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Pan-American Union

(Encyclopedia)Pan-American Union, former name for the General Secretariat of the Organization of American States (OAS). It was founded (1889–90) at the first of the modern Inter-American Conferences (see Pan-Amer...

Rosecrans, William Starke

(Encyclopedia)Rosecrans, William Starke rōzˈkrănz [key], 1819–98, Union general in the American Civil War, b. Kingston, Ohio. He served in the army from 1842 to 1854 and in Apr., 1861, rejoined as a volunteer....

Colby, William Egan

(Encyclopedia)Colby, William Egan, 1920–96, American public official, b. St. Paul, Minn., grad. Princeton, 1940. During World War II he served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and in 1944 was dropped by ...

Phips, Sir William

(Encyclopedia)Phips, Sir William, 1651–95, American colonial governor. Born in what is today Maine, he was a carpenter and shipbuilder in Boston and became interested in sunken treasure. On his second hunt for tr...

William of Orange

(Encyclopedia)William of Orange: see William the Silent; William II, prince of Orange; William III, king of England. ...

Shenstone, William

(Encyclopedia)Shenstone, William, 1714–63, English poet and landscape gardener. The Schoolmistress (1742), his best-known poem, was written in imitation of Spenser. His home, “Leasowes,” in Shropshire, was a ...

Warner, William

(Encyclopedia)Warner, William, 1558?–1609, English poet. A lawyer educated at Oxford, he wrote Pan his Syrinx (1584), translated Plautus's Menaechmi (1595), and gained a reputation with Albion's England, a long h...

Frederick William IV

(Encyclopedia)Frederick William IV, 1795–1861, king of Prussia (1840–61), son and successor of Frederick William III. A romanticist and a mystic, he conceived vague schemes of reform based on a revival of the m...

Wirt, William

(Encyclopedia)Wirt, William wûrt [key], 1772–1834, U.S. Attorney General and author, b. Bladensburg, Md. He had little formal schooling but was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1792. His first book was an anonymo...

Langland, William

(Encyclopedia)Langland, William, c.1332–c.1400, putative author of Piers Plowman. He was born probably at Ledbury near the Welsh marshes and may have gone to school at Great Malvern Priory. Although he took minor...