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

Casaubon, Isaac
(1559-1614) Swiss-born French classical scholar. He published editions of numerous ancient writers, including Aristotle, Theophrastus, Polybius, Theocritus, Persius, and Suetonius. His own works include the...

case shot
Non-explosive artillery projectile consisting of a sheet-metal canister filled with lead or cast-iron balls. On being fired from a gun the canister is split by the force of the propellant...

Case, Francis Higbee
(1896-1962) US representative and senator. Primarily interested in domestic issues, such as water conservation and farm surplus programs, he initiated the Renegotiation Act of 1942 which was intended to recover...

Casement, Roger David
(1864-1916) British diplomat and Irish revolutionary. While in the British consular service, he exposed the ruthless exploitation of the people of the Belgian Congo and Peru, for which he was knighted in 1911...

Casey, William J (Joseph)
(1913-1987) US lawyer and government official. He served as a chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission 1971-73. As President Reagan's director of the Central Intelligence Agency 1981-87, he...

cash flow
Input of cash required to cover all expenses of a business, whether revenue or capital. Alternatively, the actual or prospective balance between the various outgoing and incoming movements which are...

cashmere
Natural fibre originating from the wool of the goats of Kashmir, India, used for shawls, scarves, sweaters, and coats. It can also be made artificially. ...

Casino Marino
The `little house by the sea`, near Dublin, on what was formerly the Marino estate, is one of the most elegant small buildings in Europe. A garden pavilion, it was designed from 1758 by the...

Caspe
Town in the province of Zaragoza, northwest Spain, near the confluence of the Guadalope and Ebro rivers; population (1991) 8,000. Its castle was the scene of...

Cass, Lewis
(1782-1866) US political leader and diplomat. He was appointed secretary of war 1831 by President Jackson, and served as US minister to France 1836-42. Elected to the Senate 1945, he was the unsuccessful...

Cassander
(c. 350-297 BC) King of Macedonia, son of Antipater. In the struggles for power over the Macedonian empire which followed the death of Alexander the Great, Cassander joined other Diacochi against Antigonus and...

Cassandra
In Greek mythology, Trojan daughter of Priam and Hecuba. Loved by the god Apollo, she was promised the gift of prophecy in return for her favours, but rejected his advances after receiving her...

Cassatt, Mary
(1845-1926) US Impressionist painter and printmaker, active in France. Her colourful pictures of mothers and children show the influence of Japanese prints, as in The Bath (1892; Art Institute, Chicago). She...

Cassel, Gustav
(1866-1945) Swedish economist. He became the most influential international member of the economics profession in the 1920s, playing an important part in interpreting the abnormal monetary phenomena of the...

Cassell, John
(1817-1865) English publisher. He founded in 1848 the publishing firm of Cassell and Co., which later became incorporated into the US owned company of Cassell and Collier Macmillan. Cassell was born in...

Cassianus, Johannes
(c. 360-435) Monk and theologian. He was one of the founders of western monasticism. He was probably born in Provence, France, but spent his early life in a monastery at Bethlehem in the middle east. With his...

Cassin, René-Samuel
(1887-1976) French jurist, professor, humanitarian, and internationalist. Cassin was a distinguished proponent of the legal and moral recognition of human rights. His life's work was based on the belief that if...

Cassina
Italian furniture-manufacturing company, established 1923, based in Meda, Italy. Cassina moved from craft to mass production after 1945 and successfully sold modern design to a sophisticated...

Cassino, Battles of
In World War II, series of costly but ultimately successful Allied assaults January-May 1944 on heavily fortified German positions blocking the Allied advance to Rome. Both sides sustained heavy...

Cassiopeia
In Greek mythology, the mother of the Ethiopian princess Andromeda. ...

Cassirer, Ernst
(1874-1945) German philosopher of the neo-Kantian school (see neo-Kantianism). Immanuel Kant had taught that human...

Cassiterides
The `Tin Islands`, a group of islands first mentioned by the Greek historian Herodotus as the place where the Phoenicians exchanged their wares for tin. The islands were to the northwest of...

Cassius
(c. 85 BC-42 BC) Roman general and politician, one of Julius Caesar's assassins. He fought with Marcus Licinius ...

Cassius, Avidius
(died AD 175) Roman general under the emperor Marcus Aurelius. He distinguished himself in...

Cassivelaunus
Chieftain of the British tribe, the Catuvellauni, who led the British resistance to the Romans under Caesar in 54 BC. ...

Casson, Hugh Maxwell
(1910-1999) English architect. He was professor at the Royal College of Art from 1953 to 1975, and president of the Royal Academy from 1976 to 1984. He was director of architecture for the Festival of Britain...

