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The Vaalpens are a Negrito tribe of cave-dwelling cannibals inhabiting Northern Transvaal where they live in a state of serfdom to the Baralongs.
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Vail M Pittman was an American politician. He was a Democratic governor of Nevada from 1945 until 1951.
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The Vaishnava are a Bhakti sect devoted to Vishnu.
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Vaisya is the third or ordinary class in ancient Hindu society. Described in the Rig-Veda as sprung from the thighs of Purusha, it comprised the free commonalty, the ordinary folk engaged in providing the Aryan community with the necessities of life. To them were entrusted the material interests of agriculture, cattle-raising, handicraft, and trade, apart from those menial occupations which were allotted to the servile Sudras. Their peaceful penetration of the Dravidian population in southern India proceeded for centuries before the Kshattriya class undertook military dominion in that region, and their commercial intercourse with other lands led to much racial admixture.
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Val Guest (Valmond Guest) is a British writer, producer and film director. He was born in 1911. He worked on a number of 1930s comedies for Will Hay, Arthur Askey and The Crazy Gang.
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Val Peterson was an American politician. He was a Republican governor of Nebraska from 1947 until 1953.
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Flavius Gratianus Valentinianus, known as Valentinian I, was Roman emperor of the West, from 364 to 375. He was born in 321 at Cibalis in Pannonia and died in 375. He rose to high rank in the army, and on his election by the troops as emperor after the death of Jovian he associated his brother Flavius Valens with himself in the government of the empire. The rebellion of Procopius was crushed in 366. There was fighting against the Alamanni on the Rhine frontier, which kept Valentinian I in Gaul for a great part of his reign. He was a ruler of considerable ability, and endeavoured to alleviate the condition of his subjects now grievously burdened by taxation. He was prone, however, to ungovernable fits of passion, in one of which he burst a blood-vessel and died. A Catholic Christian, he tolerated Arianism and all forms of religion.
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Valentinian II was Roman emperor of the West, from 375 to 392. He was born in 371 and died in 392. A mere child, he became joint emperor with his half-brother Gratian, after whose death, in 383, his mother, Justina, was virtual ruler of the empire. When Maximus Magnus, whose claims as an independent sovereign had been recognized beyond the Alps, advanced against Italy, Valentinian II took refuge with his brother-in-law, Theodosius, who defeated Maximus and restored Valentinian II. An uneventful reign ended with his assassination by one of his generals, Arbogast the Frank, on May the 15th, 392.
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Valentinian III was Roman emperor of the West, from 425 to 455. He was born in 419 and died in 455. Son of Constantius and Placidia, daughter of Theodosius, he succeeded Honorius, his mother acting as regent. The Vandals, who had conquered Roman Africa and set up a kingdom there, concluded an alliance with Attila, who, after defeat by Aetius near Chalons, invaded northern Italy, while the Vandal fleet ravaged the coasts of Sicily. Aetius was treacherously put to death by Valentinian III who a year later shared the same fate.
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The Valentinians were a sect of Gnostics, They were named after Valentinus, a priest of Alexandria, who was excommunicated in Rome, acquired a reputation as a philosophical theologian, and died in Cyprus about 160. He was one of the first to attempt the formation of a syncretistic theosophy by amalgamating Judaism and Christianity with the theogonies and philosophy of ancient Greece and the Orient. Fragments only of his writings are preserved, what is known of him being gathered from the works of Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria.
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Valerian (Publius Licinius Valerianus) was a Roman Emperor from 253 to 260. He was born in 190 and died in 266. A leading sen ator, and censor in 251, he was sent by the emperor Gallus against the upstart emperor Aemilianus on the Danube, but both Gallus and Aemilianus were murdered, and Valerian, who had been proclaimed emperor in Rhaetia, was acknowledged by the senate. A good soldier and administrator, he deputed his son Gallienus to rule the west, and, after defeating the Goths, in 257, he recovered Antioch from the invading Persians, and pursued their king Shapur I to the Euphrates, but was captured near Edessa, in 260, and lived for the rest of his life in ignominious captivity.
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Valerius Corvus was a famous general of the early Roman republic. He was born about 370 BC and died about 270 BC. He was elected consul in 348; defeated the Volsci, the Samnites, the Etruscans, and the Marsi; was dictator in 342 and in 301; consul for the sixth time in 299.
