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The History Channel - Encyclopedia
Category: History and Culture > History
Date & country: 02/12/2007, UK
Words: 25833
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BeltaneCeltic name for the first day of May, formerly one of the Scottish quarterdays. The ancient feasts held on this day were marked by the kindling of Beltane fires on the hillsides. ...
BelusAlternative name of
Bel, Babylonian and Assyrian god. ...
Belvedere HouseIrish villa dating from about 1740, near Mullingar, County Westmeath, Republic of Ireland. It was designed by Richard Castle for Robert Rochfield, afterwards the 1st Earl of Belvedere. It contains...
Belvoir CastleCastle near Bottesford, Leicestershire, England. It originally dates from the 11th century, but has been rebuilt several times. The castle has an important art collection which includes works by...
Bely, Andrei(1880-1934) Russian poet, novelist, literary theorist, and leader of the younger Symbolists (see
Symbolism). Bely's intense awareness of a spiritual dimension to existence led him to embrace several mystical...
Belzoni, Giovanni Battista(1773-1823) Italian collector of Egyptian antiquities. He excavated the temples at Idfu and Karnak, the pyramid of Khafre at El Gîza, and the tomb of Seti I at Luxor to collect antiquities for sale to the...
Bem, Jozef(1794-1850) Polish general. He took part in the Polish rebellion against Russia 1830-31. In 1848 he joined the Hungarian nationalist rebellion and distinguished himself in Transylvania against the Austrians...
BembaA people native to northeastern Zambia and neighbouring areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) and Zimbabwe. They number about 3 million, many residing in urban areas such as...
Bembo, Pietro(1470-1547) Italian scholar, poet, and humanist. He was secretary to Pope
Leo X 1513-21 and later official historian of Venice. As a scholar he edited the works of
Petrarch and Dante, and played an important...
Bemelmans, Ludwig(1898-1962) Austrian-born writer and illustrator. Bemelmans emigrated to New York City in 1914 and worked at various occupations. He wrote for periodicals, and became famous for his children's books, such as...
Ben Ali, Zine el Abidine(1936) Tunisian politician, president from 1987. After training in France and the USA, he returned to Tunisia and became director general of national security. He was made minister of the interior and in...
Ben Barka, Mehdi(1920-1965) Moroccan politician. He became president of the National Consultative Assembly in 1956 on the country's independence from France. He was assassinated by Moroccan agents with the aid of the French...
Ben Bella, Muhammad Ahmed(1918) Algerian politician, a founder and leader of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), the first prime minister of independent Algeria 1962-63, and its first president 1963-65. He carried out...
Ben Salah, Ahmed(1926) Tunisian trade unionist and politician. He succeeded Farhat Hachad as secretary general of the Union Générale des Travailleurs Tunisiens (UGTT) in 1952 and sided with Habib
Bourguiba during the...
Ben Youssef, Salah(1910-1961) Tunisian nationalist and politician. Habib
Bourguiba's chief assistant and secretary general of the Néo-Destour party from the mid-1930s, he was to represent the most serious and strongest...
Ben-Gurion, David(1886-1973) Israeli statesman and socialist politician. He was one of the founders of the state of Israel, the country's first prime minister 1948-53, and again 1955-63. He retired from politics in 1970,...
Ben-Veniste, Richard(1943) US lawyer. Assistant US attorney in New York, 1968-73, Ben-Veniste headed the special Watergate task force that analysed President Nixon's `White House tapes` . ...
BenaresAlternative transliteration of
Varanasi, a holy Hindu city in Uttar Pradesh, India. ...
Benavente y Martínez, Jacinto(1866-1954) Spanish dramatist. His attacks on social hypocrisy were strongly influenced by the example of the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. He had international success with Los intereses creados/The Bonds...
Benbow, John(1653-1702) English admiral. He spent his entire life in active service; as a boy he ran away to sea, and from 1689 served in the navy. Hero of several battles with France, he fought at the battles of Beachy...