Casson, Lionel
(1914) US classicist. A specialist in nautical matters in the ancient world, he wrote Excavations at Nessana (1950) and The Ancient Mariners (1959), as well as Daily...

cassone
In Renaissance Italy, a wooden marriage chest used for storing garments, documents, and valuables. Pairs of cassoni were made for bridal trousseaux, with one bearing the husband's armorial and the...

Castagno, Andrea del
(c. 1421-1457) Italian Renaissance painter, active in Florence. His work, which develops from that of Masaccio, is powerful and sculptural in effect, showing clear outlines and an interest in foreshortening. His...

Castalia
Spring near Delphi in Greece, sacred to Apollo and the Muses in classical times, now the Fountain of St John. It was treated by later Greek writers and Latin poets as a source of inspiration. ...

Castaneda, Carlos Cesar Arana
(1931-1998) Brazilian-born US cultural anthropologist and author. He published The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (1968), allegedly based on his five-year apprenticeship with a Yaqui Indian...

Castaneda, Carlos E (Eduardo)
(1896-1958) Mexican-born US historian who emigrated to the USA at age ten. He wrote widely on Latin American history and translated the first known play written in the Americas (1935), by a Spanish priest and...

Castanheda, Fernão Lopes de
(c. 1500-1559) Portuguese chronicler. He produced a ten-volume História do descobrimento e conquista da India pelos portugueses/History of the Discovery and Conquest of India by the Portuguese, though only...

caste
A system of stratifying a society into ranked groups defined by marriage, descent, and occupation. Most common in South Asia, caste systems are also found in other societies. such as in Mali and...

Castelli, Leo (born Krauss)
(1907-1999) Italian-born US art dealer. He specialized in avant-garde American paintings, sculptures, and graphics, and was an important force in modern American art. From 1957 he was the director and owner...

Castellio, Sebastian
(1515-1563) French teacher and translator. He was an early follower of the reformer John Calvin, but they later quarrelled over doctrinal issues and Castellio's humanist sympathies. Calvin's support for the...

Castelo Branco, Humberto de Alencar
(1900-1967) Brazilian politician and president 1964-67. His government succeeded in stabilizing the economy, reorganizing the financial system, and renegotiating foreign debt, but failed to alter traditional...

Castelvetro, Lodovico
(1505-1571) Italian scholar and critic. One of the leading linguists of his day, he wrote on the evolution of Italian, and commentaries on Dante and Petrarch. He also translated Aristotle's Poetics and...

Casti, Giambattista
(1724-1803) Italian poet. His chief works are Novelle galanti 1793, a collection of tales in ottava rima, the plots of which are taken chiefly from the writers La Fontaine and Boccaccio, and Gli animali...

Castiglionchio, Lapo da
(1406-1438) Italian humanist author, a native of Florence. He produced two tracts written in humanist Latin, Comparatio inter rem militarem et studia litterarum/A Comparison of Arms and Letters and De Curiae...

Castiglione, Achille
(1918-2002) Italian industrial designer. He worked with his brothers Livio (1911-1979) and Pier Giacomo (1913-1968) until they died. A key member of the generation of Italian designers who trained as...

Castiglione, Baldassare
(1478-1529) Italian writer and diplomat. He described the perfect Renaissance gentleman in Il cortegiano/The Courtier (1528). Written in the form of dialogues, this work is one of the noblest expressions of the...

Castile
Kingdom founded in the 10th century, occupying the central plateau of Spain. Its union with Aragón in 1479, based on the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, effected the foundation of the Spanish...

Castilla, Ramón
(1797-1867) President of Peru 1841-51 and 1855-62. He dominated Peruvian politics for over two decades, bringing political stability. Income from guano exports was used to reduce the national debt and...

Castillejo, Cristóbal de
(c. 1494-1550) Spanish poet. His poems, including Sermón de amores/Sermon on Love Affairs (1542) and Diálogo de las condiciones de las mujeres/Dialogue on the Condition of Women (1544), are written in a bright...

Castillo Armas, Carlos
(1914-1957) Guatemalan soldier and anti-communist political leader, coup Leader, and ruler 1954-57. Imprisoned after a failed coup attempt in 1950, he escaped and launched an invasion in June 1954 to...

Castillon, Battle of
Battle fought on 17 July 1453 at Castillon on the lower Dordogne, southwestern France, in which the French under Jean de Bueil repelled the attacks of the English under Sir John Talbot, who was...

castle
Fortified building or group of buildings, characteristic of medieval Europe. The castle was originally designed as a defensive fortification, but it also functioned as a residence for the royalty...

Castle Coole
Classical house southeast of Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. It was built 1790-96 by James Wyatt, and contains plasterwork by Joseph Rose (1745-99) and furniture lent by the...

Castle Drogo
20th-century granite castle near Drewsteignton, Devon, England. Built by Edwin Lutyens between 1910 and 1930 on a 274 m/899 ft rocky outcrop above the River Teign. The castle was given to the...

