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

Wichita
Member of an American Indian people who lived along the Arkansas River, Kansas, before migrating to Oklahoma following their defeat by Spain in 1662. Their language is a Caddoan dialect. They called...

Wickersham, George Woodward
(1858-1936) US lawyer and cabinet member. A successful New York corporate lawyer, as President William Taft's attorney general (1909-13) he aggressively pursued antitrust indictments and had a major role in...

wickerwork
Furniture or other objects made from flexible rods or shoots, usually willow, as developed from stake-frame basketry. It is made by weaving strands in and out of a wicker frame. Wickerwork stools...

Wickram, Jörg
(1505-c 1560) German writer. A town official in Colmar, he wrote novels, stories, and plays and established a Meistergesang society in Colmar in 1549. His significance as a writer lies in having transformed the...

Wicksell, Knut
(1851-1926) Swedish economist, a leading exponent of neoclassical economics. He followed the approach of the Austrian School in attempting to measure physical capital in terms of the `average length of the...

Widdecombe, Ann Noreen
(1947) UK Conservative Party politician and member of Parliament from1987 for Maidstone (Maidstone and The Weald from 1997). She came to special prominence in 1995 when, as minister for prisons, she...

Widdemer, Margaret
(1895-1978) US poet and novelist. Her Collected Poems appeared in 1928 and 1957, and comprise crusading, sentimental, and satirical verses. Her romantic and historical novels include The Rose Garden Husband...

Wideman, John Edgar
(1941) US writer. His complex and literate fiction often drew on the African-American urban culture of his youth, and includes the award-winning Sent for You Yesterday (1983) and Philadelphia Fire...

Wiechert, Ernst
(1887-1950) German writer. His novels, written in a musical, clear style, are preoccupied with psychological and spiritual questions. Published works include Der Wald 1922, Die Majorin/The Baroness 1934, Das...

Wieland, Christoph Martin
(1733-1813) German poet and novelist. After attempts at religious poetry, he came under the influence of Voltaire and Rousseau, and wrote novels such as Die Geschichte des Agathon/The History of Agathon...

Wiener Werkstätte
Group of artisans and artists, founded in Vienna in 1903 by Josef Hoffmann and Kolo Moser, who were both members of the Vienna Wiener, Franz
Real name of Belgian playwright Francis de Croisset. ...

Wiesel, Elie(zer)
(1928) Romanian-born US academic and human-rights campaigner. He was held in Buchenwald concentration camp during World War II, and assiduously documented wartime atrocities against the Jews in an...

Wieser, Friedrich von
(1851-1926) Austrian economist, whose principal contribution to the discipline was in the theory of cost and distribution. His main work was Grundriss der Sozialökonomik/Outline of Social...

Wiggin, Kate Douglas
(1856-1923) US writer. She was a pioneer in the establishment of kindergartens in the USA, and wrote the children's classic Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm 1903 and its sequels. ...

Wigginton, (B) Eliot
(1942) US educator and author. As a high school teacher in Rabun Gap, Georgia, he initiated `Foxfire`, an innovative program of student-initiated projects based on regional folklore. His Foxfire Fund...

Wight, Peter Bonnett
(1838-1925) US architect and inventor. He helped rebuild the commercial centre of Chicago, Illinois, after the 1871 fire. He also designed furniture and interiors, and invented fireproof construction...

Wightwick Manor
19th-century half-timbered house in the West Midlands, England, 5 km/3 mi west of Wolverhampton. It contains fabrics and wallpaper designed by William Morris, Pre-Raphaelite paintings, de...

Wigley, Dafydd
(1943) Welsh politician, president of Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party, 1981-84 and from 1991. He aimed to see Wales as a self-governing nation within the European Community. He was Plaid Cymru...

Wigmore, John Henry
(1863-1943) US law educator. He was noted for his prolific legal writings, chief of which is his ten-volume Treatise on the Anglo-American System of Evidence (1940, 3rd ed). He was a founder and first...

wigwam
Temporary dwelling made by American Indians. It consists of a rough conical framework of poles stuck in the ground and converging above, covered with bark, matting, or tanned hides. ...