Benbridge, Henry(c. 1743-1812) US painter. Benbridge worked in Italy and exhibited his Portrait of Pascal Paoli (1769) in London. Settling in Norfolk, Virginia (c. 1800), he was the first teacher of Thomas Sully. He worked as a...
Benchley, Robert Charles(1889-1945) US humorist, actor, and drama critic. His books include Of All Things (1921) and Benchley Beside Himself (1943). His film skit How to Sleep illustrates his ability to extract...
Benckendorff, Alexander(1849-1917) Russian diplomat. He was appointed ambassador to England in 1903. Under his auspices the Anglo-Russian Agreement was signed in 1907, completing the Triple Entente (alliance of Britain, France, and...
Benda, Julien(1867-1956) French writer and philosopher. He was an outspoken opponent of the philosophy of Henri
Bergson, and in 1927 published a manifesto on the necessity of devotion to the absolute truth, which he felt...
Bender, George Harrison(1896-1961) US representative and senator. Elected to the US House of Representatives in 1939, he was an outspoken critic of the liberal policies of presidents Franklin D Roosevelt and Harry S Truman. However,...
Benedetto da Maiano(1442-1497) Italian sculptor and architect. Training as a sculptor in Florence under Rossellino, he developed an elegant realism typical of 15th-century Florentine sculpture. Among his many works - which...
Benedict Biscop, St(c. 628-689) Benedictine monk, patron saint of the English Benedictines. He was abbot of St Peter's monastery, Canterbury, 669-71, and made five journeys to Rome. In 674 he built a monastery at Wearmouth,...
Benedict XIV, (Prospero Lambertini)(1675-1758) Pope 1740-58. He was an eminent canonist and devoted to learning and literature. His policy was marked by an attitude of conciliation towards all secular governments. He was lenient towards the...
Benedict XV(1854-1922) Pope 1914-22. He made several ineffective attempts to bring about peace during World War I, interceded with the French and German governments for the exchange of prisoners of war, and was...
Benedict XVI(1927) German Roman Catholic priest, pope from 2005. Appointed prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith by his predecessor Pope
John Paul II in 1981, he swiftly became one of the most...
Benedict, Kirby(1810-1874) US judge. Named a federal judge for the New Mexico Territory by President Pierce in 1853, he dispensed frontier justice from Taos and Santa Fe until 1866, when he left the bench to return to his...
Benedict, Ruth(1887-1948) US anthropologist whose Patterns of Culture (1934) had a major influence on the `culture and personality` research tradition of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Benedict argued that different...
Benedictine orderReligious order of monks and nuns in the Roman Catholic Church, founded by St
Benedict at Subiaco, Italy, in the 6th century. It had a strong influence on medieval learning and reached the height of...
benedictionBlessing recited at the end of a Christian service, particularly the Mass. ...
beneficeIn the early Middle Ages, a donation of land or money to the Christian church as an act of devotion; from the 12th century, the term came to mean the income enjoyed by clergy. Under the
benefit of clergy
Immunity from lay jurisdiction granted to members of the clergy. The benefit was granted by the Constitutions of Clarendon 1164 which laid down that members of the clergy should be exempt from the...
Benelux
Customs union of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, an agreement for which was signed in London by the three governments in exile in 1944, and ratified in 1947. It came into force in 1948 and...
Beneš, Edvard
(1884-1948) Czechoslovak politician. He worked with TomášMasaryk towards Czechoslovak nationalism from 1918 and was foreign minister and representative at the League of Nations. He was president of the...
Benet-Mercie gunUS light machine gun. A modified version of the French Hotchkiss light machine gun, it was adopted by the US Army 1909. They were used in the 1916 expedition to Mexico and by the first units of the...
Benét, Stephen Vincent(1898-1943) US poet, novelist, and short-story writer. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1929 for his narrative poem of the Civil War, John Brown's Body (1928). One of his short stories, `The Devil and Daniel...