Castle Hill rising
Irish convict revolt in New South Wales, Australia, 4 March 1804; a number were killed while parleying with the military under a flag of truce. ...

Castle Ward
Imposing 18th-century mansion in County Down, Northern Ireland, 11 km/7 mi northeast of Downpatrick. Castle Ward was reputedly one of the first houses in Ireland to exemplify `the modern...

Castle, Barbara Anne
(1911-2002) British Labour politician; a cabinet minister in the Labour governments of the 1960s and 1970s. She led the Labour group in the European Parliament 1979-89 and became a life peer in 1990. Castle...

Castle, Wendell
(1932) US furniture maker. He developed a method of laminating wood to make organic-shaped furniture. In 1970 he started a production line to make limited editions of his designs, and went on to explore...

Castledermot
Historic town in County Kildare, Republic of Ireland, 10 km/6 mi northeast of Carlow; population (2002) 1,120. Originally the site of a monastery founded by Saint Dermot in 812, it became a walled...

Castlemaine
Town in Victoria, Australia, about 105 km/65 mi northwest of Melbourne, on the River Loddon. Site of one of the earliest gold strikes 1851, its population rose to 31,000 by 1857. It survives as a...

Castlemaine, Countess of
(1641-1709) English mistress of Charles II of England 1660-70 and mother of his son, the Duke of Grafton (1663-1690). A noted society hostess, she...

Castlereagh, Robert Stewart
(1769-1822) British Tory politician. As chief secretary for Ireland 1797-1801, he suppressed the rebellion of 1798 and helped the younger Pitt secure the union of England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1801. As...

Castletown House
Country house near Celbridge, County Kildare, Republic of Ireland. Begun in 1722, it is the first and greatest Palladian house in Ireland built to correct Classical proportions by a professional...

Castor and Pollux-Polydeuces
In Greek mythology, the inseparable twins or sons of Leda; brothers...

Castro (Ruz), Fidel Alejandro
(1927) Cuban communist politician, prime minister 1959-76, and president from 1976. He led the revolution that overthrew the right-wing regime of the dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959. He improved...

Castro y Bellvis, Guillén de
(1569-1631) Spanish dramatist. He is chiefly remembered for Las mocedades del Cid (1618), a chronicle play based on the legend of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, `El Cid`; it is the source of the French playwright...

Castro, Cipriano
(1858-1924) Venezuelan military leader and dictator 1899-1908, known as `the Lion of the Andes`. When he refused to pay off foreign debts in 1902, British, German, and Italian ships blockaded the country,...

Castro, Rosalia de
(1837-1885) Spanish poet. Her delightful verse in the Galician dialect, Cantares gallegos (1863) and Follas novas (1880), have a gentle sadness and musicality which seem to be lost in her work written in...

casuistry
The application of an ethical theory to particular cases or types of case, especially in theology and dogmatics. Casuistry is contrasted with situationism, which considers each moral situation as it...

Cat
Alternative name for the Erie people. ...

Cat and Mouse Act
Popular name for the Prisoners, Temporary Discharge for Health, Act 1913; an attempt by the UK Liberal government under Herbert Asquith to reduce embarrassment caused by the incarceration of...

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Play 1950 by US writer Tennessee Williams. Family tensions are revealed when a dying wealthy cotton planter, the repressive Big Daddy, makes known the terms of...

CAT scan
Sophisticated method of X-ray imaging. Quick and noninvasive, CAT scanning is used in medicine as an aid to diagnosis, helping to pinpoint problem areas without the need for exploratory surgery....

catacomb
Underground burial chambers, such as the catacombs of the early Christians. Examples include those beneath the basilica of St Sebastian in Rome, where bodies were buried in niches in...

Çatal Hüyük
Neolithic site (6000 BC) in Turkey, southeast of Konya. It was a fortified town and had temples with wall paintings, and objects such as jewellery, obsidian, and mirrors. Finds at Jericho and Çatal...

Catalaunian Fields
Plain near Troyes, France, scene of the defeat of Attila the Hun by the Romans and Goths under the Roman general Aëtius 451. ...

Catawba
Member of an American Indian people of Sioux origin who lived in North and South Carolina. They were the foremost Siouan-speaking peoples in the southeast. The Catawba set up villages, often along...

Catch-22
Black-humour novel by Joseph Heller, published in 1961, about a US squadron that is ordered to fly an increased number of bombing missions in Italy in World War II; the crazed military...

Catcher in the Rye, The
Novel by US writer J D Salinger, published in 1951, about a young man growing up and his fight to maintain his integrity in a `phoney` adult world; it has become an international classic. ...

