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

Gideon v. Wainwright
US Supreme Court decision of 1963 that required states to provide free counsel to any person accused of a felony who was too poor to hire their own. Prior to this case, only those defendants being...

Gielgud, (Arthur) John
(1904-2000) English actor and director. One of the greatest Shakespearean actors of his time, he made his debut at the Old Vic in 1921 and played Hamlet in 1929. His stage appearances ranged from roles in works...

Gierek, Edward
(1913-2001) Polish communist politician. He entered the Politburo of the ruling Polish United Workers' Party (PUWP) in 1956 and was party leader 1970-80. Gierek, a miner's son, lived in France and Belgium for...

Giffard, Walter
(died 1279) English cleric who was consecrated bishop of Bath and Wells in 1265, and was made chancellor of England after the battle of Evesham. Pope Clement IV appointed him archbishop of York in 1266. ...

Gifford, William
(1756-1826) English poet and critic. His Baviad 1794 and Maeviad 1795 were powerful satires directed respectively against the Della Cruscans and the ineptitudes and corruption of contemporary drama. Gifford was...

Gil Blas de Santillane
Influential novel by Alain-RenéLe Sage published in four volumes 1715-35. It is a picaresque romance set in Spain in which the easy-going, adaptable hero experiences poverty and wealth, the...

Gilbert and George
English painters and performance artists. They became known in the 1960s for their presentations of themselves as works of art, or `living sculptures`, holding poses for many hours. They also...

Gilbert, Alfred
(1854-1934) English sculptor and goldsmith. Influenced by art nouveau, he created the statue known as Eros 1887-93 in Piccadilly Circus, London, erected as a memorial to the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury. Gilbert...

Gilbert, Cass
(1859-1934) US architect, born at Zanesville, Ohio. He began practice in 1883, and was a major developer of the skyscraper. He designed the Woolworth Building, New York (1908-1913), the highest building in...

Gilbert, Humphrey
(c. 1539-1583) English soldier and navigator who claimed Newfoundland (landing at St John's) for Elizabeth I in 1583. He died when his ship sank on the return voyage. He was knighted in 1570. ...

Gilbert, John
(1817-1897) English illustrator and painter. He painted historical and literary subjects in oils and watercolour, Shakespeare and Walter Scott among them. He is of note as a prolific Victorian illustrator...

Gilbert, W(illiam) S(chwenck)
(1836-1911) English humorist and dramatist. He collaborated with composer Arthur Sullivan, providing the libretti for their series of light comic operas from 1871 performed by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company;...

Gilbert's Act
Statute passed in 1762 in Britain allowing workhouse inmates to find outside work. The Workhouse Act of 1722 empowered parishes or groups of parishes to build workhouses, and by the mid-18th...

Gilchrist, Ellen
(1935) US short-story writer and novelist. She is noted for sharp and stylish social tragicomedy, set against the backdrop of the American south. Her collections include In the Land of Dreamy Dreams...

Gildas, St
(c. 500-570) British saint and historian, author of the history De Excidio et Britanniae Conquestu, the first by a British historian and the only one written about the Celts Gildas's history was probably...

Gilded Age
In US history, a derogatory term referring to the opulence displayed in the post-Civil War decades. It borrows the title of an 1873 political satire by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner...

Gilder, Richard Watson
(1844-1909) US poet and editor. His works include The New Day 1875, love sonnets, Five Books of Songs 1894, and Collected Poems 1908, and studies of Abraham Lincoln 1909 and Grover Cleveland 1910. He...

Gildersleeve, Basil (Lanneau)
(1831-1924) US classicist. Thought of as the greatest American classicist of his day, his Latin Grammar (1867), Pindar: The Olympian and Pythian Odes (1885), and Greek Syntax (1900) were used by generations of...

gilding
Application of gilt (gold or a substance that looks like it) to a surface. From the 19th century, gilt was often applied to ceramics and to the relief surfaces of woodwork or plasterwork to...

