Standish, Myles (b. c. 1584, Lancashire, Eng.—d. Oct. 3, 1656, Dux- bury. Mass.) British-American colonist. He fought in the Netherlands, where he met the Pilgrims, with whom he later sailed to North America on the Mayflower (1620). As the Plymouth colony’s military leader, he led several expeditions against hostile Indian tribes. He served as the colo¬ ny’s assistant governor and treasurer (1644-49). There is no historical evidence for the story that he asked John Alden to propose marriage for him to Priscilla Mullins, as mythologized in Henry W. Longfellow’s poem The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858).
Stanford, (Amasa) Leland (b. March 9, 1824, Watervliet, N.Y., U.S.—d. June 21, 1893, Palo Alto, Calif.) U.S. entrepreneur, a builder of the first transcontinental railroad. He practiced law in Wisconsin before settling in Sacramento, Calif., where he built a successful retail business in mining supplies and became active in local politics. He served as gov¬ ernor of California (1861-63). He invested heavily in the plan to build a transcontinental railroad, and when the Central Pacific Railroad was orga¬ nized in 1861 he became its president (1863-93). During his tenure its track was built eastward to join that of the Union Pacific at Promontory, Utah (1869), and he played a major role in further railroad development in California and the Southwest. From 1885 to 1893 he served in the U.S. Senate. He and his wife, Jane, founded Stanford University in 1885.
Stanhope, Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl (b. Aug. 3, 1753, Lon¬ don, Eng.—d. Dec. 15, 1816, Chevening, Kent) English politician and inventor. A member of the House of Commons (1780-86), where he was known as Lord Mahon until inheriting his father’s title, he became chair¬ man of the Revolution Society and favoured parliamentary reform. He sympathized with the French republicans and opposed Britain’s war with Revolutionary France. He was also an experimental scientist and invented calculating machines, a printing press and a microscope lens named for him, a stereotyping machine, and a steam carriage.
Stanhope, James Stanhope, 1 st Earl (b. 1673, Paris, France—d. Feb. 5, 1721, London, Eng.) English soldier and statesman. He began a military career in 1691 and rose rapidly to become commander in chief of the English army in Spain in 1708 in the War of the Spanish Succes¬ sion. He was defeated and captured by the French (1710), then returned to England (1712) and regained his seat in the House of Commons (1701— 21). He served in the Whig government as secretary of state and nego¬ tiated the Quadruple Alliance against Spain (1718). Stanhope served as first lord of the treasury (1717-18), but his ministry was discredited by the South Sea Bubble scandal.
Stanislavsky \,sta-ni-'slaf-ske\, Konstantin (Sergeyevich) orig. Konstantin Sergeyevich Alekseyev (b. Jan. 17, 1863, Moscow, Russia—d. Aug. 7, 1938, Moscow) Russian director and actor. From age 14 he acted with his family’s amateur dramatic group, and in 1888 he cofounded a permanent dramatic company. He won praise in 1891 for his first independent production, The Fruits of Enlightenment. In 1898 he and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko (1858-1943) founded the Moscow Art Theatre; that year it restaged Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull to great acclaim. Stanislavsky continued to direct and act in many Russian plays, including Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya (1899) and The Cherry Orchard (1904). He trained his actors to achieve greater realism by identifying deeply with their characters, a technique that became known as the Stanislavsky method. His company toured Europe and the U.S. (1922-24), where his method influenced the later development of the Group Theatre and the Actors Studio.
Stanislavsky method or method acting Influential system of dramatic training developed by the Russian actor, producer, and theore¬ tician Konstantin Stanislavsky. The method was developed over years of trial and error, beginning c. 1898. It requires that an actor use his emo¬ tion memory (i.e., his recall of past experiences and emotions) to iden¬ tify with the character’s inner motivation. The technique was developed in reaction to the histrionic acting styles of the 19th century. Noted Ameri¬ can practitioners began using the method in the 1920s; they have included Lee Strasberg, Marlon Brando, Dustin Hoffman, and Eli Wallach.