BengalFormer province of British India, in the northeast of the subcontinent. It was the first major part of India to come under the control of the British
East India Company (the `Bengal...
BengaliPeople of Bengali culture from Bangladesh and India (West Bengal, Tripura). There are 80-150 million speakers of Bengali, an Indo-Iranian language belonging to...
BeninCountry in west Africa, bounded east by Nigeria, north by Niger and Burkina Faso, west by Togo, and south by the Gulf of Guinea. Government The 1990 constitution provides for a president, elected by...
BeninFormer African kingdom 1200-1897, now a province of Nigeria known as Edo; population (1991 est) 2,172,000. It reached the height of its power in the 14th-17th centuries when it ruled the area...
Beningbrough HallEarly 18th-century house northwest of York, northern England, with estate of 150 ha/370 acres. It was acquired in 1958 by the National Trust. The house has an oak staircase, carved friezes, and...
Benjamin, Asher(1773-1845) US author and architect. A Boston businessman and architect, his seven pattern books (1797-1843) spread Georgian, Federal, and Greek Revival styles throughout America. He designed the Charles...
Benjamin, Judah Philip(1811-1884) US Confederate official. Holding office in the US Senate 1853-61, he was a proponent of secession of the South and resigned from office at the outbreak of...
Benn, Gottfried(1886-1956) German lyric poet and writer. Experience as a military physician during World War I encouraged a cynically pessimistic emphasis on human degeneracy and physical decay in his early collections such...
Benn, Hilary James Wedgwood(1953) British Labour politician, secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs from 2007. The son of the left-wing former Labour cabinet minister, Tony Benn, he shares his father's passion...
Benn, Tony(1925) British Labour politician, formerly the leading figure on the party's left wing. He was minister of technology 1966-70 and secretary of state for industry 1974-75, but his campaign against entry...
Bennet, Donald(1910-1968) Australian air vice-marshal, commander of the Royal Air Force
Pathfinder Force in World War II from August 1942. In the early part of the war, he controlled the `transatlantic ferry` system of...
Bennett, (Enoch) Arnold(1867-1931) English novelist, playwright, and journalist. His major works are set in the industrial `five towns` of the Potteries in Staffordshire (now Stoke-on-Trent) and are concerned with the manner...
Bennett, Alan(1934) English dramatist and screenwriter. His works (often set in his native north of England) treat, with macabre, gruesome comedy, such subjects as class, senility, illness, and death. They include the...
Bennett, James Gordon(1795-1872) Scottish-born journalist and newspaper publisher. In 1835, with $500 capital, Bennett launched the New York Herald, a daily paper aimed at a mass audience. Unlike other newspapers, the Herald had...
Bennett, James Gordon, Jr(1841-1918) US newspaper editor. Taking over the New York Herald from his father in 1867, he continued a tradition of aggressive news gathering and financed several famous international expeditions, including...
Bennett, Jill(1931-1990) English actor. She scored her first major success in Jean Anouilh's Dinner With The Family (1957), and went on to establish a considerable reputation as an elegant, sharp-witted actor, both in...
Bennett, John W(illiam)(1915) US anthropologist. Bennett's interdisciplinary studies covered a broad range of subjects including human ecology, social and cultural theory, Asian and North American society, and economic...
Bennett, Richard Bedford(1870-1947) Canadian Conservative politician, prime minister 1930-35. He was minister of finance in 1926. In the election of 1935 he was heavily defeated because of his failure to cope with the effects of the...
Bennett, Wendell C(lark)(1905-1953) US anthropologist. As a staff specialist in Andean archaeology at the American Museum of Natural History in the 1930s, Bennett led many expeditions, publishing, among other important reports of his...
Bennett, William J(ohn)(1943) US federal official. As chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, 1981-85, Bennett reversed liberal policies; as US secretary of education, 1985-88, he promoted a conservative...