Giles, Carl Ronald
(1916-1995) English cartoonist for the Daily Express and Sunday Express from 1943, noted for his creation of a family with a formidable `Grandma`. Self-taught, he became an animator on advertising films...

Giles, St
(died c. 712) Patron of beggars, cripples, and blacksmiths. Giles was one of the most popular saints of the Middle Ages. His feast day is on 1 September. Giles was an abbot of a monastery on the site of the...

Gilgamesh
Hero of Sumerian, Hittite, Akkadian, and Assyrian legend, and lord of the Sumerian city of Uruk. The 12 verse books of the Epic of Gilgamesh were recorded in a standard version on 12 cuneiform...

Gill, (Arthur) Eric (Rowton)
(1882-1940) English sculptor, graphic designer, engraver, and writer. He designed the typefaces Perpetua in 1925 and Gill Sans (without serifs) in 1927, and created monumental stone sculptures with clean,...

Gill, Irving (John)
(1870-1936) US architect. He developed an avant-garde cubist style of architecture that introduced and refined concrete tilt-slab construction. His unornamented, abstract designs were based on mission and...

Gillars, Mildred
(1901-1988) US-born Axis propagandist. During World War II she broadcast Nazi propaganda aimed to demoralize American troops, who nicknamed her `Axis Sally`. Convicted of treason after the war, she spent...

Gillett, Frederick Hunting
(1851-1935) US politician. He was an assistant state attorney general and state senator. As a Republican representative of Massachusetts, he went to the US House of Representatives (1893-1925) where he...

Gillette, William
(1855-1937) US actor and playwright. An authoritative and striking stage presence in plays that he had himself adapted from other works. He made an extremely successful Sherlock Holmes in 1899, a role he would...

Gilliatt, Penelope Ann Douglas
(1932) English film and theatre critic, novelist, and screenwriter. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her screenplay for Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), based upon her novel One By One (1965). Her...

Gillies, Sir Harold Delf
(1882-1960) New Zealand-born British surgeon who won international acclaim as a pioneer in plastic surgery. His experience in the Royal Army Medical Corps in the World War I made him realize the urgent need...

Gillin, John P(hilip)
(1907-1973) US anthropologist. He directed a pioneering field study of southern American culture (1946), did extensive fieldwork in Central and South America, and contributed to the US government's Latin...

Gillis, James M(artin)
(1876-1957) US Catholic religious editor and broadcaster. Ordained a Paulist priest in 1901, he taught theology at a seminary, conducted parish missions, and edited Catholic World magazine (1922-48). He was...

Gillray, James
(1757-1815) English caricaturist. Creator of over 1,500 cartoons, his fierce, sometimes gross caricatures satirized George III, the Prince of Wales, politicians, and the social follies of his day, and later...

Gilman, Arthur D(elavan)
(1821-1882) US author, architect, and planner. His landmark articles and lectures (1843-44) denouncing classical revival styles launched an architectural career in Boston (1843-66) and New York (1868-82)....

Gilmer, Elizabeth Meriwether
(1861-1951) US journalist (under the pen-name Dorothy Dix) and women's rights pioneer. Author of a nationally syndicated column covering women's issues and based on her responses to letters from her readers,...

Gilpin, Bernard
(1517-1583) English cleric who did much for education, and built and endowed a grammar school. Gilpin was born at Kentmere Hall, Westmorland. He was educated at Queen's College, Ox ...

Gilpin, Charles Sidney
(1878-1930) US stage actor. His performance as the slave Custis in the Broadway production of John Drinkwater's Abraham Lincoln (1919) led to him landing the title role in the first production of Eugene...

Gilpin, William
(1813-1894) US territorial governor. He accompanied explorer John C Frémont's expedition through the Rocky Mountains in 1842. He wrote The Central Gold Region (1860) and as Colorado's first territorial...

Gilpin, William
(1724-1804) English artist. He is remembered for his essays on the `picturesque`, which set out precise rules for the production of this effect. ...

gilt-edged securities
Stocks and shares issued and guaranteed by the British government to raise funds and traded on the Stock Exchange. A relatively risk-free investment, gilts bear fixed interest and are usually...

