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

Bourlon Wood, attacks on
In World War I, British operations against a section of the Hindenburg Line November 1917 and September 1918. The wood lay 5 km/3 mi west of Cambrai and was carefully organized by the Germans as a...

Bourne, Francis
(1861-1935) English cardinal. In 1889 he founded and became the first head of a theological seminary in the diocese of Southwark, London, of which he was made bishop in 1897. In 1895 he had been appointed...

Boursault, Edmé
(1638-1701) French dramatist. He wrote three comedies, Le Mercure galant 1683, Esope à la ville 1690, and Esope à la cour 1701, but is chiefly remembered for his quarrels with the writer Boileau and the...

Bouteflika, Abdelaziz
(1937) Algerian politician and diplomat, elected president in April 1999 amidst accusations of a fraudulent election. He joined the Armée de Liberation Nationale (ALN) in 1956 and became minister of...

Bouterse, Désiré
(1945) Surinamese military leader and president 1980-87. He ruled dictatorially during his presidency, and set about suppressing all forms of democratic opposition. Bouterse, a commander-in-chief of...

Boutros-Ghali, Boutros
(1922) Egyptian diplomat and politician, deputy prime minister 1991-92, secretary general of the United Nations (UN) 1992-96. He worked towards peace in the Middle East in the foreign ministry posts he...

Bouts, Dirk (or Dierick)
(c. 1420-1475) Dutch painter. Born in Haarlem, he settled in Louvain, painting portraits and religious scenes influenced by Rogier van der Weyden, Albert van Ouwater, and Petrus Christus. The Last Supper...

Bouvines, Battle of
Decisive victory for Philip II (Philip Augustus) of France on 27 July 1214, near the village of Bouvines in Flanders, over the Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV and his allies, including King John of...

Bovard, Oliver Kirby
(1872-1945) US newspaper editor. Named managing editor of the St Louis Post Dispatch in 1910, he assembled a top-notch staff and produced outstanding news coverage. He resigned in 1938 after owner Joseph...

Bow Bells
The bells of St Mary-le-Bow church, Cheapside, London; a person born within the sound of Bow Bells is traditionally considered a true Cockney. The bells also feature in the...

Bow Church
Church in Cheapside, London, originally built in the 11th century. The surviving crypt is the oldest parochial building in London. The church was destroyed in the Fire of London and rebuilt by...

Bow Street
Street in London, England, between Long Acre and Russell Street, the location of a famous police court. The work of the Bow Street magistrates formerly embraced executive functions which are now...

Bow Street Runners
Informal police force organized in 1749 by Henry Fielding, chief magistrate at Bow Street in London. The scheme was initially established as a force of detectives to aid the Bow Street Magistrates'...

Bowdich, Thomas Edward
(1790-1824) English traveller and scientific writer. He led a mission to Ashanti in 1815, and on his return published A Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee (1819), and The African Committee in the same...

Bowditch, Charles P(ickering)
(1842-1921) US businessman and archaeologist. A Harvard graduate, he was president of Pepperell Manufacturing Company and Massachusetts Hospital Life Insurance Company while pursuing a career as an amateur...

Bowdler, Thomas
(1754-1825) English editor. His expurgated versions of Shakespeare and other authors gave rise to the verb bowdlerize. In 1818 he published the Family Shakespeare, in ten volumes, in which `those words and...

Bowdoin, James
(1726-1790) American public official. A supporter of American independence, he was elected to the Massachusetts General Court 1753, chosen as a member of the Governor's Council 1757, and served on the...

Bowen, Elizabeth (Dorothea Cole)
(1899-1973) Irish novelist and short-story writer. Born in Dublin of Anglo-Irish descent, she moved to England as a child. She published her first volume of short stories, Encounters in 1923. Her novels...

Bowersock, Glen (Warren)
(1936) US classicist and historian. Bowerstock became professor at the School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton in 1980. In works like Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire (1969)...