Stanisiaw \sta-'ne-slaf\ I orig. Stanisiaw Leszczynski (b. Oct. 20, 1677, Lwow, Pol.—d. Feb. 23, 1766, Luneville, France) King of Poland (1704-09, 1733). The son of a Polish noble, he became king when Charles XII of Sweden invaded Poland (1702), deposed King Augustus II, and placed Stanisiaw on the throne (1704). When Sweden was defeated by the Russians in 1709, Augustus regained the throne, and Stanisiaw settled in France, where his daughter Marie married Louis XV. After Augustus’s
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1812 I Stanislaw II August Poniatowski ► star
death (1733), Stanislaw was elected king of Poland, but Russia invaded to prevent an alliance with France, causing the War of the Polish Succes¬ sion. Deposed again, Stanislaw was granted the provinces of Lorraine and Bar, where he promoted economic development and made his court at Luneville a cultural centre.
Stanistaw II August Poniatowski Vp6n-ya-'t6f-ske\ orig. Stanislaw Poniatowski (b. Jan. 17, 1732, Wolczyn, Pol.—d. Feb. 12, 1798, St. Petersburg, Russia) King of Poland (1764-95). Son of a Pol¬ ish noble, he was sent in 1757 to Russia to win support for Polish inter¬ ests and became the lover of the future Empress Catherine II. In 1764 Catherine used Russian troops and influence to ensure Stanislaw’s elec¬ tion as king. He tried to introduce administrative reforms, but opposition from Polish nobles and from Catherine forced him to continue his rule as a pawn of Russia. He attempted to pass a new constitution but could not stop the partitions of Poland (1772, 1793, 1795), after which he abdicated.
Stanley, Francis Edgar; and Stanley, Freelan O. (respectively b. June 1, 1849, Kingfield, Maine, U.S.—d. July 31,1918, Ipswich, Mass.; b. June 1, 1849, Kingfield, Maine, U.S.—d. Oct. 2, 1940, Boston, Mass.) U.S. inventors of the steam-driven automobile. In 1883 the twin brothers invented a dry-plate photographic process and conducted experiments with steam engines. In 1897 they built a steam-powered car, and in 1902 they established a company to manufacture their “Stanley Steamers.” In 1906 they set a world record for the fastest mile, in 28.2 seconds. They retired in 1917; their company continued to manufacture cars until 1924, declining as gasoline-powered cars became easier to start and operate and steam cars became less popular.
Stanley, Sir Henry Morton orig. John Rowlands (b. Jan. 28, 1841, Denbigh, Denbighshire,
Wales—d. May 10, 1904, London,
Eng.) British-U.S. explorer of central Africa. An illegitimate child, Stanley grew up partly in a British work- house; he sailed to the U.S. as a cabin boy in 1859. After becoming a jour¬ nalist for the New York Herald in 1867, he embarked (1871) on a jour¬ ney to locate David Livingstone, of whom little had been heard since his departure for Africa in 1866. On finding him at Ujiji on Lake Tanga¬ nyika, Stanley uttered the famous words “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”
He further explored central Africa for extended periods between 1874 and 1884, often in the service of Leopold II of Belgium, for whom he paved the way for the creation of the Congo Free State. Stanley’s last expedition (1888) was for the relief of Mehmed Emin Pasha, who had been cut off by the Mahdist revolt in the Sudan; he escorted Emin and 1,500 others to the eastern coast. His highly popular books include Through the Dark Continent (1878) and In Dark¬ est Africa (1890).
Stanley, Wendell Meredith (b. Aug. 16, 1904, Ridgeville, Ind., U.S.—d. June 15, 1971, Salamanca, Spain) U.S. biochemist. He taught at the University of California at Berkeley from 1948 until his death. He is known for his work in the purification and crystallization of viRUSes to demonstrate their molecular structure. He crystallized the tobacco mosaic virus and did important work on the influenza virus, for which he devel¬ oped a vaccine. He shared a Nobel Prize in 1946 with John Howard Northrop and James Sumner.