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

Bucaram, Ortiz Abdalá
(1952) Ecuadorean politician and president 1996-97. He founded the Ecuadorean Roldosista Party (PRE) in 1982 and was elected mayor of Guayaquil in 1984. In 1996 he succeeded in his bid for the...

buccaneer
Member of any of various groups of seafarers who plundered Spanish ships and colonies on the Spanish American coast in the 17th century. Unlike true pirates, they were acting...

Bucentaur
Ship, richly decorated with figures of monsters, in which the doge of Venice sailed every year on Ascension Day to the Adriatic Sea. He then performed the rite of dropping a ring into the water, to...

Bucephalus
Favourite horse of Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia. Bucephalus died in 326 BC during Alexander's Indian campaign. Alexander built the city...

Bucer, Martin
(1491-1551) German Protestant reformer who was instrumental in introducing his own brand of Lutheranism to the city of Strasbourg 1523-24. He gained an international reputation second only to that of Luther...

Buchan, Anna
Real name of Scottish novelist O Douglas. ...

Buchan, John
(1875-1940) Scottish writer and politician. His popular adventure stories, today sometimes criticized for their alleged snobbery, sexism, and anti-Semitism, include The Thirty-Nine Steps, a tale of...

Buchan, Peter
(1790-1854) Scottish printer and ballad collector. His works include Gleanings of Scotch, Irish and English: Scarce Old Ballads (1825) and Ancient Ballads and Songs of the North of Scotland (1828). An...

Buchanan, Franklin
(1800-1874) US naval officer. He joined the Confederate States Navy in 1861 and commanded the Chesapeake Bay squadron, became a Confederate admiral (1862, was wounded and captured at Mobile Bay (1864), and was...

Buchanan, Jack (Walter John)
(1890-1957) Scottish musical-comedy actor. His songs such as `Good-Night Vienna` epitomized the period between World Wars I and II. ...

Buchanan, James
(1791-1868) 15th president of the USA 1857-61, a Democrat. He was a member of the US House of Representatives 1821-31, minister to Russia 1832-34, a senator 1834-45, and secretary of state 1845-49....

Buchanan, Pat(rick Joseph)
(1938) US right-wing Republican activist and journalist. Although a TV and radio commentator, he often attacked the mass media. He was a candidate for the Republican nom ...

Buchanan, Robert Williams
(1841-1901) English poet, novelist, and dramatist. His verse includes London Poems (1866). Two of his reviews, `The Fleshly School of Poetry` (1871), attacking the Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet Dante...

Bucher, Lloyd (Mark) (`Pete`)
(1929-2003) US naval officer. In January 1968, he surrendered the Pueblo, when fired on by the North Korean navy. He and his crew were imprisoned until December 1968, and forced to confess the ship had been...

Bucher, Lothar
(1817-1892) Prussian politician. In 1848 he entered the Prussian national assembly, becoming leader of the extreme Democrats. Charged with various political offences 1860, he fled to Brit ...

Buchman, Frank Nathan Daniel
(1878-1961) US Christian evangelist. In 1938 he launched in London the anticommunist campaign, the Moral Re-Armament movement. ...

Buchwald, (Arthur) Art
(1925-2007) US journalist. Starting as a columnist for the European edition of the Herald Tribune, covering the lighter side of Paris life, he later moved to Washington, DC, and his syndicated column of wry...

Buck, (Franklyn Howard) Frank
(1884-1950) US animal collector and showman. Starting in 1911, he travelled extensively to South America and Asia to buy exotic animals, which he then sold to zoos and circuses in the USA. He soon extended his...

Buck, Pearl S(ydenstricker)
(1892-1973) US novelist. Daughter of missionaries to China, she spent much of her life there and wrote novels about Chinese life, such as East Wind-West Wind (1930) and The Good Earth (1931), for which she...

Buckingham Palace
London home of the British sovereign, it stands at the west end of St James's Park. The original Buckingham House, begun in 1703 for the 1st Duke of Buckingham, was sold to...

Buckle, George Earle
(1854-1935) English journalist. In 1880 he joined the staff of The Times, which he edited from 1884- 1912. The six years of Unionist rule (1886-92), during which The Times opposed home rule in Ireland, were...

Buckler, Ernest Redmond
(1908-1984) Canadian novelist. From a Novia Scotia farming background, he has published verse and distinguished short stories, including The Rebellion of Young David and Other Stories (1975). He is best known...

Buckley, William
(1780-1856) Australian convict who escaped from Port Phillip and lived 1803-35 among the Aborigines before giving himself up, hence Buckley's chance meaning an `outside chance`. ...

Buckley, William F(rank)
(1925) US conservative political writer, novelist, and founder-editor of the National Review (1955). In such books as Up from Liberalism (1959), and in a weekly television debate Firing Line, he...