Bowes, Edward
(1874-1946) US entrepreneur and radio impresario. As manager of New York City's radio station WHN, Bowes began Major Bowes' Original Amateur Hour, which offered potential stardom and a $10 stipend to...

Bowie, Jim
(1796-1836) US frontiersman and folk hero. A colonel in the Texan forces during the Mexican War, he is said to have invented the single-edge, guarded hunting and throwing knife known as a Bowie knife. He was...

Bowles, Jane
(1917-1973) US writer. After her marriage to the writer Paul Bowles in 1938, she lived mostly abroad. Her literary reputation rests on a slender output from the 1940s and 1950s (a novel -Two Serious Ladies...

Bowles, Samuel
(1939) US economist. Bowles taught at Harvard before joining the faculty of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, where he was a professor of economics. He published extensively in the economics of...

Bowles, Samuel, III
(1826-1878) US newspaper editor. Bowles was editor of the Springfield Republican, and his influence made the newspaper into one of the most highly regarded of its time. His editorials were highly influential;...

Bowles, William Lisle
(1762-1850) English poet. His Fourteen Sonnets on Picturesque Spots (1789) had a considerable influence on the young Romantic poets William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Southey. His longer...

Bowne, Borden Parker
(1847-1910) US philosopher and theologian. After studying idealist philosophy in Germany, Bowne joined the faculty at Boston University in 1876 and he ultimately became head of the philosophy department and...

Bowyer, William
(1699-1777) English printer and classical scholar. His chief work was Conjectural Emendations of the Greek Testament (1763). He also wrote two essays on the origin of printing, published in 1774, and translated...

Boxer
Member of the I ho ch'üan (`Righteous Harmonious Fists`), a society of Chinese nationalists dedicated to fighting Western influence in China. They were known as Boxers by Westerners as they...

Boxer Rebellion
Rebellion of 1900 by the Chinese nationalist Boxer society against Western influence. European and US legations in Beijing (Peking) were besieged and many missionaries and Europeans were killed. An...

Boy Scout
Member of the Scout organization. ...

boyar
Landowner in the Russian aristocracy. During the 16th century boyars formed a powerful interest group threatening the tsar's power, until their influence was decisively broken in 1565 when Ivan the...

boycott
Social and commercial isolation of South Africa by individuals, organizations, and national governments protesting against South Africa's ...

Boycott, Charles Cunningham
(1832-1897) English ex-serviceman and land agent in County Mayo, Ireland, 1873-86. He strongly opposed the demands for agrarian reform by the Irish Land League, 1879-81, with the result that the peasants...

Boyd, Belle
(1843-1900) US Confederate spy. Boyd brought information about Federal troops to Confederate commands, especially to General Stonewall Jackson. She was arrested twice (1862, 1863) and was captured on her way to...

Boyd, Martin
(1893-1972) Australian novelist. His chief work is the Langton Tetralogy, comprising the novels The Cardboard Crown (1952), A Difficult Young Man (1955), Outbreak of Love (1957), and When Blackbirds Sing...

Boyd, William Andrew Murray
(1952) Ghanaian-born British novelist and short-story writer. He won wide critical acclaim for A Good Man In Africa (1981; filmed in 1994), which won the Whitbread Award for best first novel and the...

Boyd, Zachary
(1585-1653) Scottish minister. He taught at the Protestant College of Saumur, France, until the town was occupied by Louis XIII in 1621 and the Huguenots were persecuted. Returning to Scotland, he became...

Boyesen, H(jalmar) H(jorth)
(1849-1895) Norwegian literary critic and writer. Boyesen travelled to America in 1869 and was a journalist before becoming a tutor at Urbana University. He went on to teach at Cornell...

Boyington, (Gregory) `Pappy`
(1912-1988) US marine aviator. Boyington led the Black Sheep Squadron, which consisted of pilots dismissed from other squadrons for disciplinary and other problems, in the Pacific during World War II. ...

Boyle, Charles
(1676-1731) Irish soldier, diplomat, and writer. His 1695 edition of the Epistles of Phalaris led to a controversy with Richard Bentley, who proved th ...