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The Vandals were a Teutonic people of the east Germanic stock. Although closely associated with the Goths, they were, unlike them, destitute of the nobler barbarian qualities. Having moved from the shores of the Baltic to the middle Danube, they migrated west. At the beginning of the 5th century they poured into Gaul, and in 409 made their way into Spain. Thither they were soon followed by the Visigoths, who destroyed half of them and penned the rest into the district which still bears their name in the form Andalusia. About 428 they left Spain for North Africa. Upon the Mediterranean littoral they established a powerful dominion, and there they ruled for a hundred years. Of their kings the most famous was Gaiseric who carried out the conquest between 429 and 439, and sacked Rome in 455. Their fanatical devotion to Arianism made them fierce persecutors of the Catholics. The pirate fleets of the Vandals spread terror over the whole Mediterranean, but in 533 the emperor Justinian, bent on a full restoration of the dominion of the Caesars, dispatched Belisarius to tame their insolence. The work was done so thoroughly that the Vandal race was wiped out.
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Varangians was a name given by the Greeks and Slavs to the Scandinavian rovers who in the 9th and 10th centuries sailed down the Dnieper and threatened Constantinople.
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Dom Vasco da Gama was a Portuguese explorer. He was born in 1450 at Sines, Portugal, and died in 1524. He discovered the sea-route from Europe to India by the Cape of Good Hope. The voyage had been projected under John II, and his successor, Emmanuel the Fortunate, having fitted out four vessels, intrusted Gama with the chief command. He sailed from Lisbon on July 8th, 1497, and doubling the Cape, visited Mozambique, Mombaza, Melinda, and Calicut, returning to Lisbon in 1499. For this exploit he was named Admiral of the Indies and received the title of Dom, with an annual pension and extensive privileges in Indian commerce. In the year 1502 he was placed at the head of a powerful fleet, with which he provided for the security of future voyagers by founding establishments at Mozambique and Sofala. He also inflicted signal reprisals on the town of Calicut, where the Portuguese residents had been massacred, and established the first Portuguese factory in the Indies. He re-entered Lisbon in 1503, and passed the next twenty years in obscurity. In 1524 he was appointed Viceroy of India by King John III, but his administration lasted only three months, his death taking place at Goa in the December of that year.
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Vasco Nunez De Balboa was one of the early Spanish adventurers in the New World. He was born in 1475 and died in 1517. Having dissipated his fortune, he went to America, and was at Darien with the expedition of Francisco de Enciso in 1510. An insurrection placed him at the head of the colony, but rumours of a western ocean and of the wealth of Peru led him to cross the isthmus. On September the 25th 1513, he saw for the first time the Pacific, and after annexing it to Spain, and acquiring information about Peru, returned to Parien. Here he found himself supplanted by a aew governor, Pedrarias Davila, with much consequent grievance on the one side, and much jealousy on the other. Balboa submitted, however, and in the following year was appointed viceroy of the South Sea. Davila was apparently reconciled to him, and gave him his daughter in marriage, but shortly after, in 1517, had him beheaded on a charge of intent to rebel. Pizarro, who afterwards completed the discovery of Peru, served under Balboa.
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Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin is a former KGB officer. He was born in 1922 in central Russia. He entered service as a Soviet foreign intelligence officer for the MGB in 1948 and was first posted abroad in 1952. He defected to England in 1992 and was smuggled out of the Soviet Union by the British SIS along with his family and realms of notes copied from KGB files over a period of many years which he then published as 'The Mitrokhin Archive' offering an insight into Soviet Intelligence operations around the world during the 20th century and naming many hitherto unknown Soviet spies.
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Vasily Sokolovsky was a Soviet general. He was born in 1897 and died in 1968. During the Second World War he was Chief of Staff to the West Front Army from 1941, he took command of it in 1943, and led the counteroffensive after the Battle of Kursk and liberated Smolensk. His progress then slowed and he was removed from command and became Chief of Staff to the 1st Ukrainian Front. In 1945 he became Deputy Commander of the 1st Byelorussian Front for the attack on Berlin, captured the Fuhrerbunker, and verified Hitler's corpse from dental records. After the war he became commander in chief of Soviet Forces in Germany.