Cateau-Cambresis, Treaty of
Treaty that ended the dynastic wars between the Valois of France and the Habsburg Empire, 2-3 April 1559. ...

catechism
Teaching by question and answer on the Socratic method, but chiefly as a means of instructing children in the basics of the Christian creed. A person being instructed in this way in preparation for...

categorical imperative
Technical term in Immanuel Kant's moral philosophy designating the supreme principle of morality for rational beings. The imperative orders us to act only in such a way that we can wish a maxim, or...

category
In philosophy, a fundamental concept applied to being that cannot be reduced to anything more elementary. Aristotle listed ten categories: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time,...

Catena, Vincenzo di Biagio
(died 1531) Italian painter. A disciple of Giovanni Bellini, he was also influenced by Giorgione. The Warrior Adoring the Infant Christ and the Virgin (National Gallery, London), formerly thought beyond his...

Catesby, Robert
(1573-1605) English conspirator and leader of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. He took part in the uprising of the 2nd Earl of Essex in 1601 and was an accomplice in the plot of 1603 to capture James I and force...

Cathar
Member of a sect in medieval Europe usually numbered among the Christian heretics. Influenced by Manichaeism, they started about the 10th century in the Balkans where they were called...

cathedral
Principal Christian church of a bishop or archbishop, containing his throne, which is usually situated on the south side of the choir. In the Middle Ages, cathedrals were used for state occasions,...

Cather, Willa Sibert
(1873-1947) US novelist and short-story writer. Her novels frequently explore life in the pioneer West, both in her own time and in past eras; for example, O Pioneers! (1913) and My Antonia (1918), and A Lost...

Catherine (II) the Great
(1729-1796) Empress of Russia from 1762, and daughter of the German prince of Anhalt-Zerbst. In 1745 she married the Russian grand duke Peter. Catherine dominated her husband; six months after he became Tsar...

Catherine de' Medici
(1519-1589) French queen consort of Henry II, whom she married in 1533; daughter of Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino; and mother of Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III. At first outshone by Henry's mistress...

Catherine I
(1684-1727) Empress of Russia from 1725. A Lithuanian peasant, born Martha Skavronsky, she married a Swedish dragoon and eventually became the mistress of Peter the Great. In 1703 she was rechristened Katarina...

Catherine of Alexandria, St
(lived early 4th century) Christian martyr. According to legend she disputed with 50 scholars, refusing to give up her faith and marry Emperor Maxentius. Her emblem is a wheel, on which her persecutors tried to kill her (the...

Catherine of Aragón
(1485-1536) First queen of Henry VIII of England, 1509-33, and mother of Mary I. Catherine had married Henry's elder brother Prince Arthur in 1501 and on his death in 1502 was betrothed to Henry, marrying him...

Catherine of Bologna, St
(1413-1463) Italian nun. She joined a community of Augustinian nuns at Jerra, Italy, who afterwards became Poor Clares (see St Clare). Later she was appointed abbess of the Poor Clares at Bologna, Italy....

Catherine of Braganza
(1638-1705) Queen of Charles II of England (1662-85). Her childlessness and Catholic faith were unpopular, but Charles resisted pressure for divorce. She was instrumental in Charles II's return to Catholicism...

Catherine of Genoa, St
(1447-1510) Italian mystic who devoted herself to the sick and to meditation. Her feast day is 15 September. She was canonized in 1737. ...

Catherine of Sweden, St
(1331-1381) Swedish abbess. She was the daughter of St Bridget of Sweden whom she succeeded as superior of the Briggitines. She had a chaste marriage with Eggard Lydersson, after whose death she became widow,...

Catherine of Valois
(1401-1437) Queen of Henry V of England, whom she married in 1420; the mother of Henry VI. After the death of Henry V, she secretly married Owen Tudor (c. 1400-1461) about 1425, and...

Catherwood, Frederick
(1799-1854) English topographical artist and archaeological illustrator who accompanied John Lloyd Stephens in his exploration of Central America 1839-40 and the Yucatán 1841-42. His engravings, published...

Catholic Apostolic Church
Adventist Christian group formed in the late 19th century in London, UK, by Henry Drummond and Edward Irving. Convinced of the imminent second coming of Jesus, it set up a hierarchy of Apostles,...

Catholic Church
The whole body of the Christian church, though usually referring to the Roman Catholic Church (see Roman Catholicism). ...

Catholic Emancipation
In British history, acts of Parliament passed between 1780 and 1829 to relieve Roman Catholics of civil and political restrictions imposed from the time of Henry VIII and the Reformation. ...

Catholic Monarchs, the
The two monarchs Ferdinand V of Castile and Isabella I, so-called because they catholicized Spain after 700 years of Moorish rule. ...

Catiline
(c. 108-62 BC) Roman politician and conspirator. Catiline was a member of an impoverished patrician family and a former partisan of Sulla. Twice failing to be elected to the consulship in 64 BC and 63 BC, he...