Gimbel, Peter (Robin)
(1928-1987) US explorer, film-maker, and businessman. A trustee of the New York Zoological Society (from 1957) and the American Museum of Natural History (1958), in 1959 he also became an executive director...

Gimbutas, Marija
(1921-1994) Lithuanian-born US-based archaeologist whose feminist theories challenged traditional views of society in prehistoric Europe. She proposed that Stone Age Europe was a peaceful and harmonious...

Gin Drinker's Line
In World War II, British defensive line on the Chinese mainland in the New Territories of Hong Kong running about 18 km/11 mi from Gin Drinker's Bay to Port Shelter. It was taken by the Japanese 10...

Gingrich, Newt(on Leroy)
(1943) US Republican politician, speaker of the House of Representatives 1995-98. A radical-right admirer of Reagan, he was the driving force behind his party's victory in the 1994 congressional...

Ginner, (Isaac) Charles
(1878-1952) English painter. His street scenes and landscapes were strongly influenced by post-Impressionism. He settled in London in 1910, and was one of the London Group. ...

Ginsberg, (Irwin) Allen
(1926-1997) US poet and political activist. His reputation as a visionary, overtly political poet was established by Howl (1956), which expressed and shaped the spirit of the Beat Generation and criticized the...

Ginsburg, Ruth Joan Bader
(1933) US Supreme Court associate justice. Nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1993, she was only the second woman to serve on the court. Ginsburg made her reputation as a civil liberties lawyer in the...

Ginzberg, Louis
(1873-1953) Lithuanian-born US rabbi and scholar. He was named rabbinical literature editor of the Jewish Encyclopedia in 1900. From 1903 until his death he was professor of Talmud at the Jewish Theological...

Gioberti, Vicenzo
(1801-1852) Italian philosopher, publicist, and statesman whose political ideal was a confederated Italy, with the pope at the head and the king of Sardinia as military guardian. Gioberti...

Giocondo, Fra
(c. 1433-1515) Italian architect. He worked in both Italy and France, often as an architectural adviser, and was also responsible for garden design (at Naples and Blois). In his native Verona he worked on the...

Gioja, Melchiorre
(1767-1829) Italian writer on philosophy and political economy whoseNuovo Prospetto delle scienze economiche1815-17 may be considered the best and most original treatment of the division of labour since Adam...

Giono, Jean
(1895-1970) French novelist. His books are chiefly set in Provence. Que ma Joie demeure/Joy of Man's Desiring 1935 is an attack on life in towns and a plea for a return to country life. In 1956 he published a...

Giorgione, da Castelfranco
(1475-1510) Italian Renaissance painter. Active in Venice, he created the Renaissance poetic landscape, with its rich colours, soft forms, and gentle sense of intimacy. An example is his Sleeping Venus (about...

Giottino
(lived mid-14th century) Italian painter of the early Florentine School. He was called Giottino because he worked in the style of Giotto. It is known that he worked in the Vatican. Paintings that have been attributed to him...

Giovanni di Paolo
(1403-1482) Sienese painter. He ranks with Stefano di Sassetta, by whom he was influenced, as the leading Sienese painter of the 14th century. Six scenes from the life of John the Baptist from a dismembered...

Giovio, Paolo
(1483-1552) Italian historian and biographer. He spent most of his life at the papal court, where he acquired an intimate knowledge of its workings. His major work, Historiae sui temporis/History of Our Times...

Giraldi, Giambattista Cinzio
(1504-1573) Ferrarese author. He held various academic posts at Ferrara and elsewhere, and wrote nine tragedies, the best known of which is Orbecche (1541). Gli hecatommiti (1565) is a famous volume of tales,...

Girardin, Emile de
(1806-1881) French politician, journalist, and legislator who founded the Presse in 1836, one of the first cheap and popular newspapers. Attacks on this led to a duel in which Girardin killed Armand Carrel,...

Girardon, François
(1628-1715) French academic sculptor. His Apollo Tended by Nymphs, commissioned 1666, is one of several marble groups sculpted for the gardens of Louis XIV's palace at Versailles. ...