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Vaslav Nijinsky was a Russian ballet dancer and choreographer. He was born in 1890 and died in 1950. He came from a family of dancers and at 18 joined the Russian Imperial Ballet. After leaving Russia in 1911 he joined Diaghilev's company in France and quickly gained an international reputation. He retired from ballet in 1918 suffering from mental instability.
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Vassili Verestchagin was a Russian painter. He was born in 1842 and died in 1904. He studied under Geromes in Paris. He served in the wars with Turkey in 1877 and Japan in 1904. His paintings are on military subjects.
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Ralph Vaughan Williams was an English composer. He was born in 1872 at Down Ampney and died in 1958.
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Baron Vaux of Harrowden is an English title held by the family of Mostyn. In 1523 Sir Nicholas Vaux, a soldier of repute, was made a baron, and the title was held by his descendants until the fifth baron died in 1662. It was thence forward in abeyance until 1838, when George Mostyn, a descendant of the last baron's sister, was given the barony. It is still held by his descendants. The seat is at Harrowden Hall, Northamptonshire.
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In the feudal system, vavasor was a term applied to various kinds of vassals, sometimes for a class below barons or tenants-in-chief, and above knights.
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Vavasour was the original English name for what is now called a baron.
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The Vedda are an aboriginal peoples of Sri Lanka, who occupied the island before the arrival of the Aryans about 550 BC. Of Caucasoid stock, they are dark-brown, wavy-haired, long-limbed, long-headed, short in height. They consisted of forest Veddas, who still preserving the primitive culture until the early part of the 20th century; village Veddas, who intermarried with the Sinhalese and practise crude agriculture; and coast Veddas, dwelling for the most. part north of Batticaloa, who display Tamil admixture.
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The Vellala are an Indian caste of Tamil-speaking Hindu farmers in the Tamil country. They are a long-headed, frugal, industrious, and peaceable people. Traditionally they are descended from Vaisya cultivators who came from the north into the ancient Pandya kingdom.
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Vera Caslavska is a Czech gymnast. She was born in 1942 at Prague. Originally a promising ice skater, when she was fifteen she was invited to take part in trials to find gymnastic talent and trained with Bosakova, going on to win 22 titles in Olympic, World and European championships including the gold medal at the 1964 and 1968 Olympic Games for the combined exercises, at the 1964 Olympic Games she also won the gold medal for the beam and the vault. She was famed also for her floor routine known as the 'Mexican Hat Dance', which was greeted with rapturous applause by audiences.
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Publius Vergilius Maro (Vergil) was a Roman poet. He was born in 70BC near Mantua and died in 19BC.
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Verity Lambert OBE was an English television show producer. She was born in 1935 at London and died in 2007. Her first production was 'Dr Who', which she was the first producer of and worked on from 1963 to 1966 being employed by the BBC. She later produced episodes of the television series 'Jonathan Creek' in 1998 and formed her own production company. 'Cinema Verity'. She was awarded the OBE in 2002.
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Verney Lovett Cameron was an English exoplorer. He was born in 1844 near Weymouth and died in 1894. He entered the British navy in 1857, and in 1872 was chosen by the Royal Geographical Society of London to conduct an expedition for the relief of Dr David Livingstone. He was only in time to meet the remains of David Livingstone at Unyanyembe, but continued his journey west to Benguela, and was thus the first to cross Central Africa. Returning to England in 1876, he was made Companion of the Bath, and raised to the rank of a commander. In 1878 he made a journey through Asia Minor and Persia. He published accounts of both journeys in his Across Africa and Our Future Highway to India.
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Vernon W Thomson was an American politician. He was a Republican governor of Wisconsin from 1957 until 1959.
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Vespasian (Titus Flavius Sabinus Vespasianus) was a Roman emperor. He was born in 9 and died in 79. He commanded a legion in Britain and subdued the Isle of Wight between 43 and 44. In 63 he became governor of Africa and in 66 governor of Judaea. In 69 he was proclaimed emperor at Alexandria. During his reign he continued the conquest of Britain, restored peace to Rome, suppressed the Batavians, Gauls and Jews and restored the finances of the state. He found money for monumental building works in Rome including the start of the Colosseum.
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A vicar is a church of England priest.
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Vicente Aleixandre was a Spanish poet. He was born in 1898 at Seville and died in 1984. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1977.
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Vicente Barrantes was a Spanish publicist and author. He was born in 1829 and died in 1898.
