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

Gleig, George Robert
(1796-1888) Scottish novelist and historian. His novel The Subaltern 1826 is based on incidents that occurred during the Peninsular War; other works include The Campaign of New Orleans 1821, Chelsea Pensioners...

Gleim, Johann Wilhelm Ludwig
(1719-1803) German poet. Besides his patriotic Preussische Kriegslieder von einem Grenadier 1758, his works consist chiefly of odes, and wine and love songs in the style of Anacreon. ...

Gleiwicz
(Now Gliwice, Poland) small German town on the border with Poland about 130 km/80 mi northwest of Kraków; site of the `provocation` engineered by Germany August 1939 to provide an excuse for...

Gleizes, Albert
(1881-1953) French cubist painter and theorist. He is chiefly remembered for his pioneering book De Cubisme 1912, written with Jean Metzinger (1883-1956). Influenced initially...

Glencoe, Massacre of
Slaughter in Glencoe, Scotland, of members of the MacDonald clan in 1692 by the Campbells, their hereditary enemies in league with government forces; the chief and 37 MacDonalds perished. William...

Glendalough
Mountain glen in County Wicklow, Republic of Ireland, situated 16 km/10 mi northwest of the town of Wicklow. Glenealo Stream, a tributary of the Avonmore, runs through Glendalough, and the area is a...

Glendon, Mary Ann
(1938) US legal scholar. She taught at Boston College (1968-86) and Harvard University (1986), and was an expert in comparative law. Glendon served as chief editor of the 4th volume of the International...

Glendower, Owen
(c. 1350-1416) Welsh nationalist leader. He led a rebellion against Henry IV of England, taking the title `Prince of Wales` in 1400, and successfully led the Welsh defence against English invasions in...

Glendower, Sons of
Welsh guerrilla group, active from 1979 against what they perceive to be England's treatment of Wales as a colonial possession. Houses owned by English people in the principality, and offices of...

Glenn, John Herschel, Jr
(1921) US astronaut and politician. On 20 February 1962, he became the first US astronaut to orbit the Earth, doing so three times in the spacecraft Friendship 7. The flight lasted 4 hours 55 minutes. On...

Glenveagh Castle
Victorian Scottish-style baronial castle at Church Hill, Country Donegal, Republic of Ireland. It was built in 1870 by the American J G Adair to designs by J T Trench. One of the few major country...

Glick, George Washington
(1827-1911) US politician. He was admitted to the bar in Ohio (1850) and he moved to Kansas in 1859. He served eight terms in the Kansas legislature and became the first Democratic governor of Kansas...

Glickman, Daniel
(1944) US politician. A democratic congressman, he served in the US House of Representatives 1977-95 and as secretary of agriculture under President Bill Clinton 1995-2001. After directing Harvard...

Gligorov, Kiro
(1917) Macedonian politician, president of Macedonia from 1991. He was a member of the presidency of the Socialist Federation of Republics of the Republic of Yugoslavia 1971-72 and the president of the...

globalization
Process by which different parts of the globe become interconnected by economic, social, cultural, and political means. Globalization has become increasingly rapid since the 1970s and 1980s as a...

Globe Theatre
17th-century London theatre, octagonal and open to the sky, near Bankside, Southwark, where many of Shakespeare's plays were performed by Richard Burbage and his company. It was burned down in...

Gloria Patri
Christian prayer. In the Roman Catholic and some Anglican churches, it is one of the prayers recited when saying a rosary. ...

Glorious First of June
Naval battle between the British and French fleets off Ushant 1 June 1794; the first major naval action of the French Revolutionary Wars. Both sides claimed a victory; the British because they had...

Glorious Revolution
In British history, the events surrounding the removal of glossolalia
The gift of speaking in tongues, usually claimed to be unknown by the speaker and interpreted by someone else. It is referred to in the New Testament, Acts 2:4, and is believed to be a gift of the...

Glover, Denis
(1912-1980) New Zealand poet. A member of the influential Phoenix group in the 1930s, he was first noted for impudently satirical works such as Six Easy Ways...

Glozel
Site in a village near Vichy, France. Finds here from the 1920s onwards are considered a blatant hoax because of the disparate age of the objects and the crude nature of their manufacture. They...

Glueck, Nelson
(1900-1971) US archaeologist and educator. He discovered 1,500 biblical sites in four decades of work in Transjordan and the Negev, including King Solomon's mines, Khirbet Nahasr, and the possible site of King...

glut
Excess of goods in a market. A glut of agricultural produce often follows an exceptional harvest, causing prices to fall unless there is some form of intervention in the market. ...

Glück, Louise Elisabeth
(1943) US poet. Her work is known for its sparse, elegant language, and striking imagery. Loss and isolation of women are common themes. Her collection The Wild Iris won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in...