Wijdenbosch, Jules
(1941) Surinamese politician and president 1996-2000. His administration faced many longstanding economic problems, worsened by the erratic flow of limited Dutch aid during...

Wilberforce, Samuel
(1805-1873) British Anglican bishop of Oxford 1845-69, and from 1869 of Winchester. He defended Anglican orthodoxy against Tractarianism, the Oxford Movement for the revival of English...

Wilberforce, William
(1759-1833) English reformer. He was instrumental in abolishing slavery in the British Empire. He entered Parliament in 1780. In 1807 his bill banning the trade in slaves from the West Indies was passed, and by...

Wilbur, Ray Lyman
(1875-1949) US physician, educator, and public official. As a prominent Republican physician, he attended President Warren Harding on his deathbed in 1923. President Herbert Hoover appointed him secretary of...

Wilbur, Richard Purdy
(1921) US poet. He is noted for his cultural conservatism, urbane wit, and the elegance of his verse in such volumes as The Beautiful Changes (1947) and Things of This World (1956), which was awarded the...

Wilcox, Ella
(1850-1919) US poet. From the temperance verses Drops of Water 1872 she progressed to Poems of Passion 1883, criticized as immoral when they first appeared. She published nearly 40 volumes of verse, including...

Wild West
Name given to the period in the American West when crime and disorder posed a major problem in its newly established communities. Rapid settlement, such as that experienced during the Wild, Jonathan
(c. 1682-1725) English criminal who organized the thieves of London and ran an office that, for a payment, returned stolen goods to their owners. He was hanged at Tyburn. Wild was the subject of Henry Fielding's...

Wildavsky, Aaron B(ernard)
(1930-1993) US political scientist. He taught at Oberlin College in Ohio (1958-63) and at the University of California, Berkeley (from 1963). He published numerous books and articles that focus on public...

Wilde, Jane Francesca
(1826-1896) Irish poet and literary hostess. A committed nationalist, she contributed poetry and prose to the Nation from 1845 under the pen-name `Speranza`. Her salon became the...

Wildenbruch, Ernst von
(1845-1909) German novelist and dramatist. His plays on patriotic themes heralded a revival of German historical drama and introduced a new naturalism to the German theatre. They include Die Karolinger 1881,...

Wilder, Alec
(1907-1980) US composer and arranger. He began songwriting and arranging in New York in the 1930s for such artists as Cab Calloway, Bing Crosby, Ethel Waters, and Mabel Mercer. In 1939 he composed a series of...

Wilder, Laura (Elizabeth) Ingalls
(1867-1957) US children's novelist and pioneer. Her `Little House` series, beginning with Little House in the Big Woods (1932), vividly describe her homesteading childhood and the life of the American West....

Wilder, Thornton Niven
(1897-1975) US dramatist and novelist. He won Pulitzer Prizes for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927) and for the plays Our Town (1938) and The Skin of Our Teeth (1942). His farce The Matchmaker (1954)...

Wilderness, Battle of the
In the American Civil War, indecisive battle between Union and Confederate forces 5-6 May 1864 in a wooded area known as `The Wilderness` about 24 km/15 mi west of Fredericksburg, Virginia. As...

Wilding, Alison
(1948) English sculptor. Since the mid-1970s she has evolved her own quietly authoritative abstract style using a variety of materials, including brass, steel, acrylic, beeswax, fossils and pigments,...

Wiley, Alexander
(1884-1967) US lawyer and Republican senator. Born in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, he was first elected to the US Senate in 1939, representing Wisconsin until 1963. He rose to the positions of chairman of the...

Wiley, Charles
(1782-1826) US publisher. Born in New York, New York, he opened a print shop in 1807 and began a publishing business in 1814, putting out works by Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, and other New York...

Wilfrid, St
(634-709) Northumbrian-born bishop of York from 665. He defended the cause of the Roman Church at the Synod of Whitby in 664 against that of Celtic Christianity. Feast day is 12 October. ...