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Vicente de Espinel was a Spanish writer and musician. He was born in 1550 at Ronda and died in 1634. He produced melodious lyric poems and translated Horace's Art of Poetry into iambic blank verse, and several of Horace's Odes.
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Vicente Pinzon was a Spanish explorer. He was born around 1460 and died around 1524. He commanded La Nina in the expedition of Columbus in 1493. In 1499, he discovered Brazil and the Amazon. He made two subsequent voyages to South America in 1506 and 1508.
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A viceroy is someone who acts as governor of a country or province by authority of the ruler.
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Victor Adler was an Austrian Socialist. He was born in 1852 at Prague and died in 1918. A Jew by birth, he trained as a doctor of medicine but gave up his professional work to campaign for social democracy. He was largely responsible for the establishment of the Austrian Socialist Party, and became its leader. He served for many years in the Reichsrath, and was foreign minister at the time of his death.
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Victor Amadeus II was Duke of Savoy and the first King of Sardinia. He was born in 1666 and died in 1732.
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Victor Balaguer was a Spanish author and politician. He was born in 1824 at Barcelona and died in 1901. He is regarded as the most important writer of the 19th century in the Catalonian dialect.. He studied law at Barcelona, and becoming learned in Catalonian history was appointed archivist and soon after professor of history. In 1869 he entered the Cortes as a liberal; in 1872 was minister of public works; in 1886-88 colonial minister. He wrote much both in prose and verse, his prose comprising historical works, novels, etc, his verse lyrics, ballads, tragedies, odes, etc. His tragedies were partly on subjects taken from Catalonian history, partly on subjects connected with Greek and Roman history or literature. Among his lyrical and other poems are: El Trovador de Montserrat; Primavera de Ultimo Trovador Catalan; Poesias Completas (1874); Obras Poeticas (1880). Don Juan de Serrallonga is the most popular of his novels. Among other works of his are: Historia Politica y Literaria de los Trovadores; Historia de Cataluna; Los Pirineos; Cristobal Colon; Estudios Historicos y Politicos; Historias y Tradiciones; Instituciones y Reyes de Aragon.
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Victor Barna (born Gyozo Braun) was a Hungarian-born British table-tennis player. He was born in 1911 at Budapest and died in 1972. After leaving Hungary and emigrating to France he went to Britain where he adopted British nationality. He was captain of the England table tennis team and five times world men's singles champion, four times in succession, between 1930 and 1939. He was also eight times men's doubles champion with three different partners and twice mixed doubles champion.
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Victor Benson was a British wrestler in the catch-as-catch-can and Cumberland and Westmoreland styles. He was born in 1892 and died in 1967. Between 1919 and 1930 he held 13 British championships.
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Victor Cousin was a French educationalist and philosopher. He was born in 1792, and died in 1867. He was educated at the Ecole Normale, University of Paris. Cousin was appointed lecturer at the University of Paris in 1815 and was made director of the Ecole Normale in 1830, the year he became a councillor of state and a peer of France. In 1840 he became minister of public instruction in the French cabinet; under his influence the French system of primary education was reorganised, philosophical freedom was encouraged in the university, and the study of the history of philosophy was introduced into academic curricula.
Victor Cousin is regarded as the founder of the modern philosophical school of eclecticism. Believing that no single philosophical system is entirely correct, Victor Cousin combined aspects of idealism, materialism, mysticism, and scepticism into an eclectic system of his own. He was particularly influenced by the philosophy of common sense of the Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid and by the idealism of the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel.
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Victor Duruy was a French historian and educationalist. He was born in 1811 at Paris and died in 1894. He was appointed successively teacher of history in the gymnasium of Henry IV, then at the Normal School and the Polytechnic School, inspector of the Academy of Paris, inspector-general of secondary education, and minister of public instruction (1863-1969). He is author of Geographie Politique de la Republique Romaine et de l'Empire; Geographic Historique du Moyen Age; Histoire Romaine; Histoirede France; Histoire Grecque; Histoire Populaire Contemporaine; etc. Some of these are simply school-books, but his Histoire des Romains (translated into English) and his Histoire de la Grece Ancienne (translated into English) are extensive and important works, the former especially.
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Victor E Anderson was an American politician. He was a Republican governor of Nebraska from 1955 until 1959.
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Victor Emmanuel I was King of Sardinia. He was born in 1759 and died in 1824. He became king in 1820 but later abdicated in favour of his brother Charles Albert.