Glycon of Athens
(lived 1st century BC) Greek sculptor. The Farnese Hercules, a colossal statue found in the baths of Caracalla, Rome, in 1540, has the inscription `Glycon the Athenian made it` engraved on the rock supporting it. The...

Glyn, Elinor
(1864-1943) English writer. Her novel of an exotic love affair, Three Weeks 1907, scandalized Edwardian society. She also wrote The Career of Katherine Bush 1917. Born in Jersey, she spent part of her youth in...

gnome
In folklore, a small, mischievous spirit of the earth or mountain. The males are bearded, wear tunics and hoods, and often conceal treasure in their underground dwellings. The garden gnome, an...

Gnosticism
Esoteric cult of divine knowledge (a synthesis of Christianity, Greek philosophy, Hinduism, Buddhism, and the mystery cults of the Mediterranean), which flourished during the 2nd...

GNP
Abbreviation for gross national product. ...

Gobán Saor
In Irish folklore, the ancient smith-god. A master craftsman, in folk legends he travels the countryside constructing castles, monasteries, and round towers. Many of these legends are of a...

Gobat, Charles A(lbert)
(1843-1914) Swiss lawyer and statesman. Gobat shared the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1902 with Swiss politician Elie Ducommum, for his efforts for peace and his work as president of the fourth conference of the...

Gobelins
French tapestry factory, originally founded as a dyeworks in Paris by Gilles and Jean Gobelin about 1450. The firm began to produce tapestries in the 16th century, and in 1662 the establishment was...

Gobineau, Joseph Arthur, Comte de
(1816-1882) French diplomat and writer who wrote Souvenirs de voyage and Nouvelles Asiatiques, books of exotic short stories and La Renaissance, 1877, a series of dialogues in which the masters of the Italian...

goblin
In folklore, a friendly but mischievous sprite, supposed to haunt dark corners. Goblins are also called hobgoblins, `hob` being an affectionate short form of `Robin`. ...

God
In Christianity, the supreme creator and ruler of the universe. The Christian religion, like Judaism and Islam, maintains that there is only one God (monotheism), who is active in and concerned...

god
The concept of a supreme being, a unique creative entity, basic to several monotheistic religions (for example Judaism, Christianity, Islam); in many polytheistic cultures (for example Norse, Roman,...

Goddard, Sarah
(1700-1777) US printer. In 1762, when her doctor husband died, she backed her son William Goddard in establishing the first printing firm and newspaper (The Gazette) in Providence. In 1765 she took over the...

Godden, (Margaret) Rumer
(1907-1998) English novelist, poet, and writer of children's books. Her first popular success was the romantic novel Black Narcissus (1939; filmed in 1946). Like several of her finest books it is set in India,...

goddess worship
Veneration of a female deity. It is a tradition known to have existed since prehistoric times, and continues today. It has frequently been connected with the worshipper's desire for their own...

Goderich, 1st Viscount Goderich
Title of British prime minister Frederick Robinson, 1st Earl of Ripon. ...

Godey, Louis Antoine
(1804-1878) US publisher. His Godey's Lady's Book (1830-77), the largest circulation magazine of its time, catered to a middle-class market, covering issues relating to fashion, music, and literature. Its...

Godfrey de Bouillon
(c. 1060-1100) French crusader, second son of Count Eustace II of Boulogne. He and his brothers, Baldwin I and Eustace, led 40,000 Germans in the First Crusade in 1096. When Jerusalem was taken in 1099, he was...

Godiva, or Godgifu, Lady
(c. 1040-1080) Wife of Leofric, Earl of Mercia (died 1057). Legend has it that her husband promised to reduce the heavy taxes on the people of Coventry if she rode naked through the streets at noon. The grateful...

Godkin, Edwin Lawrence
(1831-1902) Irish-born US editor and writer on political affairs who founded the liberal weekly magazine The Nation in 1865. ...

Godolphin, Sidney
(1645-1712) English politician who was an unscrupulous intriguer, but a capable administrator and whose masterly control over the finances did much to secure the success of the Duke of Marlborough's continental...

Godoy y Alcayaga, Lucila
Real name of the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral. ...

Godunov, Boris Fyodorovich
(1552-1605) Tsar of Russia from 1598, elected after the death of Fyodor I, son of Ivan the Terrible. He was assassinated by a pretender to the throne who professed to be Dmitri, a brother of Fyodor and the...

Godwin
Earl of Wessex from 1020. He secured the succession to the throne in 1042 of Edward the Confessor, to whom he married his daughter Edith, and whose chief minister he became. King Harold...

Godwin-Austen, Henry Haversham
(1834-1923) English explorer. He made many ascents in the Himalayas and executed an important physical survey of the Baltoro region of the Karakoram. He made the first maps and descriptions of the great Baltoro...

