Thomistic philosophy (see Thomism). He travelled to Maryland in 1634 as head of a...

White, Andrew Dickson
(1832-1918) US historian, university president, and diplomat. A historian of Europe, he planned and was the first president of Cornell University (1867-85), where his innovations included integrating natural...

White, Bailey (June)
(1950) US writer. A popular essayist and storyteller, she has received critical praise for her humorous writings in Mama Makes Up Her Mind, and Other Dangers of Southern Living (1993).White was born in...

White, Byron Raymond
(1917-2002) US jurist. He worked to elect John F Kennedy to the presidency 1960 and was appointed by him as associate justice of the Supreme Court, serving 1962-93. He was a moderate conservative, usually...

White, E(lwyn) B(rooks)
(1899-1985) US writer. He was long associated with the New Yorker magazine and renowned for his satire, such as Is Sex Necessary? (1929; with the humorist James Thurber). White also wrote two children's...

White, Edward Douglass, Jr
(1845-1921) US jurist. Elected to the US Senate in 1891, he was nominated by President Cleveland as associative justice to the US Supreme Court in 1893, and under President Taft he was nominated as chief...

White, Ellen Gould
(1827-1915) US religious leader. She converted to Adventism after hearing William Miller preach in 1842; when the Second Coming of Christ failed to take place, as predicted, in 1844, the Millerites faded, but...

White, George Stewart
(1835-1912) Northern Irish soldier, commander-in-chief of British forces in India 1893-98. During the Second Anglo-Boer War, he won fame as commander of the forces that held the town of Ladysmith during...

White, Gilbert
(1720-1793) English naturalist and cleric. He was the author of The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789), which records the flora and fauna of an area of Hampshire. White studied at Oxford....

White, Henry
(1850-1927) US diplomat. The heir to a distillery fortune, he was well-received in England by London society. He was a secretary in the US embassy in London (1883-93, 1897-1905) and ambassador to Italy...

White, John
(lived late 16th century) English artist and pioneer. He was one of the first settlers in Walter Raleigh's colony in Virginia 1585 and later became its governor. He made studies in watercolour depicting the life and customs...

White, Joseph M
(1781-1839) US lawyer and US politician. Knowledge of French and Spanish gained him clients in Pensacola, Florida. A Democrat, he represented Florida in the US House of Representatives (1825-37). An eloquent...

White, Leonard D(upee)
(1891-1958) US political scientist and historian. He pioneered higher education in public administration at the University of Chicago (1920-56), himself writing a standard introductory text in 1926. As US...

White, Leslie A(lvin)
(1900-1975) US social anthropologist. He carried out extensive fieldwork among the Pueblo Indians from 1926-57. In his book The Science of Culture (1949), and other works, he propounded a theory of cultural...

White, Lynn (Townsend), Jr
(1907-1987) US historian and college president. He was an internationally-renowned medieval scholar specializing in medieval technology and the religious background of industrialism. He taught at Princeton...

White, Patrick Victor Martindale
(1912-1990) Australian writer. He did more than any other to put Australian literature on the international map. His partly allegorical novels explore the lives of early settlers in Australia and often deal...

White, Peregrine
(1620-1703) US colonist. White was born on the Mayflower in Cape Cod Bay. He was the first English child born in New England, although another child, Oceanus Hopkins, had been born at sea. He became a captain...

White, Stanford
(1853-1906) US architect. He was a cofounder of the architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White. One of the most prominent US architects of the 19th century, he specialized in the Renaissance style and...

White, T(erence) H(anbury)
(1906-1964) English writer. He retold the Arthurian legend in four volumes of The Once and Future King 1938-58. ...

White, Tim(othy) Douglas
(1950) US physical anthropologist. his excavation of protohominid footprints in Tanzania in 1978 led to his codiscovery, with D C Johanson, of `Lucy`, the earliest human ancestor, Australopithecus...

White, Wallace H(umphrey), Jr
(1877-1952) US politician. A Republican representing Maine, hee served in the US House of Representatives (1917-31) and the US Senate (1931-49), where he was minority leader (1944-47) and majority leader...

White, Walter (Francis)
(1893-1955) US civil rights leader and author. A leading member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), he fought against lynching and launched numerous campaigns against...

White, William Allen
(1868-1944) US journalist and author. In 1895, borrowing $3,000, he bought the small, rural Emporia Gazette, which he published and edited for the rest of his life. He also contributed articles and short...

White, William Hale
(1831-1913) English novelist. He wrote under the pseudonym Mark Rutherford. His works, which comment on religious and social matters, include The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford, Dissenting Minister 1881, Mark...

White, William S(mith)
(1906-1994) US journalist. After working for the Associated Press for almost 20 years, he became a Washington reporter for the New York Times (1945-58). His biography of Senator Robert Taft won a 1955...

Whitefield, George
(1714-1770) British Methodist evangelist. He was a student at Oxford University and took orders in 1738, but was suspended for his unorthodox doctrines and methods. For many years he travelled through Britain...

Whitehead, Alfred North
(1861-1947) English philosopher and mathematician. In his `theory of organism`, he attempted a synthesis of metaphysics and science. His works include Principia Mathematica...

Whitehead, George
(c.1636-1723) English religious leader. After being persuaded to join the Society of Friends (`Quakers`) by its founder George Fox, he travelled around Engl ...

