The ISO (International Standards Organisation) assigns a two character code to each country name. These codes are used by Internet 'whois' databases (these two character abbreviations are the whois country codes) and also other applications.
Sir John Wfrederick william Herschel was an English astronomer. He was born in 1792 at Slough, near Windsor and died in 1871. The only son of Sir William Herschel, in 1813 he graduated BA at Cambridge, and was Senior Wrangler and Smith's Prizeman. After his father's death he spent eight years reviewing the nebulae and clusters of stars discovered by his father. The results were given in 1833 to the Royal Society in the form of a catalogue of stars. The catalogue contained observations on 525 nebulas and clusters of stars not noticed by his father, and on a great number of double stars, between 3000 and 4000 in all.
In 1830 he produced his excellent Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, and about the same time published several treatises in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, Lardner's Cyclopeadia, etc. In 1834 he established, at his own expense, an observatory at Feldhuysen, near Cape Town, his object being to discover whether the distribution of the stars in the southern hemisphere corresponded with the results of his father's labours in the north.
He returned to England in 1838, and in 1847 was published Results of Astronomical Observations made during 1834-38 at the Cape of Good Hope, being the Completion of a Telescopic Survey of the Whole Surface of the Visible Heavens. He was one of the earliest pioneers in photography; was made a DCL of Oxford; and on the queen's coronation he was created a baronet.
In 1848 he was president of the Royal Astronomical Society, and in 1850 was appointed Master of the Mint, an office which he resigned in 1855. Among Sir John Herschel's other works are Outlines of Astronomy, Familiar Lectures on Scientific Subjects, and a translation of the Iliad in verse. Research John Herschel
Richard Bentley was an English classical scholar and critic. He was born in 1662 near Wakefield, Yorkshire and died in 1742. At the age of fourteen he entered St John's College, Cambridge, where he took the degree of BA in 1680. In 1682 he became a master of Spalding School, and in the following year was appointed tutor to Dr. Stillingfleet's son.
He lived in Dr. Stillingfleet's house during 1683 to 1689, studying deeply, and accompanied his pupil to Oxford. In 1684 he took his MA degree at Cambridge, and in 1689 at Oxford, where two years later he won immediate reputation by the publication of his epistle to Mill on the Greek Chronicle of Malelas.
Dr. Stillingfleet having been raised to the bishopric of Worcester made Richard Bentley his chaplain, and in 1692 a prebendary in his cathedral. The same year he delivered the first series of the Boyle Lectures, his subject being a confutation of atheism. In 1694 he was appointed keeper of the royal library at St James's Palace, and in 1696 came into residence there. Two or three years after began his famous controversy with the Honourable Charles Boyle, afterwards Earl of Orrery, relative to the genuineness of the Greek Epistles of Phalaris, an edition of which was published by Boyle, then a student at Christ Church, Oxford.
In this dispute Richard Bentley was completely victorious, though the greatest wits and critics of the age, including Pope, Jonathan Swift, Garth, Atterbury, Aldrich, Dodwell, and ConyersMiddleton came to Boyle's assistance. Richard Bentley's Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris appeared in 1699 and was described as 'a monument of controversial genius' and 'a storehouse of exact and penetrating erudition.'
In 1700 he was presented to the mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge, and from this period until 1738 he was at feud with the fellows of that college. A lawsuit, which lasted more than twenty years, was decided against him, but his opponents were unable to carry out the sentence depriving him of his mastership. In 1711 he published an edition of Horace, and in 1713 his remarks on Collins's Discourse on Free-thinking, by Phileleutherus Lipsiensis. He was appointed regius professor of divinity in 1716. In 1726 he published an edition of Terence and Phsedrus.' He meditated an edition of Homer, but left only notes.