Giraud de Borneil
(1156-1200) Provençal troubadour. He was a professional poet who wrote in most of the lyric genres. His love songs, often complex in thought and expression despite his defence of a simple style, were praised...

Giraud, Henri Honoré
(1879-1949) French general. He put up stiff resistance to the German invasion of France but was captured and imprisoned by the Germans 1940-42, when he escaped to Algiers. He succeeded Admiral Darlan as local...

Giraudoux, (Hippolyte) Jean
(1882-1944) French dramatist and novelist. He wrote the plays Amphitryon 38 (1929), La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu/Tiger at the Gates (1935), and La Folle de Chaillot/The Madwoman of Chaillot (1945). His...

Girig
(lived 9th century AD) Scottish (Garioch) chieftain who, after defeating and killing Aedh, governed the Pictish kingdom, 878-96, in association with Eocha, and later with D ...

Girl Guides
Female equivalent of the Scout organization, founded in 1910 in the UK by Robert Baden-Powell and his sister Agnes. There are three branches: Brownie...

giro
System of making payments by direct transfer between one bank or post-office account and another. It originated in Austria in 1883, and the system was introduced in the UK in 1968, the beginning...

Girondin
Member of the moderate republican party in the French Revolution, so called because a number of its leaders came from the Gironde region of southwestern France. The Girondins controlled the...

Girtin, Thomas
(1775-1802) English landscape painter, one of the most important watercolourists of the 18th century. His work is characterized by broad washes of strong colour and bold compositions, for example The White...

Girty, Simon
(1741-1818) US soldier. He deserted the Continental Army in 1778 to fight with the British and their Indian allies in the Northwest Territory. Known as `the great renegade`, Girty was charged with many,...

Giscard d'Estaing, Valéry
(1926) French centre-right politician, president of France 1974-81. Committed to developing closer European unity, during his presidency he helped initiate the new Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1978 and...

Gissing, George Robert
(1857-1903) English writer. His work deals with social issues and has a tone of gloomy pessimism. Among his books are New Grub Street (1891), about a writer whose marriage breaks up, and the...

Gist, Christopher
(c. 1706-c. 1759) US frontier explorer, guide, and Indian agent. In 1753 he established a settlement near present-day Brownsville, Pennsylvania. During the French and Indian War, he became a guide to Major George...

Gist, George
US American Indian leader; see Sequoya. ...

Gitlow v. New York
US Supreme Court decision of 1925 dealing with state legislation that restricts freedom of speech. Benjamin Gitlow, editor of the left-wing Manifesto, was convicted, under a New York state law, of...

Giugiaro, Giorgio
(1938) Italian industrial designer. He established himself internationally as an independent automotive designer with his Volkswagen Golf car in 1973, the popular successor to the Beetle. He went on to...

Giuliani, Rudolph W
(1944) US Republican politician, mayor of New York City 1993-2001. A former federal prosecutor, he was elected mayor of the traditionally Democrat-dominated New York City, at the second attempt, in...

Giuliano da Maiano
(1432-1490) Florentine architect. A member of an established artistic family, Giuliano trained with his brother, the sculptor Benedetto da Maiano, as a stone-carver and later collaborated with him on a number...

Giulio Romano
(c. 1499-1546) Roman painter and architect. As assistant to Raphael, he developed a style characterized by its exaggerated movement and rich colours. Having studied under Raphael, Giulio became his chief assistant...

Giusti, Giuseppe
(1809-1850) Italian poet. His poems are mainly patriotic and they express contemporary problems in a simple, popular manner. They include La ghigliottina a vapore 1833, Lo stivale 1836, Il brindisi di Girella...

Gjellerup, Karl
(1857-1919) Danish author. His works are varied, including poetry, fiction, drama, and criticism, but he is best remembered for novels such as Germanernes Laerling/The Apprentice of the Teutons (1882), Minna...

Glabrio, Manius Acilius
(lived 2nd century BC) Roman general. As consul 191 BC he defeated the Seleucid king Antiochus III of Syria at the Battle of Thermopylae. ...