Benois, Alexander Nikolayevich(1870-1960) Russian artist, art historian, and critic. His work ranged from historical paintings to illustrations and theatrical designs. With Sergei Diaghilev, he was one of the founders of the influential art...
Benoit de Sainte-Maure(lived c. 1155-75) French poet. His Roman de Troie/Romance of Troy, a poem of 30,000 octosyllabic lines, is important both in the history of courtly ...
Bensley, Thomas(died c. 1835) British printer and producer of some of the finest books of his period. His chief production was a folio Bible (1800), and his octavo Shakespeare is also well known. He was involved in developing...
Benson, Ambrosius(died 1550) Netherlandish painter. A little-known figure, identified only in the 20th century, he was a painter of religious subjects and portraits in the style of Gerard
David. Works signed with his monogram...
Benson, Arthur Christopher(1862-1925) English poet and essayist. He published studies of Archbishop William Laud (1887), the Pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1904), and the critic Walter Pater (1906), among others, as well as...
Benson, E(dward) F(rederic)(1867-1940) English writer. He specialized in novels gently satirizing the foibles of upper-middle-class society, and wrote a series of books featuring the formidable female antagonists Mapp and Lucia,...
Benson, Edward White(1829-1896) English cleric, first headmaster of Wellington College 1859-68, and, as archbishop of Canterbury from 1883, responsible for the `Lincoln Judgment` on questions of ritual 1887. ...
Benson, Ezra Taft(1899-1894) US government official and religious leader. Benson was President Dwight Eisenhower's secretary of agriculture, 1953-1961. In 1985 he became president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day...
Benson, Frank (Weston)(1862-1951) US painter and etcher. Benson studied at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and in Paris. He was an Impressionist and he also produced popular wildlife etchings. ...
Benson, Robert Hugh(1871-1914) English writer, son of the cleric Edward White Benson. He wrote both novels and religious works, although most of his later works of fiction are vehicles for Catholic propaganda. His poems were...
Benson, Stella(1892-1933) English novelist. Her works include I Pose (1915), This is the End (1917), Living Alone (1919), Goodbye, Stranger (1926), and Tobit Transplanted (1931). ...
Benson, William Shepherd(1855-1932) US naval officer. During a long naval career (1877-1929) he served as chief of staff of the Pacific Fleet, 1909-10, and as the first chief of naval operations, 1915-19. He published The...
Bent, James Theodore(1852-1897) English archaeologist. His explorations covered sites in Asia Minor 1885, the Great
Zimbabwe ruins in Mashonaland 1891, and parts of Arabia and Abyssinia 1893. His publications include The Ruined...
Benteen, Frederick(1834-1892) US cavalry officer and general. Benteen was a captain in the
7th Cavalry at the Battle of the
Little Bighorn, Montana, in 1876. He was under the command of Lt-Col George
Custer, whom he disliked...
Bentley, Arthur Fisher(1870-1957) US political scientist. While employed as a journalist in Chicago, he wrote The Process of Government (1908), describing how `pressure groups` influence all governments. Although he wrote...
Bentley, Edmund Clerihew(1875-1956) English writer. He invented the four-line humorous verse form known as the clerihew, first collected in Biography for Beginners (1905) and...
Bentley, John Francis(1839-1902) English architect, born at Doncaster. In 1894 he was appointed architect for the new Roman Catholic Cathedral at Westminster, London (1895-1903). The Byzantine style was chosen for the cathedral,...
Bentley, Phyllis Eleanor(1894-1977) English novelist. Many of her novels have Yorkshire backgrounds; they include Environment (1922), Cat-in-the-Manger (1923), A Modern Tragedy (1934), Sleep in Peace (1938),...
Bentley, Richard(1662-1742) English classical scholar. His textual criticism includes the `Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris` 1699, proving that they were not genuine in a dispute with Charles
Boyle. Bentley was...
Bentley, William(1759-1819) US Protestant clergyman and author. Benson was a proponent of a theological and political liberalism and is considered to be a pioneer of the Unitarian movement. He was a Freemason, a regular...