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Victor Emmanuel II was King of Sardinia and of Italy. He was born in 1820 and died in 1878. Through his diplomacy he united Italy and was in 1871 crowned the first king of a united Italy.
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Victor Emmanuel III was King of Italy. He was born in 1869 and succeeded to the throne on the assassination of his father, Humbert I, in 1900.
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Victor G Atiyeh was an American politician. He was a Republican governor of Oregon from 1979 until 1987.
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Victor Marie Hugo was a French poet and novelist. He was born in 1802 at Besancon and died in 1885. His father having entered the service of Joseph Bonaparte, king of Italy, and afterwards of Spain, Victor's earlier years were partly spent in those countries, but in 1812 he went with his mother to Paris. At the age of twelve he was already writing verses, and in 1823 his first novel, Han d'lslande, appeared, followed in 1825 by Bug Jargal.
In 1828 a complete edition of his Odes et Ballades appeared. In these productions Victor Hugo's anti-classical tendencies in style and treatment of his subject had been very visible, but the appearance of his drama Cromwell in 1827, with its celebrated preface, gave the watchword to the anti-classical or romantic school. Cromwell was too long for representation, and it was only in 1830 that Hernani, over which the great contest between Classicists and Romantacists took place, was brought on the stage.
Other dramas followed: Marion Delorme (1831), Le Roi s'amuse (1832), Lucrece Borgia (1833), Marie Tudor
(1833), Angelo (1835), Ruy Blas (1838), Les Bourgraves (1843). During those years he had also published a novel, Notre Dame de Paris (1830), and several volumes of poetry, Les Feuilles d'Automne (1831), Les Chants du Crepuscule (1835), Les Voix Interieures (1837), Les Rayons et Les Ombres (1840). The poetry of this period has a melody and grace superior perhaps to any that he afterwards wrote, but wants that deep and original sense of life which is characteristic of his later poems. During the same period he also wrote his critical essays on Mirabeau, Voltaire, and a number of articles for the Revue de Paris.
In 1841, after having been twice previously rejected, he was elected a member of the French Academy and shortly afterwards made a tour in the Rhineland, of which he wrote a brilliant and interesting account in Le Rhin, published in 1842. In 1845 he was made a peer of France by Louis Philippe.
The revolution of 1848 threw Victor Hugo into the thick of the political struggle. At first his votes were decidedly Conservative, but afterwards, whether from suspicion of Napoleon's designs or from other reasons, he became one of the chiefs of the democratic party. After the coup d'etat on December the 2nd, 1851, he was one of those who kept up the struggle in the streets against Napoleon to the last. He then fled to Brussels, where he published the first of his bitter satires on the founder of the Second Empire, Napoleon le Petit. In the following year (1853) the second, the famous volume of Les Chatiments, a wonderful mixture of satirical invective, lyrical passion and pathos appeared.
Victor Hugo now went to live in Jersey, was expelled along with the other French exiles in 1855 by the English government, and finally settled in Guernsey. It was in the comparative solitude and quietness of the Channel Islands that he wrote most of the great works of his later years, Les Contemplations (1856), La Legende des Siecles, 1st series (1859), Chansons des Rues et des Bois (1865), and his celebrated series of social novels, Les Miserables (1862), Les Travailleurs de la Mer (1866), and L'Homme qui Rit (1869).
In 1870, after the fall of the Empire, Victor Hugo returned to Paris, where he spent the remaining years of a remarkably vigorous old age in occasional attendances at the senate, and in adding to the already long list of his literary works. Amongst these latest productions may be mentioned Quatro-vingt-treize (1872), L' Art d'etre Grand-pere (1877), L'Histoire d'un Crime (1877), Le Pape (1878), La Pitie Supreme (1879), Religions et Religion (1880), Les Quatre Vents de l'Esprit (1881), La Legende des Siecles (last series 1883), Torquemada (1882).
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Victor Thomas Trumper was an Australian cricketer. He was born in 1877 and died in 1915. A player for New South Wales and Australia, he earned a reputation as a legendary batsman able to play on even the most difficult wicket, making 135 not out in the 1899 Lord's Test match and 300 not out against Sussex. In 1903 at Sydney he made 185 not out, reaching his century in 94 minutes.
