Authors: Bill Bryson
Swope, Herbert Bayard
(i)
Taylor, Augustine
(i)
Taylor, Sam
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Taylor, William Desmond
(i)
Taylor, Zachary
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tea
(i)
teenagers
(i)
telephone
(i)
,
(ii)
,
(iii)
,
(iv)
,
(v)
television
(i)
,
(ii)
,
(iii)
,
(iv)
,
(v)
,
(vi)
Tetrazzini, Luisa
(i)
Thanksgiving celebrations
(i)
Theroux, Paul
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Thomas, Buckwheat
(i)
Thomas, Clarence
(i)
Tilton, Elizabeth
(i)
time, standardisation of
(i)
Tisquantum ‘Squanto’ (lndian)
(i)
,
(ii)
Todt, Dr Fritz
(i)
Toman, Ed
(i)
Tracy, Nathaniel
(i)
travel
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cars
(i)
manufacturers
(i)
horse drawn vehicles
(i)
,
(ii)
,
(iii)
ships and boats
(i)
,
(ii)
,
(iii)
,
(iv)
,
(v)
,
(vi)
streetcars
(i)
see also
railways
Traynor, William J.H
(i)
treason
(i)
Treaty of Ghent
(i)
trolley cars
see
streetcars
Trollope, Frances
(i)
,
(ii)
,
(iii)
Troy (New York)
(i)
Truman, Harry S
(i)
Truth, Sojurner
(i)
Turner, Kathleen
(i)
Turner, Lorenzo Dow
(i)
Twain, Mark
(i)
,
(ii)
,
(iii)
,
(iv)
typhoid fever
(i)
Utah
(i)
Van Alen, William
(i)
Vandalia (Illinois)
(i)
Vanderbilt, Mrs Cornelius
(i)
Veblen, Thorstein
(i)
vegetables
see
food
Vernon, Edward ‘Old Grog’
(i)
Verrazano, Giovanni da
(i)
,
(ii)
Vespucci, Simonetta
(i)
Vice-President, election of
(i)
,
(ii)
Victoria Island (Canada)
(i)
Victoria, Queen
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Vincennes (Indiana)
(i)
Virgil
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Virginia
(i)
,
(ii)
,
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,
(iv)
,
(v)
,
(vi)
,
(vii)
horse racing
(i)
and leisure
(i)
tobacco
(i)
and womens’ clothing
(i)
wrestling
(i)
Virginia City
(i)
Virginia (North Carolina)
(i)
Volstead Act (prohibition)
(i)
Von Stronheim, Erich
(i)
Waldseemüller, Martin
(i)
Walker, Felix
(i)
Walker, William
(i)
War of Independence
see
American
Revolution
War of Jenkins Ear, The
(i)
Warner, Albert
(i)
Warner, Harry
(i)
Warner, Jack
(i)
Warner, Sam
(i)
wars
(i)
American Revolution
(i)
,
(ii)
,
(iii)
,
(iv)
‘Cold War’
(i)
ethnic cleansing
(i)
Gulf War
(i)
Korean War
(i)
War of 1812
(i)
,
(ii)
,
(iii)
,
(iv)
washing machine
(i)
Washington, Charles
(i)
Washington (District of Columbia)
(i)
,
(ii)
,
(iii)
,
(iv)
,
(v)
Washington, George
(i)
,
(ii)
,
(iii)
,
(iv)
,
(v)
and Constitutional Convention
(i)
inauguration
(i)
Life of George Washington
(Weems)
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military career
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place names
(i)
and postal services
(i)
Washington, John
(i)
Washington, Lawrence
(i)
Watson, Thomas A
(i)
Webster, Daniel
(i)
Wells Fargo and Co
(i)
Wenburg, Ben
(i)
West Wycombe (England)
(i)
Western Union
(i)
Westinghouse, George
(i)
,
(ii)
,
(iii)
Westmorland(England)
(i)
Weymouth, George
(i)
Wharton, Edith
(i)
Whigs
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White Castles
(i)
White House (Washington)
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White, Resolved
(i)
Whitney, Eli
(i)
Whittier, John Greenleaf
(i)
Wilcox, Harvey Henderson
(i)
Wilcox, Mrs Harvey Henderson
(i)
Wilder, Billy
(i)
Willard, Emma
(i)
Willet, William
(i)
Williams, Chief Inspector Alexander
(i)
Williamsburg (Virginia)
(i)
Willkie, Wendell
(i)
Willow Creek
(i)
Wilson, Charles E
(i)
Wilson, James
(i)
Wilson, Kemmons
(i)
Wilson, Samuel
(i)
Wirt, William
(i)
Wister, Owen
(i)
women
(i)
,
(ii)
,
(iii)
,
(iv)
,
(v)
,
(vi)
bias-free language
(i)
gynaecology
(i)
Woodhull, Victoria Claflin
(i)
,
(ii)
Woolworth, Frank W
(i)
Wordsworth, William
(i)
work
(i)
wrestling
(i)
Wright, Frances (Fanny)
(i)
,
(ii)
Wright, Orville
(i)
Wyler, William
(i)
Yale
(i)
Yorkshire (England)
(i)
Zanesville (Ohio)
(i)
Zangwill, Israel
(i)
Zeppelin, Count Ferdinand von
(i)
Zinn, Howard
(i)
Zinnemann, Fred
(i)
Zola, Émile
(i)
Zollner, Fred
(i)
Zukor, Adolf
(i)
*1
Mrs Hemans’ other principal contribution to posterity was the poem ‘Casabianca’, now remembered chiefly for its opening line; ‘The boy stood on the burning deck.’