Buckner, Emory (Roy)
(1877-1941) US lawyer. He helped reform the New York US attorney's office 1904-10 and New York City's Police Department 1910-13. In 1925-27 he served as US attorney in New York City, prosecuting a series...

Buckner, Simon Bolivar
(1823-1914) US Confederate soldier. Buckner entered Confederate service as a brigadier general in September 1861. In February 1862, after his two senior officers escaped, he surrendered Fort Donelson, Kentucky,...

Buckner, Simon Bolivar, Jr
(1886-1945) US soldier. In April 1945, he commanded the US 10th Army in the invasion of Okinawa, the last great battle on the Pacific front in World War II. He was killed in action on June 18 while inspecting...

Buckstone, John Baldwin
(1802-1879) English dramatist, actor, and theatre manager. He was an accomplished comedian and a prolific dramatist, mainly of farces and melodrama. He first appeared in London at the Surrey Theatre in 1822; in...

Budaeus
Latin form of Guillaume Budé. ...

Budaeus, Guglielmus
Latin name of French scholar Guillaume Budé. ...

Buddenbrooks
Novel by the German writer Thomas Mann, published in 1901. Set in northern Germany during the 19th century, it describes the decline of a family. ...

Buddha rupa
Picture or statue of the Buddha, from whom the teachings of Buddhism have evolved, or one of the subsequent Buddhas. Buddhas take many forms; their appearance, mudras (hand gestures), and different...

Buddhism
One of the great world religions, which originated in India in the 5th century BC. It derives from the teaching of the Buddha, who is regarded as one of a series of such enlightened beings. The...

Buddhism, schools of
The two main forms of Buddhism are Theravada (or Hinayana) in Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka, and India; and Mahayana in North and East Asia. Mahayana Buddhism has a number of branches, including...

Buddhist art
Art and design of the Buddhist world, since the foundation of Buddhism, a philosophy that seeks enlightenment, by the Buddha Sakyamuni in the 5th century BC. The earliest Buddhist art developed in...

Buddhist ethics
Questions of right and wrong considered according to Buddhism. Buddhist beliefs are governed by the Buddhist laity
Unordained members of the Buddhist religion. Lay Buddhists are bound by the same rules of conduct as ordained Buddhists, except that they follow the Buddhist teaching
The canon of the Buddha's teachings or dharma, established at group councils of thousands of Buddhist monks. The first council was held within months of the Buddha's death in 483 BC. The teachings...

Budenny, Semyon Mikhailovich
(1883-1973) Soviet general. A sergeant-major in the Tsar's army, Budenny joined the Bolsheviks 1917 and rose rapidly, commanding a cavalry army by 1920 and being made Marshal of the Soviet Union 1935. One of...

Budgell, Eustace
(1686-1737) English essayist. He contributed to the Tatler and the Spectator. He lost £20,000 in the South Sea Bubble, was attacked in writing by the satirical poet Alexander Pope, and eventually drowned...

budget
Estimate of income and expenditure for some future period, used in financial planning. National budgets set out estimates of government income and expenditure and generally...

budget deficit
The amount of shortfall that occurs when expenditures exceed revenues. While individuals and private enterprises can have budget deficits, the most economically significant deficit is the federal...

Buell, Don Carlos
(1818-1898) US military officer. In the Civil War he took part, with the Union general Ulysses S Grant, in the Battle of Shiloh 1862, and defeated the Confederate army at Perryville. Relieved of command for not...

Buell, Raymond Leslie
(1896-1946) US editor and writer. He was the research director 1927-33 and then president 1933-39 of the Foreign Policy Association. An early anti-isolationist, he championed a global...

Buff, Charlotte
(1753-1828) German woman loved by the writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in his youth. When they met in Wetzlar, near Frankfurt, in June 1772, she was engaged to Georg Christian Kestner (1741-1800), whom she...

Buffalmacco, Buonamico
(1262-1340) Italian painter of the early Florentine School. He painted frescoes in the old Badia Church in Florence but was better known, according to the writer Giovanni Boccaccio, as a wit and practical joker...

buffalo
Common name of the North American bison, a large brown hoofed mammal of the bovine (cattle) family, with a heavy mane and sloping hindquarters. Buffalo roamed the Great Plains of the USA in herds of...

Buffalo Bill
US frontiersman and showman; see William Frederick Cody. ...

buffalo soldiers
Name given by American Indians to the black cavalry regiments of the US Army that served in the West during the late 19th century. These soldiers mainly fought against the Indians and were known for...

Buffet, Bernard
(1928-1999) French figurative painter. His work is noted for landscapes and figures painted in angular, spiky forms with bold, dark outlines, the colours cold and grey. ...