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Victoria Beckham is an English singer. She was born in 1974 at Hertfordshire. She was formerly 'Posh Spice' in the British pop group the Spice Girls.
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Victorien Sardou was a French dramatist. He was born in 1831 and died in 1908.
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Vidkun Quisling was a Norwegian politician. He was born in 1887 and died in 1945 when he was executed following the liberation of Norway. Quisling was from 1931 to 1933 Minister of Defence, and then later leader of the Norwegian fascist party. When Norway was invaded by Nazi Germany during the Second World War, Vidkun Quisling was appointed Prime Minister by Adolf Hitler.
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The Vikings (creek-dwellers) were the inhabitants of Scandinavia, and more particularly Norway from about the 8th to the 11th century. They were also called Norsemen, and Danes. They were great explorers and set up colonies in Ireland, France, England and Scotland as well as reaching Iceland, Greenland and Nova Scotia. In 912 they were granted the duchy of Normandy, and these
Vikings became known as Normans, later famously invading and conquering England.
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Vilhjalmar Stefansson was a Canadian Arctic explorer. He was born in 1879 at Manitoba, Canada of Icelandic parents and died in 1962. He studied archaeology and anthropology at Iowa University and in 1908 was commissioned by the American Museum of Natural History to make an ethnological survey of the Central Arctic coast of America.
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Originally the term villain meant a simple person, a peasant, someone unsophisticated and uneducated. Now the term refers to an unprincipled, depraved person and by extension, colloquially a criminal.
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Vincent Bourne was an English scholar and poet. He was born in 1695 and died in 1747. In 1721, after graduating as MA at Cambridge, he became a master in Westminster School, where he remained, so far as is known, to the end of his life. He is one of the few who have attained fame for writing Latin verse almost with the felicity of the Roman poets. His poems in Latin, which include original compositions and versions of English pieces, were first published in 1734. Cowper and Lamb translated poems of his.
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Vincent Van Gogh was a Dutch painter. He was born in 1853 at Brabant and died in 1890 after shooting himself.
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Vincenzo Bellini was an Italian composer. He was born in 1801 at Catania in Sicily in 1802 and died in 1835. He was educated at Naples under Zingarelli, commenced writing operas before he was twenty, and composed for the principal musical establishments in Europe. He composed I Puritani, La Sonnambula, Norma.
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Vincenzo Camuccini was an Italian painter. He was born in 1775 and died in 1844. He was the head of the pseudo- classic school instituted by the French painter David. His pictures were greatly valued during his lifetime, but fell from popularity following his death.
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Vincenzo Da Filicaja was an Italian poet. He was born in 1642 at Florence and died in 1707. Of a noble family, he first achieved note for his stirring odes on the victory of Sobieski over the Turks in 1683. The publication of his odes, sonnets, etc, in 1684 established Filicaja's fame as the first poet of his time in Italy. The Grand-duke of Tuacany appointed him governor of Volterra, and then of Pisa, in which posts he gained the esteem equally of people and sovereign. Among his most successful poems are the Canzone to John Sobieski on the occasion of the relief of Vienna from the Turks, and the celebrated sonnet on Italy, imitated by Byron in the 4th canto of Childe Harold, stanzas 42, 43.
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Vincenzo Gioberti was an Italian philosopher and statesman. He was born in 1801 at Turin and died in 1852. Having been educated for the church, he was appointed chaplain to Charles Albert, king of Sardinia, but having rendered himself obnoxious by his republican sentiments, he was first imprisoned, and, in 1833, banished. The first few years of his exile he spent at Paris, and afterwards became a teacher of philosophy in a school at Brussels. There he published two works, one of which was an attempt to reconcile philosophy and Roman Catholicism. In 1843 appeared his Primato Morale e Civile degli Italiani, a defence on liberal principles of the Papacy, a work which brought over the majority of the priests to the national party. In 1847 he published a work entitled Il Gesuita Moderno (the Modern Jesuit). When Charles Albert granted a constitution to Sardinia in 1848, Vincenzo Gioberti returned to his native country, but he soon after withdrew to Paris.
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Vincenzo Monti was an Italian poet. He was born in 1754 at Fusignano and died in 1828. he went to Rome in 1778 where he became secretary to Prince Braschi. He was professor of eloquence at Pavia during the French republic and during the empire became Napoleon's official poet and histiographer for Italy at Milan.