Wilhelm (IV) the Wise
(1532-1592) Landgrave (count) of the German state Hesse-Kassel 1567-92. A leading Protestant, he fought against Emperor Charles V in 1552, obtaining the release of his own father, Philip the Magnanimous,...

Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship
Novel by Goethe published 1795-96. An outstanding example of the bildungsroman or novel of personal development, it describes Wilhelm's formative emotional experiences, including his time with a...

Wilhelmina (Helena Paulina Maria)
(1880-1962) Queen of the Netherlands, 1898-1948. Following the Nazi invasion of Holland in May 1940, she and her government went into exile in London for five years. Her daughter Juliana (b.1909) succeeded...

Wilkes, Charles
(1798-1877) US naval officer and explorer. Born in New York, New York, he commanded a naval scientific expedition (1838-42) which surveyed the Antarctic coast, islands of the Pacific, and the American...

Wilkes, John
(1727-1797) British Radical politician, imprisoned for his political views; member of Parliament 1757-64 and from 1774. He championed parliamentary reform, religious tolerance, and US independence. Wilkes,...

Wilkie, David
(1785-1841) Scottish painter. Active in London from 1805, he became famous for his depictions of everyday life, such as The Blind Fiddler (1806; Tate Gallery, London) and The Letter of Introduction (1813;...

Wilkins, Roy
(1901-1981) US journalist and civil-rights leader who worked to achieve racial equality without the use of violence and spoke out against both white supremacy and African-American separatism. From 1931 he...

Wilkins, William
(1778-1839) English architect. He pioneered the Greek Revival in England with his design for Downing College, Cambridge (1807-20). His other works include Haileybury College (1806-09); and in London, the...

Wilkinson, James
(1757-1825) US soldier and conspirator. Born in Calvert County, Maryland, he served in the American Revolution under Benedict Arnold and Horatio Gates and joined the Conway Cabal, the group that schemed against...

will
In law, declaration of how a person wishes his or her property to be disposed of after death. It also appoints administrators of the estate (
Willard, Simon
(1753-1848) US clock maker. Born in Grafton, Massachusetts, he established his clock factory in Roxbury, Massachusetts about 1778. He would turn out over 5,000 timepieces by the time he retired in 1839. He...

Willey, Gordon R(andolph)
(1913-2002) US anthropologist and archaeologist. Born in Chariton, Iowa, he was a leading archaeologist and theorist of New World prehistory and was known particularly for his settlement pattern studies. He was...

William
(1982) Prince of the UK; first child of Charles, Prince of Wales, and his first wife, Diana, Princess of Wales. William attended Ludgrove School, Wokingham (1990-95); Eton College, Windsor (1995-2000);...

William
The badly behaved schoolboy hero of a series of children's books by English author Richmal Crompton, published from 1922-70. William rebels against conventional English family life and, with his...

William (I) the Conqueror
(1028-1087) King of England from 25 December 1066. He was the illegitimate son of Duke Robert the Devil whom he succeeded as Duke of Normandy in 1035. Claiming that his relative King Edward the Confessor had...

William (II) Rufus
(c. 1056-1100) King of England from 1087, the third son of William (I) the Conqueror. He spent most of his reign attempting to capture Normandy from his brother Robert (II) Curthose , Duke of Normandy. His...

William (III) of Orange
(1650-1702) King of Great Britain and Ireland from 1688, the son of William II of Orange and Mary, daughter of Charles I. He was offered the English crown by the parliamentary opposition to James II. He invaded...

William I
(1797-1888) King of Prussia from 1861 and emperor of Germany from 1871; the son of Friedrich Wilhelm III. He served in the Napoleonic Wars 1814-15 and helped to crush the 1848 revolution. After he succeeded...

William I
(1772-1844) King of the Netherlands 1815-40. He lived in exile during the French occupation 1795-1813 and fought against the emperor Napoleon at Jena and Wagram. The Austrian Netherlands were added to his...