Benton, Thomas Hart(1889-1975) US painter. One of the leading
Regionalists and
American Scene painters, Benton is known...
Benton, Thomas Hart(1782-1858) US political leader. He was a member of the US Senate 1821-51. He distinguished himself as an outspoken opponent of the Bank of the United States and the extension of slavery as well as a strong...
Bentsen, Lloyd Millard(1921-2006) US Democrat politician. He served in the House of Representatives 1949-55 before becoming a senator from Texas 1971-93, chairing the Senate Finance Committee 1986-92. During the
Clinton...
bentwoodType of furniture, originally made by steam-heating and then bending rods of wood to form panels. Initially a country style, it was patented in the early 19th century in the USA....
benzyl bromideLachrymatory (tear) gas first used by the Germans at Verdun March 1915. It is a powerful eye irritant, and high concentrations also effect the nose and throat. Its prime component was toluene, more...
BeowulfOld English poem of 3,182 lines, thought to have been composed in the first half of the 8th century. It is the only complete surviving example of Germanic folk epic and exists in a single manuscript...
berachahJewish prayer of thanks for being blessed. Berachot are said in Hebrew throughout the day, either before experiencing pleasure (such as before a meal), or during prayers, or before following a...
Beran, Joseph(1888-1969) Czech cardinal. He was made cardinal in 1965, when he was allowed to leave Czechoslovakia to reside in Rome. He was previously professor of pastoral theology at Prague University in 1939, and was...
Béranger, Pierre Jean de(1780-1857) French poet. He wrote light satirical lyrics dealing with love, wine, popular philosophy, and politics. Many of his verses were printed satires against the government that succeeded...
BerberThe non-Semitic Caucasoid people of North Africa who since prehistoric times have inhabited Barbary - the Mediterranean coastlands from Egypt to the Atlantic. Their language, present-day...
Berceo, Gonzalo de(c. 1180-c. 1246) Spanish poet. He was a priest and his poems, mostly based on Latin originals, are sacred in theme; they include Milagros de Nuestra Señora/Miracles of Our Lady and several lives of saints,...
Berchem (or Berghem), Nicholas(1620-1683) Dutch landscape painter. He visited Italy, and his warmly toned views of the Campagna and of mountain scenery with ruins and peasants tending their flocks, answered to a contemporary Dutch vogue for...
BerchtesgadenVillage in southeastern Bavaria, Germany, site of Hitler's country residence, the Berghof, which was captured by US troops 4 May 1945 and destroyed. ...
Berdyaev, Nikolai Alexandrovich(1874-1948) Russian philosopher who often challenged official Soviet viewpoints after the Revolution of 1917. Although appointed professor of philosophy in 1919 at Moscow University, he was exiled in 1922 for...
Bérégovoy, Pierre (Eugène)(1925-1993) French socialist politician, prime minister 1992-93. A close ally of François
Mitterrand, he was named chief of staff in 1981 after managing the successful presidential campaign. He was social...
Berengaria of Navarre(1165-c. 1230) Queen of England. The only English queen never to set foot in England, she was the daughter of King Sancho VI of Navarre. She married Richard I of England in Cyprus 1191, and accompanied him on his...
Bérenger de la Tour(died c. 1559) French poet. His verse is characterized by elegance and verve, if at times it lacks good taste. It includes Le Siècle d'or (1551), Choreide ou Louange du bal, aux dames (1556), L'Amye des amyes...
Berenice(born AD 28) Eldest daughter of Herod Agrippa I, ruler of Palestine. She was married at 13 years old to her uncle, Herod of Chalcis, but after his death in AD 48 she lived, not without suspicions of incest, with...
BereniceAncient name for the Libyan city of Benghazi. ...
Beresford, John Davys(1873-1947) English novelist. His first novel, The Early History of Jacob Stahl (1911), established his reputation as a writer of the realist school deriving from George Gissing. A C ...