Boyle, John
(1707-1762) Irish biographer and scholar, a member of the prominent Boyle political dynasty. Born in England and educated at Oxford, he visited Dublin in 1732, but settled in M ...

Boyle, Kay
(1903-1992) US writer. Boyle joined the American expatriate community in Europe in 1923, returning to America after World War II as the New Yorker's European Correspondent. A number of Boyle's 50 books drew on...

Boyle, Richard
(1566-1643) Anglo-Irish administrator. After gaining great wealth and property, he promoted English Protestant immigration to Ireland, and won the favour of Queen Elizabeth I. He was made a privy counsellor...

Boyle, Roger
(1621-1679) Irish soldier, politician, and author, the fifth son of Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork. In...

Boyne Valley
Vast necropolis of the Neolithic and Bronze Age Boyne Valley culture in County Meath, Republic of Ireland. One of Europe's most remarkable prehistoric sites, the remains of four massive tumuli...

Boyne, Battle of the
Battle fought on 1 July 1690 in eastern Ireland, in which the exiled King James II was defeated by William III and fled to France. It was the decisive battle of the War of English Succession,...

Boz
Pseudonym under which Charles Dickens published a collection of satires on institutions, pictures of private individuals, and fairy tales of the vulgarity of his world (originally written for the...

Bozeman, John M
(1835-1867) US explorer. In 1963-65 he pioneered the Bozeman Trail, the best route for gold-seekers on their way from southeastern Wyoming to Virginia City, Montana. He was killed by Blackfeet Indians at...

Br&acaron;tianu, Ioan Constantin
(1821-1891) Romanian premier 1876-88. During his administration, Romania won its independence and embarked on a programme of economic development. Prior to his premiership, he took part in the Wallachian...

Br&acaron;tianu, Ion
(1864-1927) Romanian premier and virtual dictator during World War I and almost until his death. He concluded with the Entente powers (Britain, France, and Russia) a treaty on the basis of which Romania...

Brabançonne, La
National anthem of Belgium, written and composed during the revolution of 1830. ...

Brackenridge, Henry Marie
(1786-1871) US lawyer and author. Son of Hugh Henry Brackenridge, Henry was admitted to the bar when he was 20-years old. He served in the Maryland and Florida legislatures, and was briefly a US...

Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
(1748-1816) Scottish-born author and judge. Brackenridge emigrated to the USA as a child. He helped to establish the first newspaper and bookstore in frontier Pittsburgh and went on to become a Supreme Court...

Bracton, Henry de
(died 1268) English judge, writer on English law, and chancellor of Exeter cathedral from 1264. The account of the laws and customs of the English attributed to Henry de Bracton, De Legibus et consuetudinibus...

Bradbury, Malcolm (Stanley)
(1932-2000) English novelist and critic. His fiction includes comic and satiric portrayals of provincial British and US campus life:Eating People is Wrong (1959) (his first novel), Stepping Westward (1965), and...

Bradbury, Ray(mond) Douglas
(1920) US author. He is best known as a writer of science fiction, a genre he helped make `respectable` to a wider readership. His work is concerned with the hazards of unregulated technology and shows...

Braddon, Mary Elizabeth
(1837-1915) English novelist. Her first best-seller was Lady Audley's Secret (1862) and she went on to write about 70 novels in all. Most were sensational stories of murder, blackmail, and intrigue, but they...

Braden, Spruille
(1894-1978) US diplomat and consultant. Braden entered the diplomatic service in 1933 and became known as a crusader for democracy, especially while he was ambassador to Argentina in 1945 and assistant...

Bradford, David
(lived 1794) US political agitator. Bradford was a popular prosecuting attorney in Washington County, Pennsylvania He was the most prominent leader of the movement known as the Whiskey Rebellion. He avoided...

Bradford, John
(c. 1510-1555) English Protestant preacher and martyr. He became chaplain to Nicholas Ridley, bishop of London, in 1550, prebendary of St Paul's in 1551, and royal chaplain to Edward VI in 1553. His preaching won...

