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

Zog, Ahmed Bey Zogu
(1895-1961) King of Albania 1928-39. He became prime minister of Albania in 1922, president of the republic in 1925, and proclaimed himself king in 1928. He was driven out by the Italians...

Zohar
Central work of Jewish mysticism. It is a discourse on the Pentateuch (first five books of the Bible), written in Aramaic by the Spanish writer Moses de Leon (c. 1270-1300). It contains mystical...

Zollinger, Albin
(1895-1941) Swiss novelist and poet. His novel Die grosse Unruhe 1939 contains social criticism and self-analysis, as do two other novels, Pfannenstiehl 1940 and Bohnenblust 1942, in which the individual...

Zollverein
19th-century German customs union, begun under Prussian auspices in 1828; the union included most German-speaking states except Austria by 1834. Although designed to remove tariff barriers and...

zombie
Corpse believed to be reanimated by a spirit and enslaved. The idea, widespread in Haiti, possibly arose from voodoo priests using the nerve poison tetrodotoxin (from the puffer fish) to produce a...

Zongli Yamen
Advisory body created in China after 1861 to deal with foreign affairs and other state modernization projects. It consisted of national and provincial state officials but was limited by a lack of...

Zoppo, Marco
(1423-1478) Italian painter. He was trained in the studio of Francesco Squarcione in Padua about 1453, and worked mainly in Venice. His style shows the influence of Cosimo Tura. ...

Zorach v. Clausen
US Supreme Court decision of 1952 dealing with the inclusion of religious studies in public school education. A New York City programme that exempted some public school students from the required...

Zorach, William
(1887-1966) US sculptor and painter. Born in Eurburick-Kovno, Lithuania, his family emigrated in 1891 and settled in Cleveland, Ohio in 1894, where he was an apprentice to a lithographer. He moved to New...

Zorndorf, Battle of
In the Seven Years' War, a Prussian victory over the Russians 25 August 1758 at Zorndorf, a Prussian village (now Debno, Poland) about 8 km/5 mi northwest of Kostrzyn. Zorndorf was the bloodiest...

Zoroastrianism
Pre-Islamic Persian religion founded by the Persian prophet Zoroaster in the 6th century BC, and still practised by the Parsees in India....

Zorrilla y Moral, José
(1817-1893) Spanish poet and playwright. He based his plays chiefly on national legends, such as the Don Juan Tenorio 1844. ...

Zoshchenko, Mikhail Mikhailovich
(1895-1958) Russian humorist and satirist. His sketches and short stories, written in the language of an uneducated Soviet citizen, contrasted the ideals with the reality of Soviet life. His gibes at...

Zosimus, St
(died 418) Pope AD 417-418, of Greek birth. His term of office was notable for the condemnation and banning of the doctrine known as Pelagianism. ...

Zouave
Member of a corps of French infantry soldiers, first raised in 1831 from the Zouaoua tribe in Algeria. The term came to be used for soldiers in other corps modelled on the French Zouaves. ...

Zrínyi, Miklós
(1620-1664) Hungarian poet, essayist, and military leader. His heroic epic Szigeti veszedelem/The Siege of Sziget 1651 celebrates his great-grandfather's attempt to hold the stronghold of Szigetvár in 1566...

Zsamboky, János
Hungarian name of the historian better known as Johannes Sambucus. ...

Zuccarelli, Francesco
(1704-1788) Italian painter. He produced pastoral and fanciful landscapes. He visited England 1751-62 and again 1768-about 1772, his light, decorative style winning him great popularity. He was a founder...

Zuccaro
(lived 16th century) Two Italian painter brothers. Federigo Zuccaro (1542-1609) was the younger of the two;Taddeo Zuccaro (1529-1569) was the principal partner in the decorative works in which he collaborated with...

Zuckmayer, Carl
(1896-1977) German-born Swiss dramatist and writer. His plays include Der fröhliche Weinberg 1925, Der Hauptmann von Köpenick/The Captain of Köpenick 1931, Des Teufels General 1946, and Das kalte Licht...

Zukofsky, Louis
(1904-1978) US poet. He combined poetry, prose, criticism, musical notation, and drama in his complex epic A (complete publication 1979). He was a major theorist and practitioner of Objectivism. Zukofsky also...

Zuloaga, Ignacio
(1870-1945) Spanish painter of Basque origin. He first studied architecture in Rome but turned to painting later in Paris, though he was mainly influenced by Diego Velázquez and Francisco Goya. He settled in...

Zulu
Member of a group of southern African peoples mainly from Kwa Zulu-Natal, South Africa. They are traditionally agriculturalists. The Zulu language, closely related to Xhosa, belongs to the Bantu...

Zumwalt, Elmo R(ussell), Jr
(1920-2000) US naval officer. He commanded the US naval forces in Vietnam (1968-70). Born in San Francisco, California, he joined the navy in 1942 and directed arms control and (as of 1963) contingency...

Zuni
Member of an American Indian people living in New Mexico since AD 600. They speak Zuni (Shiwi), a unique language, and are probably descendants of the prehistoric Anasazi. One of the agricultural...

Zurara (or Azurara), Gomes Eanes de
(1410/20-1473/4) Portuguese chronicler, librarian, and archivist. He became keeper of the royal library in 1451 and royal archivist in 1454 (a post he held until his death). He was also appointed royal chronicler,...

Zurbarán, Francisco de
(1598-c. 1664) Spanish painter. Based in Seville, he painted religious subjects in a powerful, austere style, often focusing on a single figure in prayer, for example St Francis (National Gallery, London). He also...

Zweig, Arnold
(1887-1968) German novelist, playwright, and poet. He is remembered for his realistic novel about a Russian peasant in the German army Der Streit um den Sergeanten Grischa/The Case of Sergeant Grischa 1927. ...

Zweig, Stefan
(1881-1942) Austrian writer. He was the author of plays, poems, and many biographies of writers (including Balzac and Dickens) and historical figures (including Marie Antoinette and Mary Stuart). He and his...

Zwingli, Ulrich
(1484-1531) Swiss Protestant reformer. He was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1506, but by 1519 was a Reformer and led the Reformation in Switzerland with his insistence on the sole authority of the...

Zyklon-B
Poison gas used in Nazi extermination camps. A cyanide compound originally developed for fumigation purposes in the 1920s, Zyklon-B was actually a crystalline compound which gave off hydrogen...

Zürich, Battle of
In the French Revolutionary Wars, defeat of two Russian armies by the French June 1799 in the mountains near Zürich, Switzerland, forcing the Tsar to withdraw from the...

Zyuganov, Gennadi Andreyevich
(1944) Russian politician, leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) from 1992. During President Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost programme 1988-91, he served as deputy director of the...