Buford, John
(1826-1863) US Union soldier. On July 1, 1863, with a single brigade of dismounted troopers, Buford parried a heavy Confederate attack long enough to allow Union infantry to reach the battlefield. He died of...

buggery
Anal intercourse by a man with another man or a woman, or sexual intercourse by a man or woman with an animal (bestiality). In English law, buggery may be committed by a man with his wife, or with...

Bugis
An Austronesian-speaking group of traders, craftsmen, and rice cultivators, living in Sulawesi, Borneo, and the Philippines. They were the first Malayans to convert to Buddhism and Hinduism. In...

Bugs Bunny
Cartoon-film character created by US cartoonist Bob Clampett for Porky's Hare Hunt (1938). The cynical, carrot-crunching rabbit with its goofy incisors and catchphrase `Eh, what's up, Doc?`...

Buhari, Muhammadu
(1942) Nigerian politician and soldier, president 1983-85. He led the military coup that ousted Shehu Shagari in 1983. Having assumed the presidency himself, he imposed an authoritarian regime of...

buhl
Alternative spelling for boulle, a type of marquetry. ...

building society
In the UK, a financial institution that attracts investment in order to lend money, repayable at interest, for the purchase or building of a house on security of a mortgage. The largest building...

Buisson, Ferdinand E(douard)
(1841-1932) French progressive educator and pacifist. Ferdinand Buisson was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1927 with German politician Ludwig Quiddefor being `the...

Bukharin, Nikolai Ivanovich
(1888-1938) Soviet politician and theorist. A moderate, he was the chief Bolshevik thinker after Lenin. Executed on Stalin's orders for treason in 1938, he was posthumously rehabilitated in 1988. He wrote the...

Bukowski, Charles
(1920-1994) German-born US writer. In his many poetry collections, six novels, short stories, and essays, he created the persona of himself as an ugly lover and angry drunk, an outsider trapped in a gutter...

Bulatovic, Miodrag
(1930-1991) Serbian writer. Self-educated and first noted as a lyric poet drawing on his country's oral tradition, he later disclosed a gift for original, courageous, and grimly satiric narrative. He has...

Bulatovic, Momir
(1928) Montenegrian politician, president of Montenegro 1990-97, and prime minister of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia 1998-2000. He was a founder member of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia,...

Bulfinch, Charles
(1763-1844) US architect. He became one of New England's leading architects after his design for the Massachusetts State House was accepted 1787. His designs include the Hollis Street Church, Harvard's...

Bulfinch, Thomas
(1796-1867) US banker and author. He spent his spare time studying natural history and literature, eventually writing books based on his extensive reading -Hebrew Lyrical History (1853), The Age of Chivalry...

Bulgakov, Mikhail Afanasyevich
(1891-1940) Russian novelist and playwright. His novel The White Guard (1924), dramatized as The Days of the Turbins (1926), dealt with the Revolution and the civil war. His satiric approach made him unpopular...

Bulgakov, Sergei Nikolayevich
(1871-1944) Russian philosopher, economist, and theologian. Initially a Marxist, he later became an Idealist and an Orthodox priest. He was a Constitutional Democrat member of the State Duma. He was expelled...

Bulgaria
Country in southeast Europe, bounded north by Romania, west by Serbia and Macedonia, south by Greece, southeast by Turkey, and east by the Black Sea. Government Under the 1991 constitution, Bulgaria...

Bulgarian
An ethnic group living mainly in Bulgaria. There are 8-8.5 million speakers of Bulgarian, a Slavic language belonging to the Indo-European family. The Bulgarians use the Cyrillic alphabet. Known...

Bulge, Battle of the
In World War II, Hitler's plan (code-named `Watch on the Rhine`) for a breakthrough by his field marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, aimed at the US line in the Ardennes from 16 December 1944 to 28...

bull
In business, trader in financial market who believes the market is going to rise. Such positive sentiments are said to be bullish. A bull is the opposite of a bear. In a bull market, prices fall and...

bull
Document or edict issued by the pope; so called from the circular seals (medieval Latin bulla) attached to them. Some of the most celebrated bulls include Leo X's condemnation of Luther in 1520 and...

Bull Moose Party
US political party founded 1912 by supporters of the former president Theodore Roosevelt. The Bull Moose ticket split the Republican Party completely; as a consequence the Democratic candidate,...

Bull Run, battles of
In the American Civil War, two victories for the Confederate army under General Robert E Lee at Manassas Junction, northeastern Virginia, named after the stream where they took place:First Battle of...

Bull, John
Imaginary figure personifying England; see John Bull. ...