In Homeric criticism he has the merit of having detected the loss of the letter 'digamma' from the written texts. His last work was an edition of Milton's Paradise Lost, with conjectural emendations published in 1732. Research Richard Bentley
Richard Ford was an English writer on Spanish subjects. He was born in 1796 and died in 1858. Educated at Winchester and at Trinity College, Oxford, where he took his BA degree in 1817, he then studied law and was called to the bar, but never practised. From 1830 to 1834 he lived with his family in Spain, and in many riding-tours acquired an intimate knowledge of the country. Returning to England he took up his residence near Exeter, and contributed several articles to the Quarterly and Edinburgh Reviews and other periodicals, dealing with Spanish art and architecture. In 1845 appeared the original edition of his excellent Handbook for Travellers in Spain, a veritable storehouse of information, rich alike in knowledge and in wit and humour. In subsequent editions this work underwent various changes, and was much reduced in bulk. Research Richard Ford
Robert Greene was an English dramatist and poet. He was born in 1558 and died in 1592. Educated at Cambridge, he took his degree of BA in 1578, after which he travelled on the Continent. He graduated MA in 1583, lived a wild and profligate life, and died in poverty in 1592. His works consist of plays, poems, tales, and tracts, His chief romances are Pandosto (1588), The History of Arbasto (1617), A Pair of Turtle Doves (1606), Menaphon (1587). His plays include The Honourable Historie of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (1594), OrlandoFurioso (1594), Alphonsus, king of Arragon (1597), and James IV (1598). Amongst his miscellaneous works are The Myrrour of Modestie (1584), Morando (1584), Euphues, his censure to Philautus (1587), Perimedes
(1588), Alcida (1588), Spanish Masquerade (1589), and various pamphlets and autobiographical works, such as his Never-too-late (1590), Greene's Vision (1592), The Repentance of Robert Greene (1592), and Farewell to Folly (1591). His Groat's worth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance (1592), is remarkable for the allusion to Shakspere, 'an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers'. His Pandosto furnished the basis for William Shakspeare's Winter's Tale. Research Robert Greene
Thomas Fuller was an English historian and divine of the Church of England. He was born in 1608 at Aldwinkle, in Northamptonshire and died 1661. He was sent to Queen's College, Cambridge, where he graduated BA in 1625 and MA in 1628. Afterwards he moved to Sidney Sussex College in the same university and being chosen minister of St Beliefs parish, Cambridge, he became very popular as a pulpit orator. In 1631 he obtained a fellowship at Sidney Sussex, and was collated to a prebend in the cathedral of Salisbury. He was next chosen rector of Broad Windsor, Dorset, and lecturer at the Savoy, London.
In 1643 he went to Oxford and joined the king; left in a few months for the army, in which he became chaplain to Sir Ralph Hopton, and employed his leisure in making collections relative to English history and antiquities. At the close of the war he took refuge in Exeter, and was appointed chaplain to the infantPrincessHenrietta Maria. Shortly before the restoration he was reinstated in his prebendal stall, and soon after that was made one of the king's chaplains.
Several of his writings are English classics, remarkable for quaintness of style, wit, sagacity, and learning. Among the more important are: History of the Holy War; The Holy and Profane State; Pisgah Sight of Palestine; ChurchHistory of Britain; and the Worthies of England, a production valuable alike for the solid information it affords relative to the provincial history of the country, and for the profusion of biographical anecdote and acute observation on men and manners. Research Thomas Fuller
William Dunbar was a Scottish poet. He was born about 1460 to 1465 probably in East Lothianamd died in about 1520. In 1475 he went to St Andrews, where, in 1477, he took the degree of BA, and two years later that of MA. After this he seems to have become a begging friar of the Franciscan order, and made journeys in England and France, but he returned to Scotland about 1490, and attached himself to the court of James IV, from whom he received a pension of 10 pounds.
On the marriage of James IV to Margaret of England William Dunbar celebrated the event in a poem of great beauty, entitled, The Thrissil and the Rois. His pension was ultimately raised to 80 pounds a year, and he was the recipient of various additional gratuities, though he appears frequently to have addressed both the king and the queen for a benefice, but always without success. After FIodden his name disappears from the royal accounts, and he probably died about 1520. His works, which consist of elaborate allegories, satirical and grimly humorous pieces, and poems full of brilliant description and luxuriant imagination, were first collected by David Laing and published in Edinburgh in 1834. Research William Dunbar
Mira Sorvino is an American actress and film producer. She was born in 1967 at Tenafly, New Jersey. She graduated from Harvard University in 1990, with a BA in Asian Studies (she speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese and French as well as English), her first television appearance was in the 1987 'The Oldest Rookie'. Research Mira Sorvino
Abbreviations
Research Country Codes