Bradford, Samuel Clement
(1876-1948) British librarian and documentalist who pioneered the use of the Universal Decimal Classification and the work of the International Federation for Documentation (FID). He edited the English edition...

Bradford, William
(1663-1752) English-born printer. Emigrating to Pennsylvania in 1685, he set up the first colonial printing press outside New England and the first colonial paper mill. Moving to New York, Bradford founded...

Bradford, William
(1590-1657) British colonial administrator in America, the first governor of Plymouth colony, Massachusetts, 1621-54. As one of the Pilgrims, he sailed for America aboard the Mayflower 1620 and was among the...

Bradlaugh, Charles
(1833-1891) British freethinker and radical politician. In 1880 he was elected Liberal member of Parliament for Northampton, but was not allowed to take his seat until 1886 because, as an a ...

Bradley, A(ndrew) C(ecil)
(1851-1935) English literary critic and scholar. His study of Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth in Shakespearean Tragedy (1904) looked at the plays in terms of their major characters, psychology, and...

Bradley, Bill
(1943) US basketball player and politician. A three-time All-American forward at Princeton University 1961-65, Bradley was part of the US basketball team that won the Olympic gold medal in Tokyo in...

Bradley, Edward
(1827-1889) English humorous writer and cleric. As a contributor to Punch, under the pen-name Cuthbert Bede, he was well known to his contemporaries. He is remembered now for his Adventures of Mr Verdant...

Bradley, Francis Herbert
(1846-1924) British philosopher who argued for absolute idealism - the theory, influenced by German philosopher G W F Hegel, that there is only one ultimately real thing, the Absolute, which is spiritual in...

Bradley, Joseph P
(1813-1892) US Supreme Court justice. Appointed by President Ulysses S Grant to the US Supreme Court in 1870, Bradley was active in the legal problems concerning the Reconstruction and cast the deciding...

Bradley, Katharine Harris
English writer; her works with Edith Cooper were published under the pseudonym Michael Field. ...

Bradley, Mark E
(1907-1999) US aviator. Bradley worked on a series of fighter development projects during World War II, including the highly successful P-47 and P-51 programs. After retirement, he became an executive...

Bradley, Omar Nelson
(1893-1981) US general in World War II. In 1943 he commanded the 2nd US Corps in their victories in Tunisia and Sicily, leading to the surrender of 250,000 Axis troops, and in 1944 led the US troops in the...

Bradley, Tom
(1917-1998) US lawyer, mayor, and policeman. Educated as a lawyer, he served in the Los Angeles Police Department from 1940 to 1962. He had a private law practice (1961-63), and subsequently served on the Los...

Bradley, Will H
(1868-1962) US designer. Initially working as a poster and book designer (1893-94, Bradley went on to found the Wayside Press. H designed typefaces, furniture, and homes, developing a style of his own that...

Bradshaw, George
(1801-1853) British publisher who brought out the first railway timetable in 1839. Thereafter Bradshaw's Railway Companion appeared at regular intervals. He was apprenticed to an engraver on leaving school, and...

Bradshaw, Henry
(1831-1886) English scholar and librarian. His discovery 1857 of the Book of Deer threw new light on ancient Celtic languages and literature, as did another discovery of manuscripts containing the earliest...

Bradshaw, John
(1602-1659) English judge who pronounced the death sentence on King Charles I. In the Civil War, when the king was brought to trial 1649, Bradshaw was president of the court. He put aside all legal objections...

Bradshaw, Robert Llewellyn
(1916-1978) St Kitts and Nevis politician, prime minister 1967-78. After universal adult suffrage had been granted by the British colonial rulers in 1952, Bradshaw led the St Kitts Labour Party (SKLP) to...

Bradstreet, Anne
(c. 1612-1672) English-born American poet. Her volume of verse, The Tenth Muse, was published in London, England, in 1650. Her poems were pious but often also witty, and show an intense imagination applied to...