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Vinova Bhave is an Indian reformer and leader of the sarvodaya movement. He was born in 1895. He was a follower of Ghandi and campaigned for help for landless peasants.
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Publius Vergilius Maro Virgil was a Roman poet. He was born in 70 BC near Mantua and died in 19 BC. He studied philosophy under the Epicurean Siron at Rome and became one of Maecena's friends.
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Virgil Thomson was an American composer. He was born in 1896 and died in 1989. He composed Opera, film music, Four Saints in Three Acts.
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Virginia Dare was the first English child born in the New World. She was born in 1587 at Roanoke, Virginia. She was the granddaughter of John White, Governor of the colony sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1587.
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William R Davie was an American soldier and politician. He was born in 1756 at England and died in 1820. He arrived in America in 1763. He commanded at Stono Ferry in 1779, and in 1781 was appointed commissary-general of the Southern army. He was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 from North Carolina, and of the special embassy to France in 1799. He was prominent among the North Carolina Federalists.
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Virginia Woolf was an English novelist. She was born in 1882 and died in 1941.
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Viscount is the fourth rank of nobility. The term comes from the Norman Conquest of England, when the Norman rulers applied the word viscounte to the officials appointed as sheriffs. It was not until nearly four hundred years later that it became an order of the peerage. The premier viscountcy is that of Hereford, which was created in 1550. The viscount's mantle has two and a half bars of ermine. His coronet has sixteen silver balls fixed to a silver circlet.
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Viscount Hill (Rowland Hill) was a British soldier. He was born in 1772 and died in 1842. He entered the army at the age of sixteen and obtained the rank of captain in 1793, and became colonel of the 90th Regiment in 1800. He took part in the Egyptian campaign, and in 1806 was made major-general. He served with great distinction during the campaigns of Moore and Wellington in the Peninsula. In 1809 he became lieutenant-general; in 1812 he was made a KB and in 1814, on being made a peer by the title of Baron of Almarez and of Hawkstone, parliament voted him a perpetual pension of 2000 pounds. At the Battle of Waterloo he commanded the right wing of the British, and he was personally thanked by Wellington for his services. In 1828 he was appointed general commanding-in-chief of the British army, a post which he held until 1842, when he retired and was made a viscount.
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Vittore Carpaccio was an Italian painter. He was born in about 1450 at Venice and died after 1521. One of the most celebrated masters of the old Venetian school, his distinguishing characteristics are natural expression, vivid conception, correct arrangement, and great variety of figures and costumes. He also excelled as an architectural and landscape painter. His favourite employment was the dramatic representation of sacred subjects, several of which he has illustrated by a series of paintings.
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Vittoria Colonna was an Italian poet. She was born in 1490 at Naples and died in 1547. She was the daughter of Fabrizio Colonna, high-constable of Naples, and at the age of seventeen she was married to Ferdinand, Marquis of Pescara, the companion of her youth, who became one of the distinguished men of his age. They lived in the happiest union, and when her husband died of wounds received at the battle of Pavia in 1525, Vittoria sought consolation in solitude and in poetry. All her poems were devoted to the memory of her husband. Her most celebrated work is the Rime Spirituali, 1538. They are considered among the happiest imitations of Petrarca.
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Count Vittorio Alfieri was an Italian poet and playwright. He was born in 1749 at Asti, Piedmont and died in 1803. After extensive European travels he began to write, and his first play, Cleopatra produced in 1775, being received with general applause he determined to devote all his efforts to attaining a position among writers of dramatic poetry. At Florence he became intimate with the Countess of Albany, wife of Prince Charles Stuart, and on the death of the prince she lived with him as his mistress. This connection he believed to have served to stimulate and elevate his poetic powers. He died at Florence and was buried in the church of Santa Croce, between Macchiavelli and Michael Angelo, where a beautiful monument by Canova covers his remains. He wrote twenty-one tragedies and six comedies. His tragedies are full of lofty and patriotic sentiments, but the language is stiff and without poetic grace, and the plots poor. Nevertheless he is considered the first tragic writer of Italy, and has served as a model for his successors. Alfieri composed also an epic, lyrics, satires, and poetical translations from the ancient classics. He left an interesting autobiography.