William II
(1859-1941) Emperor of Germany from 1888, the son of Frederick III and Victoria, daughter of Queen Victoria of Britain. In 1890 he forced Chancellor Bismarck to resign in an attempt to assert his own political...

William II
(1792-1849) King of the Netherlands 1840-49, son of William I. He served with the British army in the Peninsular War and at Waterloo. In 1848 he averted revolution by conceding a liberal constitution. ...

William III
(1817-1890) King of the Netherlands 1849-90, the son of William II. In 1862 he abolished slavery in the Dutch East Indies. ...

William IV
(1765-1837) King of Great Britain and Ireland from 1830, when he succeeded his brother George IV. Third son of George III, he was created Duke of Clarence in 1789, and married Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen...

William of Auvergne
(c.1180-1249) French scholar and theologian, born at Aurillac. He became bishop of Paris in 1228. He was a prominent ...

William of Calais, St
(died 1096) Norman cleric who arrived in England with William (I) the Conqueror in 1066, and was made bishop of Durham in 1081. He was responsible for starting the reconstruction of Durham Cathedral in its...

William of Champeaux
(c.1070-1121) French philosopher, born at Champeaux. One of most notable exponents of scholasticism he set up a school of logic in Paris that was attended by Peter Abelard. In 1113 he was...

William of Malmesbury
(c. 1080-c. 1143) English historian and monk. He compiled the Gesta regum/Deeds of the Kings (c.1120-40) and Historia novella, which together formed a history of England to 1142. ...

William of Newburgh
(1136-c. 1198) English historian, who wrote his Historia Rerum Anglicarum/History of English Affairs towards the end of the 12th century. This chronicle, one of the best sources of knowledge about England at this...

William of Tyre
(c. 1130-c. 1186) French historian. His Historia Rerum in Partibus Transmarinis Gestarum is one of the main authorities for events in the Byzantine Empire in the 12th century. It covers archaeological, political,...

William of Waynfleet
(1395-1486) English cleric. He was bishop of Winchester from 1447. He founded Magdalen College, Oxford, and a grammar school in his home town of Wainfleet, Lincolnshire, in 1459. ...

William the Lion
(1143-1214) King of Scotland from 1165. He was captured by Henry II while invading England in 1174, and forced to do homage, but Richard I abandoned the English claim to suzerainty for a money payment in 1189....

William the Marshall
(c. 1146-1219) English knight, regent of England from 1216. After supporting the dying Henry II against Richard (later Richard I), he went on a crusade to Palestine, was pardoned by Richard, and was granted an...

William the Silent
(1533-1584) Prince of Orange from 1544. Leading a revolt against Spanish rule in the Netherlands from 1573, he briefly succeeded in uniting the Catholic south and Protestant northern...

Williams-Ellis, (Bertram) Clough
(1883-1978) English architect. He designed the fantasy resort of Portmeirion, North Wales. He was knighted in 1972. ...

Williams, (Eg)Bert (Austin)
(c. 1874-1922) US stage actor, singer, and songwriter. He was noted as one of the first black American actors to break free of the stereotyped black roles. Born in Nassau, in the Bahamas, part of the British West...

Williams, (George) Emlyn
(1905-1987) Welsh actor and dramatist. His plays, in which he appeared, include Night Must Fall (1935) and The Corn Is Green (1938). He was also acclaimed for his solo performance as the author Charles Dickens....

Williams, Betty
(1943) Northern Irish peace activist. Born in Belfast into a Roman Catholic family, she shared the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1976 with Mairead Corrigan, for founding the Northern Ireland Peace Movement...

Williams, C K
(1936) US poet, editor, translator, and professor at Princeton University, New Jersey. He published 15 volumes of poetry before winning the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Repair (1999). His 1987 book...

Williams, Charles (Walter Stansby)
(1886-1945) English poet, novelist, and critic. The Silver Star, a sonnet sequence, was published in 1912. Of several allegorical fantasies, The Place of the Lion (1931) had an influence on C S Lewis, whom,...

Williams, Cicely Delphine
(1893-1992) British pioneer in maternal and child health. She became the first head of Mother and Child Health 1948-52 in the World Health Organization, Geneva, and lectured in more than 70 countries,...