Godwin, Edward William
(1833-1886) English architect. His reputation was established by his competition-winning Gothic Revival design for Northampton Town Hall 1861. However, his style was at its most original in his domestic...

Godwin, Francis
(1562-1633) English writer and prelate. He was a celebrated historian, but is chiefly remembered for his fanciful story, The Man in the Moon, published 1638. This was the first story of space flight in the...

Godwin, William
(1756-1836) English philosopher, novelist, and father of the writer Mary Shelley. His Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) advocated an anarchic society based on a faith in people's essential...

Goebbels, (Paul) Joseph
(1897-1945) German Nazi leader. As minister of propaganda from 1933, he brought all cultural and educational activities under Nazi control and built up sympathetic movements abroad to carry on the `war of...

Goebel, William
(1856-1900) US politician. A lawyer in Covington, Kentucky, he served as a Democrat in the Kentucky senate (1888-99), supporting regulation of the railroads and election reform, thereby feuding with members...

Goeben
German battle cruiser in World War I. Initially operating jointly with the Breslau in the Aegean, from September 1914 the Goeben led the Turkish fleet in the Sea of Marmora and the Black Sea until...

Goering, Hermann Wilhelm
(1893-1946) Nazi leader, German field marshal from 1938. He was part of Hitler's inner circle, and with Hitler's rise to power was appointed commissioner for aviation from 1933 and built up the Luftwaffe...

Goes, Bento de
(1562-1607) Portuguese Jesuit missionary who acquired an extensive knowledge of the geography of Asia and was the first European to realize that that Cathay and China were one and the same place. He made his...

Goes, Hugo van der
(c. 1440-1482) Flemish painter. Chiefly active in Ghent. His works were highly praised by Italian artists, particularly his Portinari Altarpiece (c. 1475; Uffizi, Florence), typically rich both in symbolism and...

Goetel, Ferdynand
(1890-1960) Polish novelist and travel writer. His work includes short stories, such as `P&acedil;tnik Karapeta/The Pilgrim Karapeta` 1924; novels, such as Kar-Chat/The Messenger of the Snow 1923 and...

Goetz, Cecelia H(elen)
(c. 1918) US lawyer. She served in the Department of Justice (1943-46, 1952-53) and as counsel with the Office Chief of Counsel for War Crimes, Nuremberg, Germany (1946-48), before practising with three...

Goff, Bruce Alonzo
(1904-1982) US architect. His work is frequently described as `organic` in form. Initially influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright, he later developed a highly individual approach, characterized by unlikely...

Gog and Magog
In Old Testament prophecy, an enemy ruler and his followers who will do battle with Israel. The names appear in the New Testament in the prophecies of the end of time contained in the book of...

Goga, Octavian
(1881-1938) Romanian poet and politician, prime minister 1937-38. His early verse, collected in Poezii/Poems 1906 and Ne cheama pamintul 1909, depicts the plight of the Romanian peasant in Transylvania. He...

Gogh, Vincent (Willem) van
(1853-1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter. He began painting in the 1880s, his early works often being sombre depictions of peasant life, such as The Potato Eaters (1885; Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)....

Gogol, Nicolai Vasilyevich
(1809-1852) Russian writer. His first success was a collection of stories, Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka (1831-32), followed by Mirgorod (1835). Later works include Arabesques (1835), the comedy play The...

Goh Chok Tong
(1941) Singaporean politician, prime minister 1990-2004. A trained economist, Goh became a member of parliament for the ruling People's Action Party in 1976. Under Lee Kuan Yew, who was the country's...

Góis, Damião de
(1502-1574) Portuguese humanist and chronicler. Travelling widely in Europe, he met the scholars Erasmus and Bembo among others, and after several years on government service retired to devote himself to study....

Gokhale, Gopal Krishna
(1866-1915) Indian political adviser and friend of Mahatma Gandhi, leader of the Moderate group in the Indian National Congress before World War I. ...

Golaseccia
Village site of a large Iron Age cemetery on the Ticino River, Italy, a few kilometres from its mouth on Lake Maggiore. The cemetery consists of hundreds of...

Golconda
Ancient city in Andhra Pradesh, south central India. It was formerly a diamond-producing centre, and was so prosperous that its name was used to describe any source of great wealth. From...

Gold Beach
Beach in Normandy on the right flank of the British sector in the D-Day landings, centred on the village of Arromanche. The British 50th (Northumberland) Division made the first landing and by the...

gold penny
Mainly in the 13th and 14th centuries, a penny minted in gold instead of the more usual silver of the time, designed for prestige rather than everyday commercial use. They were occasionally produced...

gold rush
Large influx of gold prospectors to an area where gold deposits have recently been discovered. The result is a dramatic increase in population. Cities such as Johannesburg, Melbourne, and San...

gold standard
System under which a country's currency is exchangeable for a fixed weight of gold on demand at the central bank. It was almost universally applied 1870-1914, but by 1937 no single country was on...