Glackens, William James
(1870-1938) US painter. He was a member of the Ashcan School and one of `the Eight`, a group of realists who exhibited at New York's Macbeth Gallery 1908. Glackens' painting eventually evolved into a...

Gladden, (Solomon) Washington
(1836-1918) US Protestant religious leader. In 1882 he became pastor of the First Congregational Church of Columbus, Ohio, where he remained for the rest of his life. An advocate of the `social gospel`, he...

gladiator
In ancient Rome, a trained fighter, recruited mainly from slaves, criminals, and prisoners of war, who fought to the death in arenas for the entertainment of spectators. The custom was introduced...

Gladio
Code name for the Italian branch of a secret paramilitary network backed by the Central Intelligence Agency and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Allied Coordination Committee, made...

Gladstone, William Ewart
(1809-1898) British Liberal politician, four times prime minister. He entered Parliament as a Tory in 1833 and held ministerial office, but left the party in 1846 and after 1859 identified himself with the...

Gladwin, Harold S(terling)
(1883-1976) US stockbroker, archaeologist, and anthropologist. Although he made some serious contributions to the anthropological discipline, he became best known for promoting such questionable theories as...

Glamis Castle
Fortress near Glamis village, Angus, Scotland, 20 km/12 mi north of Dundee. It has been the seat of the Lyon family, later earls of Strathmore, since 1372. Its central tower dates from the 15th...

Glanvill, Ranulf de
(died 1190) English lawyer whose chief work was Tractatus de Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliaec. 1181. In 14 books, it is valuable as the earliest treatise on the laws...

Glanville, Ranalf
English justiciar from 1180 and legal writer. His Treatise on the Laws and Customs of England 1188 was written to instruct practising lawyers and judges and is now a historical source on medieval...

Glasgow School
Either of two distinct groups of Scottish artists. The earlier of the two groups, also known as the Glasgow Boys, was a loose association of late-19th-century artists influenced by the Glasgow, Ellen Anderson Gholson
(1873-1945) US novelist. Her books, set mainly in her native Virginia, often deal with the survival of tough heroines in a world of adversity and include Barren Ground 1925, The Sheltered Life 1932, Vein of...

glasnost
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of liberalizing various aspects of Soviet life, such as introducing greater freedom of expression and information and opening up relations with Western...

Glaspell, Susan
(1882-1948) US dramatist and novelist. Her play Alison's House, whose heroine is modelled on the poet Emily Dickinson, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1931. She also wrote The Verge 1921, and the novels The...

Glass, Carter
(1858-1946) US politician and newspaper publisher. An active Democrat, he served in the Virginia senate and then in the US House of Representatives (1902-18); there he sponsored the act that established the...

Glastonbury
Market town in Somerset, southwest England, on the River Brue, 8 km/5 mi southwest of Wells; population (2001) 8,400. Light industries include injection moulding, and the production of footwear and...

Glastonbury lake village
English Iron Age settlement near Godney, 5 km/3 mi northwest of Glastonbury, Somerset, in the Somerset Levels. Occupied from around 150 BC to AD 50, the lake dwelling was sited in the former marshy...

Glatigny, Albert
(1839-1873) French poet. One of Les Parnassiens, his volumes of poems include Les vignes folles 1860, Les flèches d'or 1864, and Gilles et Pasquins 1872. He also wrote comedies, among which were Vers les...

Glauce
In Greek mythology, the second wife of Jason. She was killed by Medea, Jason's first wife. ...

glaze
In ceramics, a thin coating for pottery and porcelain, which gives the object a protective finish and helps to keep it from leaking and chipping. Glaze is applied by dipping a formed ceramic item...

Glazer, Jonathan
(1966) English advertising and film director. He was critically acclaimed for his first feature film, the British gangster drama Sexy Beast (2000), starring Ray Winstone and Ben Kingsley. He followed with...

glebe
In Britain, landed endowment of a parish church, designed to support the priest. It later became necessary to supplement this with taxation. ...