Bull, Olaf Jacob Martin Luther
(1883-1933) Norwegian lyric poet. He often celebrated his birthplace Christiania (now Oslo) in his poetry. He was the son of the humorist and fiction writer Jacob Breda Bull (1853-1930). In his first...

Bull, Phil
(1910-1989) English racing information service founder. He made racing accessible to everyone by starting the Timeform organization in Halifax, Yorkshire. Today it is the world's largest information service for...

Buller, Redvers Henry
(1839-1908) British commander against the Boers in the South African War 1899-1902. He was defeated at Colenso and Spion Kop, but relieved Ladysmith; he was superseded by British field marshal Lord Roberts....

Bullett, Gerald William
(1893-1958) English novelist and poet. His novels include The History of Egg Pandervil (1928), Nicky, Son of Egg (1929), The Jury (1935), The Snare of the Fowler (1936), and When the Cat's Away (1940). He also...

Bullins, Ed
(1935) US writer and playwright who was a leader of the 1960s `black arts` movement. He wrote his first play, Clara's Ole Man, in 1965. Although not publishing much after the 1980s, he worked on a...

Bullitt, William C (Christian)
(1891-1967) US diplomat who was one of President Roosevelt's most trusted advisors. In 1933 President Franklin Roosevelt made him the first ambassador to the USSR;...

bullroarer
Musical instrument used by Australian Aborigines for communication and during religious rites. It consists of a weighted aerofoil (a rectangular slat of wood...

Bulmer, William
(1757-1839) British printer. He was celebrated for his production of the Boydell Shakespeare (1791-1805), which included a volume of engravings entitled The Shakespeare Gallery. Thomas Bewick, a friend of...

Bultmann, Rudolf Karl
(1884-1976) German Lutheran theologian and New Testament scholar. He was a professor at Marburg University 1921-51, and during the Third Reich played a leading role in the Confessing Church, a Protestant...

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward George Earle
English writer; see Edward Lytton. ...

Bumba
Creator god of the Boshongo people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), who vomited out the heavenly bodies and all living things, including humanity, w ...

Bunbury, Henry William
(1750-1811) English caricaturist. Unlike his contemporaries James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson, he never attempted political subjects, preferring good humoured drawings to biting satire. ...

Bunche, Ralph Johnson
(1904-1971) US diplomat. He was principal director of the United Nations Department of Trusteeship 1948-54 and UN undersecretary 1955-67, acting as mediator in Palestine 1948-49 and as special...

Bundelas
Rajput clan prominent in...

Bundy, McGeorge
(1919-1996) US public official and educator. He was special national security adviser to presidents John F Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson 1961-66 and played a prominent role in pursuing the Vietnam War. Bundy was...

Bundy, Ted (Theodore Robert)
(1946-1989) US serial killer. He committed a series of up to 40 murders from 1974, habitually raping and beating his victims. He stood trial in 1977 but escaped from custody, fled to Florida, and assumed the...

Bunin, Ivan Alexeyevich
(1870-1953) Russian writer. He was the author of The Village (1910), a novel which tells of the passing of peasant life; and the short story collection The Gentleman from San Francisco (1916) (about the death...

Bunker Hill, Battle of
The first significant engagement in the American Revolution, on 17 June 1775, near a small hill in Charlestown (now part of Boston), Massachusetts; the battle actually took place on Breed's Hill,...

Bunker, Ellsworth
(1894-1984) US diplomat and executive. He was ambassador to South Vietnam during the crucial stages of the Vietnam War 1967-73, and the chief negotiator of the Panama Canal treaties 1973-78, which became...

Bunner, Henry Cuyler
(1855-1896) US poet. He edited the comic weekly Puck, to which he contributed jokes, poems, and stories, 1878-96. His first published book, Airs from Arcady and Elsewhere (1884), was followed by a collected...

Bunratty Castle
15th-century castle at Bunratty, County Clare, Republic of Ireland. Considered one of the finest castles of its period in Ireland, it stands on the site of earlier fortifications from about 1250...

Bunshaft, Gordon
(1909-1990) US architect. While working for the architectural practice Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, he produced the first modernist building to be completely enclosed in curtain walling (walls which hang from a...

Bunting, Basil
(1900-1985) English poet. His verse was given little attention when it first appeared in the 1930s, but he was rediscovered in the 1960s and some of his finest work, often dealing with autobiographical...

Bunting, Edward
(1773-1843) Irish collector of traditional music. Born in Armagh, he lived in Drogheda from 1782 and eventually settled in Dublin in 1819. A trained organist, Bunting made a major contribution to the survival...

Buntline, Ned
Adopted name of US author Edward Zane Carroll Judson. ...

Bunyan, John
(1628-1688) English writer, author of ThePilgrim's Progress (first part 1678, second part 1684), one of the best-known English religious allegories (a symbolic story with meaning...