Whitehead, John Cunningham
(1922) US investment executive. He joined Goldman, Sachs & Co. in 1947, became a partner in 1956, and was senior partner and cochairman from 1976-84. He served as a deputy secretary of state in the...

Whitehouse, Mary
(1910-2001) English media activist and campaigner for broadcasting standards. She founded the Clean Up TV campaign in 1964, which was renamed as the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, and was...

Whitehouse, Paul
(1958) English comedian and writer who stars in the cult British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) television comedy sketch show The Fast Show and in Harry Enfield and Chums. ...

Whitelaw, Billie
(1932) English actor. Noted for her interpretation of roles by the Irish dramatist Samuel Beckett, she performed in his Play (1964), Not I (1973), Footfalls (1976), and Happy Days (1979). Other work...

Whiteread, Rachel
(1963) English sculptor. Her work consists mainly of casts of objects or the spaces around them or contained within them. She came to public attention with her cast of a whole house in 1993, which was...

Whitewater scandal
Long-running financial scandal that dogged the US presidency of Bill Clinton 1992-2000. The complex affair relates to activities during the 1980s when Clinton was governor of Arkansas,...

Whitgift, John
(c. 1530-1604) English prelate, archbishop of Canterbury 1583-1604. He founded his almshouses in 1569 and the Whitgift School in 1599 in Croydon. Although doctrinally a Calvinist, he strongly defended the...

Whitlam, (Edward) Gough
(1916) Australian politician, leader of the Labor Party 1967-78 and prime minister 1972-75. He ended conscription and Australia's military commitment in Vietnam, introduced the Medibank national health...

Whitlock, Brand
(1869-1934) US author, politician, and diplomat. A journalist and lawyer, he served four terms as mayor of Toledo, Ohio (1906-14), running on a nonpartisan reform platform and keeping the government free of...

Whitman, Cedric (Hubbell)
(1916-1979) US classicist and poet. A member of the Harvard University faculty, he served as Eliot Professor of Greek Literature (1974-79). His Sophocles: A Study in Heroic Humanism (1951) won the Award of...

Whitman, Christie
(1946) US Republican politician, governor of New Jersey 1994-2001 and head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 2001-03 under President George W Bush. Although fiscally conservative, she was...

Whitman, Marcus
(1802-1847) US physician and missionary. He established a mission near present-day Walla Walla, Washington, in 1836. After returning east, he brought over 900 settlers to Washington in 1843. Following a...

Whitman, Walt(er)
(1819-1892) US poet. He published Leaves of Grass (1855), which contains the symbolic `Song of Myself`. It used unconventional free verse (with no rhyme or regular rhythm) and scandalized the public by its...

Whitney, Anne
(1821-1915) US sculptor and poet. She utilized her abolitionist and suffragist beliefs and drew on her experiences from travelling to such European countries as Italy in her sculptures, as in Roma (1869)....

Whitney, Eli
(1765-1825) US inventor who in 1794 patented the cotton gin, a device for separating cotton fibre from its seeds. Also a manufacturer of firearms, he created a standardization system that was...

Whitney, John Hay
(1904-1982) US financier and publisher. A senior partner in J H Whitney & Co., investment bankers, he was publisher of The New York Herald Tribune from 1957-66 and served as US ambassador to Great Britain...

Whitney, William Collins
(1841-1904) US lawyer and politician. He practised law in New York City and reorganized the city's corporation counsel's office. As secretary of the navy (1885-89) he fought against outmoded concepts of ship...

Whittaker, Charles Evans
(1901-1973) US Supreme Court justice. He practised law in Kansas City for 30 years before presiding over a US district court (1954-56) then a US Court of Appeals (1956-57). President Dwight Eisenhower...

Whittam Smith, Andreas
(1937) English newspaper editor, and president of the British Board of Film Classification 1998-2002. He was founder and editor (1986-94) of the centrist daily newspaper The Independent and cofounder...

Whitten, Jamie Lloyd
(1919-1995) US politician. A state representative and district attorney, he served Mississippi as a Democrat in the US House of Representatives (1941-89), chairing...

Whittier, John Greenleaf
(1807-1892) US poet, journalist, and abolitionist. A religious Quaker, he wrote on rural and antislavery themes and became a close associate and friend of the abolitionist William Lloyd ...

Whittington, Dick (Richard)
(c. 1358-1423) English cloth merchant who was mayor of London 1397-98, 1406-07, and 1419-20. According to legend, he came to London as a poor boy with his cat when he heard that the streets were paved with...

Whittredge, Thomas Worthington
(1820-1910) US painter. A sign painter in Cincinnati, Ohio (1838-39), he became a landscape artist in 1843. He was known as a Hudson River School painter. His works include Trout Pool in the Catskills (1875)....

Whitworth, Matthew
Name before ennoblement of Baron Aylmer, Canadian administrator. ...

whizzbang
In World War I, British nickname for shells fired by German 77 mm field guns, since their velocity was greater than the speed of sound so that the victim...

WHO
Acronym for World Health Organization, an agency of the United Nations established to prevent the spread of diseases. ...

Whymper, Edward
(1840-1911) English mountaineer. He made the first ascent of many Alpine peaks, including the Matterhorn 1865, and in the Andes scaled Chimborazo and other mountains. He wrote Scrambles amongst the Alps 1871...

Whyte, William H(ollingsworth), Jr
(1917-1999) US urban sociologist. Writer and editor at Fortune magazine (1946-59), he wrote The Organization Man (1956), a popular sociological tract that identified a new type of modern man who shaped his...