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Vitus Bering (Vitus Behring) was a Danish navigator. He was born in 1680 Horsens, Jutland and died in 1741. The courage displayed by him as captain in the navy of Peter the Great during the Swedish wars led to his being chosen to command a voyage of discovery in the Sea of Kamtchatka. In 1728 and subsequently he examined the coasts of Kamtchatka, Okhotsk, and the north of Siberia, ascertaining the relation between the north-eastern Asiatic and north-western American coasts, and discovered the Bering Strait which was named after him. Returning from America in 1741, he was wrecked upon the desert island of Awatska (Bering's Island), and died there.
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Antonio Vivaldi was an Italian composer. He was born in 1680 and died in 1743.
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Vivian Caulfield was an English artist and writer. He was born in 1874 and died in 1958. He wrote the book How to Ski which analysed skiing dynamics for the first time, and criticised the method of turning with a single stick which led to the modern style of skiing with a stick in each hand.
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The Vlachs are a group of Romanian peoples living mainly in the region of the lower Danube.
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Vladimir de Pachmann was a Russian pianist and interpreter of Chopin. He was born in 1848 at Odessa and died in 1933. He studied under his father, Vincent de Pachmann, a professor at Odessa, and then at Vienna. In 1878 he appeared at the Gewandhaus concerts in Leipzig and afterwards in most of the great cities of Europe.
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Vladimir Horowitz was a Russian-born American concert pianist. He was born in 1903 at Berdichev, and died in 1989. He trained at the conservatory at Kiev, and became an accomplished pianist but preferred composing his own music to performing. After his family lost most of its possessions in the Russian Revolution, he began giving piano recitals in exchange for food and clothing. His success as a pianist in the new Soviet Union was assured by a series of 23 recitals in Leningrad in 1924. In these he performed a total of more than 200 works. In 1925 he went on a concert tour of Europe and made his American debut in 1928. In 1933 he married the daughter of conductor Arturo Toscanini. Seven years later, after the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe, they settled in the USA and in 1944 he became an American citizen. He was awarded the Medal of Freedom in 1986.
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Vladimir Nabokov was a Russian-born American author. He was born in 1899 and died in 1977. Brought up in St Petersburg, he left Russia in 1919 and later lived in Berlin and Paris, writing fiction in Russian under the name V. Sirin. His first novel in English, 'The Real Life of Sebastian Knight', appeared in 1939, and in the following year he emigrated to the USA. His witty, ingenious, stylised, and erudite novels include 'Lolita' published in 1955, a farcical and satirical novel of the passion of a middle-aged sophisticated European emigre for a 12-year-old American nymphet; 'Pale Fire' published in 1962, a satirical fantasy encounter between poet and madman; and 'Ada or Ardor' published in 1969, a witty parody of a family chronicle. ' Conclusive Evidence' published in 1951 revised as 'Speak, Memory' in 1966 is a brilliant poetic autobiography.
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Vladimir Sukhomlinoff (Vladimir Sukhomlinov) was a Russian soldier and politician. He was born in 1852 and died in 1926. He came into prominence during the Russo-Japanese War, after which he devoted himself to the reorganisation of the army . He was Minister of War from 1909 until 1915, and was responsible for many of the reforms and the mobilisation plan which was put into effect in August 1914 with a smoothness and rapidity that surprised his critics. Russia's early defeats in the Great War were blamed upon a lack of munitions and equipment, and Vladimir Sukhomlinoff was accused of corruption, taking bribes from army contractors to allow them to supply inferior equipment. Found guilty, Vladimir Sukhomlinoff was sentenced to life imprisonment, but was released in May 1918 and left Russia to live in Finland.
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Vladimir Kosma Zworykin was an American physicist and electronic engineer. He was born in 1889 at Murom, Russia and died in 1982. He went to the Institute of Technology in St Petersburg, the College de France, and, after his emigration to the USA in 1919, at the University of Pittsburgh. He became an American citizen in 1924 and in 1929 director of the Electronic Research Laboratory of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) at Princeton. He made important contributions to both the transmission and the reception of television and was largely responsible for the development, during the 1920s and 1930s, of the television camera and picture tube. He also directed the group that in 1939 successfully produced a powerful electron microscope.
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The Volsci were a people living in Italy during the period of the Roman Republic. They dwelt in the southern part of Latium and were the most persistent foes of the early Republic.
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Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet) was a French writer. He was born in 1694 in Paris and died in 1778.
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