Williams, Clarence
(1898-1965) US composer and publisher. Born in Plaquemine, Louisiana, he travelled as a singer and dancer with a minstrel show from New Orleans from the age of 13. He settled in New York and in the 1920s...

Williams, Edward Bennett
(1920-1988) US lawyer and sports executive. Williams was noted for defending controversial clients. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, he has his first practice with the Washington, DC, law firm of Hogan & Hartson...

Williams, Eric
(1911-1981) Trinidad and Tobago centre-left politician and historian, prime minister 1956-81. After a career as a university lecturer and professor in the USA he founded the People's National Movement (PNM)...

Williams, Hugo
(1942) English poet who has achieved critical acclaim for his vivacious and lucid poetry as in Self-Portrait with a Slide (1990). He was awarded the 1999 T S Eliot Prize for Poetry for Billy's Rain....

Williams, Ifor
(1881-1965) Welsh scholar. An authority on early Welsh literature, he published editions of early and medieval poets, including Dafydd ap Gwilym 1914, Aneirin 1938, and Taliesin 1960, and of the Mabinogion...

Williams, Jody
(1950) US antiwar activist and founding coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1997 for her work in raising public awareness of the...

Williams, John
(1796-1839) English missionary who travelled extensively in the South Seas and helped convert many of the islands of Polynesia to Christianity. He was killed by cannibals while on a mission to Erromanga in the...

Williams, John
(1664-1729) American clergyman and author. Born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, he was captured in the French and Indian raid on Deerfield where he was the town's minister. Following two years in captivity in Canada...

Williams, John (Sharp)
(1854-1932) US Democrat representative and senator. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, he was originally a lawyer and cotton plantation owner. He was minority leader in the US House of Representatives as...

Williams, Kenneth
(1926-1988) English comedian and actor who was a mainstay of the Carry On films, made from 1958. His mobile face, haughty air, and mannered speech combined to create a unique, mock ...

Williams, Margery (Winifred)
(1881-1944) US writer. Born in London, England, she went to the USA in 1890, attended schools in Pennsylvania, and married. She spent many years travelling between England, France, and Italy, before settling in...

Williams, Michael
(1877-1950) US journalist. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, he emigrated to the USA as a penniless youth. He was a newspaper reporter in Boston, New York, and San Francisco before a 1912 conversion to...

Williams, Michael (Leonard)
(1935-2001) English actor. After a long career with the Royal Shakespeare Company, including title roles in Troilus and Cressida (1968-69) and Henry V (1971), he became widely known as Mike in the television...

Williams, Owen
(1890-1969) Welsh-born engineer and architect. In partnership with Ellis, Clark, and Gallanaugh he designed the Daily Express building, Fleet Street (1931); chemical factory at Beeston, Northamptonshire...

Williams, Paul Revere
(1894-1980) US architect. Williams was a prominent society architect who designed hundreds of elegant houses in period styles for wealthy California clients. Born in Los Angeles, California, he was educated at...

Williams, Raymond (Henry)
(1921-1988) Welsh literary critic and novelist. His Culture and Society 1780-1950 1958 explores the development of culture in England since the Industrial Revolution. Other works include the novel trilogy...

Williams, Rowan Douglas
(1950) Welsh cleric and archbishop of Canterbury from 2002. Regarded as a liberal on ethical and moral issues but a conservative on theological doctrine, he supports the ordination of women, and has an...

Williams, Samuel Wells
(1812-1884) US scholar and diplomat. The leading sinologist of his day, he published several Chinese dictionaries, and his Middle Kingdom (1848, revised 1883) was for decades the standard English-language...

Williams, Talcott
(1849-1928) US journalist and educator. Born in Turkey, he gained experience as a political reporter and editor before, in 1912, becoming the first director of t ...

Williams, Tennessee
(1911-1983) US dramatist. His work is characterized by fluent dialogue and searching analysis of the psychological deficiencies of his characters. His plays, usually set in the US Deep South against a...