*2
The
Mayflower,
like Plymouth Rock, appears to have made no sentimental impression on the colonists. Not once in
Of Plimouth Plantation,
William Bradford’s history of the colony, did he mention the ship by name. Just three years after its epochal crossing, the
Mayflower
was unceremoniously broken up and sold for salvage. According to several accounts, it ended up being made into a barn that still stands in the village of Jordans, Buckinghamshire, about twenty miles from London. Coincidentally, almost in its shadow is the grave of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania.
*3
Founded in 1610, this small colony was abandoned in the 1630s, though it was soon replaced by other British settlements on the island. Because of their isolation, Newfoundlanders created a peculiarly colourful patois blending new coinages and old English dialectal words that now exist nowhere else:
diddies
for a nightmare,
nunny-bag
for a kind of knapsack,
cocksiddle
for a somersault,
rushing the waddock
for the game of rugby. They continue to employ many odd pronunciations.
Chitterlings,
for instance, is pronounced ‘chistlings’. The one word that Newfoundland has given the world is
penguin.
No one has any idea what inspired it.
*4
Spain was preyed on not only by sailors from rival nations, but also by mutineer sailors of her own. These latter were called
buccaneers
because after fleeing their Spanish masters they would sustain themselves by smoking the flesh of wild hogs on a wooden frame called a boucan, until they could capture a becalmed ship and make it their own.
*5
And that, incidentally, is all
ye
ever was – another way of writing
the.
It was a convenience for scribes and printers, a device that made it easier to justify lines. It was not pronounced ‘yee’.
*6
Why the –
s
termination rose to prominence is something of a mystery. It came from northern England, a region that had, and still has, many dialectal differences from the more populous south, none other of which has ever had the slightest influence on the speech of London and its environs. Why the inhabitants of southern England suddenly began to show a special regard for the form in the late sixteenth century is unknown.
*7
This
ye,
it should be noted, is etymologically distinct from the
ye
used as an alternative for
the.
As a pronoun
ye
was used for one person and
you
for more than one. Gradually this useful distinction fell out of use and
you
became the invariable form. But we kept the odd practice of associating it with a plural verb, which is why we address a single person with ‘you are’ when logically we ought to say ‘you is’. In fact, until about 1760 ‘you is’ and ‘you was’ were wholly unexceptionable.
*8
Noon is a small oddity. It comes from the Old English word
nones,
meaning the ninth hour of daylight, or 3 p.m., when prayers were commonly said. It changed to 12 p.m. in the Middle Ages when the time of prayers changed to midday. But in Britain for a time it represented either of the twelfth hours, which explains references in older texts to ‘the noon of midnight’ and the like.
*9
At least the English colonists made some attempt to honour the Indian names. The French and Spanish appeared scarcely to notice what names the tribes used. The French ignored the name
Chopunnish,
the name used by a tribe of the Pacific northwest, and instead called the people the
Nez Percé,
’pierced nose’, for their habit of wearing sea-shells in their nostrils. They performed a similar disservice with
Siwash, which is actually just a modified form of the French sauvage, or savage,
and with
Gros Ventre
(French for ‘big belly’). The Spanish, meanwhile, ignored the comely, lilting name
Ha-no-o-shatch
(’children of the sun’) and called this south-western tribe the Pueblos, ‘people’.