Gold, Ben
(1898-1985) Russian-born US labour leader. A communist, he led a 1926 strike of New York fur workers. He led the fur workers into the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and was elected president of...

Gold, Michael
(c. 1893-1967) US writer, editor, journalist, and playwright. He founded and edited the newspaper New Masses (1926-c. 1935), and also contributed columns to the communist newspaper, the Daily Worker (1933-67)....

Goldberg, Arthur J(oseph)
(1908-1990) US public official, diplomat, and Supreme Court justice. After serving as a presidential campaign adviser (1960), he was appointed by President John F Kennedy to be secretary of labour (1961-62)....

Goldberg, Rube (Reuben Lucius)
(1883-1970) US cartoonist whose most famous and widely read of his strips featured ridiculously complicated inventions. He produced several popular comic strips that were nationally syndicated from 1915....

Golden Age
In classical mythology, the earliest period of human life, when human beings lived without labour and sorrow. This was followed by silver and bronze ages, the age of heroes, and the iron age of...

Golden Ass, The
Picaresque adventure by the Rom ...

Golden Calf
In the Old Testament, image made by Aaron in response to the request of the Israelites for a god when they despaired of Moses' return from Mount Sinai. ...

Golden Fleece
Former order of knighthood in Spain and Austria which was instituted by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, 1429, and revived in Vienna 1713 by Charles VI. ...

Golden Fleece
In Greek legend, the fleece of the winged ram Chrysomallus, which hung on an oak tree at Colchis and was guarded by a dragon. It was stolen by Jason and the Argonauts. ...

Golden Hill Indian
Alternative name for a member of the American Indian Paugusset people. ...

Golden Horde
The invading Mongol-Tatar army that first terrorized Europe from 1237 under the leadership of Batu Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan. Tamerlane broke their power in 1395, and Ivan III ended...

Golden Jubilee
Celebrations held throughout Britain and the Empire in 1887 to mark the 50th year of Queen Victoria's rule. Colonial leaders gathered in London to attend the celebrations and this made possible the...

Golden Legend
Medieval collection of nearly 200 saints' lives compiled c. 1265 by Dominican friar Jacobus de Voragine (c. 1230-98), who was for some years archbishop of Genoa. The collection is in 5 sections...

golden rule
Code of Christian behaviour, based on the teachings of St Matthew's Gospel (Matthew 7:12) in which Jesus instructed his followers to treat other people as they would want to be treated themselves. ...

golden section
Mathematical relationship between three points, A, B, C, in a straight line, in which the ratio AC:BC equals the ratio BC:AB (about 8:13 or 1:1.618). The area of a rectangle produced by the whole...

golden share
Share, often with overriding voting powers, issued by governments to control privatized companies. ...

Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Children's story about a little girl who finds a cottage in the woods with no one at home. She makes use of the chairs, dishes, and beds, all in triplicate, but flees when the returning owners prove...

Goldin, Horace
(1874-1939) Russian-born US magician and illusionist. One of the first to `saw` a woman in half, he switched to a buzz saw when others copied him. Born in Vilna, Russia, he emigrated to the...

Golding, Louis
(1895-1958) English novelist. His best-known novel is Magnolia Street 1931; others include Day of Atonement 1925, The Miracle Boy 1927, Five Silver Daughters 1934, Mr Emmanuel 1939, The Glory of Elsie Silver...

Golding, William (Gerald)
(1911-1993) English novelist. His work is often principally concerned with the fundamental corruption and evil inherent in human nature. His first book, Lord of the Flies (1954; filmed in 1962), concerns the...

Goldman, Emma
(1869-1940) US political organizer, feminist and co-editor of the anarchist monthly magazine Mother Earth 1906-17. In 1908 her citizenship was revoked and in 1919 she was deported to Russia. Breaking with...

Goldman, Hetty
(1881-1972) US archaeologist. She was one of the first female directors of an archaeological excavation (at Halae, Greece, 1911-14) and went on to direct numerous excavations for the Fogg Museum and Bryn Mawr...

Goldoni, Carlo
(1707-1793) Italian dramatist. He wrote popular comedies for the Sant'Angelo theatre, which drew on the traditions of the commedia dell'arte, Il servitore di due padroni/The Servant of Two Masters (1743), Il...

Goldsborough, Louis (Malesherbes)
(1805-1877) US naval officer. He commanded the Atlantic and North Atlantic blockading squadrons during the American Civil War. In conjunction with General Ambrose Burnside's troops, he captured Roanoke Island...

goldsmith
Old commercial term for a dealer in bullion and foreign currency as opposed to one who works gold as an artisan. Goldsmiths existed from at least the 12th century and were granted a charter 1394....