Bradwardine, Thomas
(c. 1290-1349) English prelate, archbishop of Canterbury in 1349. He became known as a lecturer and writer, especially against Pelagianism. He was made chancellor of the London diocese and chaplain to Edward III,...

Bradwell, Myra
(1831-1894) US lawyer and editor. Bradwell originally studied law to help her lawyer husband. Although she passed the bar exam in 1869, she was denied admission. In 1868, she established the pioneer weekly...

Brady, Ian
(1938) British murderer who, with Myra Hindley, abducted, sexually abused, and murdered two children and a 17-year-old youth between 1963 and 1965. They were known as `the Moors Murderers` because...

Brady, Nicholas
(1659-1726) Irish poet and cleric. The metrical version of the psalms he made in collaboration with Nahum Tate gradually superseded the older version of Thomas Sternhold (1500-1549) and John Hopkins (died...

Brady, William A(loysius)
(1863-1950) US actor and theatre manager. Brady is best known for the many plays he mounted at the various theatres he managed in New York. ...

Braganza
The royal house of Portugal whose members reigned from 1640 until 1910; members of another branch were emperors of Brazil from 1822 to 1889. ...

Bragg, Braxton
(1817-1876) American Confederate general. When the Civil War broke out 1861 he served as major-general in the Confederate army of the Mississippi, taking part...

Bragg, Melvyn
(1939) English television presenter and executive, also author, who began presenting and editing the subsequently long-running ITV arts documentary series The South Bank Show in 1978. He was head of arts...

Bragi
In Norse mythology, the god of wisdom, poetry, and eloquence, husband of Idun. He received slain heroes when they entered Valhalla, and at chieftains' funerals the `cup of Bragi` was drunk in...

Brahma
In Hinduism, the creator god. Brahma combines with Vishnu, the preserver, and Shiva, the destroyer of evil, to make up the Trimurti, the three aspects of Brahman, the supreme being,...

Brahma Samaj
Indian monotheistic religious movement, founded in 1830 in Calcutta (now Kolkata) by Ram Mohun Roy, who attempted to recover the simple worship of the Vedas and purify Hinduism. The movement had...

Brahma Vihara
Four Buddhist states of mind:metta (loving kindness), compassion (sympathy and empathy with the suffering of others), sympathetic joy (an ability to feel happiness at the good fortune of others),...

brahmacari
In Hinduism, a young man leading a life of disciplined religious study. In student life, the boy lives austerely in the ashram (religious community) of his guru as a brahmacari, studying the Vedic...

Brahman
In Hinduism, the supreme being, an impersonal and infinite creator of the universe. Brahman exists in everything, and is the spirit, or atman, of every living thing. Achieving union with Brahman and...

Brahmanism
Earliest stage in the development of Hinduism. Its sacred scriptures are the Vedas, with their accompanying literature of comment and explanation known as Brahmanas, Aranyakas, and Upanishads. ...

Brahui
A Dravidian-speaking group of nomadic goat-herders and seasonal labourers living in northwestern Pakistan and neighbouring mountain areas of Iran and Afghanistan. They occupied...

Braidwood, Robert J(ohn)
(1907-2003) US archaeologist and anthropologist. Braidwood pioneered interdisciplinary scientific studies in archaeology; publishing widely on the development of agriculture...

Brain Trust
Nickname of an informal group of experts who advised US president Franklin D Roosevelt on his New Deal policy. ...

Braine, John (Gerard)
(1922-1986) English novelist. His novel Room at the Top (1957) cast Braine as one of the leading Angry Young Men of the period. It created the character of Joe Lampton, one of the first of the northern...

Brainerd, David
(1718-1747) US Protestant missionary. Brainerd obtained a license to preach in 1742 and ministered to American Indians in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Poor health forced him from the field in...

Braithwaite, Edward Ricardo
(1920) Guyanese author. His writings explore the problems and dilemmas faced by humans in inhumane situations. His experiences as a teacher in London prompted To Sir With Love (1959). His books Reluctant...