hollyhock Herbaceous plant {Althaea rosea ) of the mallow family, native to China but widely cultivated for its handsome flowers. The sev¬ eral varieties include annual, bien¬ nial, and perennial forms. The stalk, growing about 5-9 ft (1.5-2.7 m) tall, bears leaves with five to seven lobes and, along the upper portion, commonly white, pink, red, or yel¬ low flowers.
Hollywood District of the city of Los Angeles, Calif., U.S. Its name is synonymous with the American movie industry. In 1887 it was laid out as a subdivision by Horace Wil¬ cox, a prohibitionist who envisioned a community based on his religious principles. It was consolidated with Los Angeles in 1910 and became the centre of the movie industry by 1915. By the 1960s it also was the source of much American network television programming.
Hollywood City (pop., 2000: 139,357), southeastern Florida, U.S. Lying along the Atlantic coast, the site was a palmetto jungle when the developer Joseph W. Young laid out the town in 1921. It is now prima¬
rily a resort-residential city with some diversified industry. Nearby are Port Everglades (a docking and warehousing facility) and a Seminole res¬ ervation.
Hollywood Ten Group of U.S. movie producers, directors, and screen¬ writers who refused to answer questions about communist affiliations before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947. The Ten— Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner, Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Omitz, Adrian Scott, and Dalton Trumbo—were charged with contempt of Congress and given prison sentences of six months to a year. After their release, they were blacklisted and unable to find work in Hollywood, though some wrote scripts under pseudonyms. The blacklist gradually disappeared in the early 1960s.
Holm, Hanya orig. Johanna Eckert (b. March 3, 1893, Worms- am-Rhein, Ger.—d. Nov. 3, 1992,
New York, N.Y., U.S.) German-born U.S. choreographer of modem dance and Broadway musicals. After train¬ ing in Germany, she worked at Mary Wigman’s Central Institute in Dres¬ den as a dancer and teacher and later codirector. In 1931 she opened a Wigman school in New York City, which became the Hanya Holm Stu¬ dio in 1936. In addition to works for her own company, she choreo¬ graphed musicals such as My Fair Lady (1956) and Came lot (1960).
She promoted the use of dance nota¬ tion, and her choreography for Kiss Me, Kate (1948) was the first to be copyrighted.
Holmes, Larry (b. Nov. 3, 1949,
Cuthbert, Ga., U.S.) U.S. heavy¬ weight boxing champion. Holmes won 19 of 23 amateur bouts before turning professional. From 1973 to 1978 Holmes won 28 consecutive bouts, culminating in a victory over the reigning champion, Ken Norton. He defended the title 17 times between 1978 and 1983, once (1980) against Muhammad All He lost the title to Michael Spinks in 1985. Only Joe Louis held the heavyweight crown longer than Holmes.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell (b. Aug. 29, 1809, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.—d. Oct. 7, 1894, Cambridge) U.S. physician, poet, and humourist. He joined the Harvard faculty in 1847 and later became dean of its medi¬ cal school. He won national acclaim with his poem “Old Ironsides” (1830). From 1857 he published his “Breakfast-Table” essays in The Atlantic Monthly, later republished in such collections as The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858) and The Professor of the Breakfast-Table (1860). Other works include the poem “The Chambered Nautilus” and the novel Elsie Venner (1861). Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., is his son.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr. (b. March 8, 1841, Boston, Mass.—d. March 6, 1935, Washington, D.C.) U.S. jurist, legal historian, and phi¬ losopher. He was the son of Oliver Wendell Holmes and Amelia Lee Jack- son, daughter of a Massachusetts supreme court justice. As an officer in the American Civil War, he was seriously wounded three times. He prac¬ ticed law in Boston from 1867, eventually serving as an associate justice (1882-99) and then chief justice (1899-1902) of the state supreme court. In The Common Law (1881), he advanced the notion of law as accumu¬ lated experience rather than science. Appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States by Pres. Theodore Roosevelt in 1902, Holmes advocated judicial restraint, maintaining that lawmaking was the business of legis¬ lative bodies rather than the courts. In Schenk v. U.S. (1919), he articu¬ lated the “clear and present danger” test for proposed restrictions on freedom of speech. Many of his vigorous and lucid opinions, including dis¬ senting opinions (he was known as “The Great Dissenter”), became clas¬ sic interpretations of the law, and he is regarded as one of the foremost jurists of the modern age. He served until 1932.
Holocaust Hebrew Sho’ah Systematic state-sponsored killing of Jews and others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. Fueled by anti-Semitism, the Nazi persecution of Jews began soon after Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933 with a boycott of
Hollyhock (Althaea rosea)
LEFEVER/GRUSHOW FROM GRANT HEILMAN PHOTOGRAPHY, INC.
Hanya Holm, 1929.
COURTESY OF THE DANCE COLLECTION, THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY AT LINCOLN CENTER, HANYA HOLM COLLECTION
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Holocaust Remembrance ► Holy Roman I 887
Jewish businesses and the dismissal of Jewish civil servants. Under the Nurnberg Laws (1935), Jews lost their citizenship. About 7,500 Jewish businesses were gutted and some 1,000 synagogues burned or damaged in the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, and thereafter Jews were imprisoned in concentration camps or forced into ghettos. German victories early in World War II (1939—45) brought most European Jews under the control of the Nazis and their satellites. As German armies moved into Poland, the Balkans, and the Soviet Union, special mobile killing units, the Ein- satzgruppen, rounded up and killed Jews, Roma (Gypsies), communists, political leaders, and intellectuals. Other groups targeted by the Nazis included homosexuals and the mentally retarded, physically disabled, and emotionally disturbed. At the Wannsee Conference (1942), a “final solu¬ tion” was formulated for the extermination of European Jewry, and there¬ after Jews from all over Nazi-occupied Europe were systematically evacuated to concentration and extermination camps, where they were either killed or forced into slave labour. Underground resistance move¬ ments arose in several countries, and Jewish risings took place against overwhelming odds in the ghettos of Poland (see Warsaw Ghetto Upris¬ ing). Individuals such as Raoul Wallenberg saved thousands by their efforts; whether the Allied governments and the Vatican could have done more to aid Jews has long been a matter of controversy. By the end of the war, an estimated six million Jews and millions of others had been killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators.
Holocaust Remembrance days International commemoration of the millions of victims of Nazi Germany’s exterminationist policies. The commemoration, observed on different days in different countries, often marks the victims’ efforts at resistance and concentrates on contemporary efforts to battle hatred and anti-Semitism. From 1951 Jews have observed Holocaust Remembrance Day on the 27th of Nisan, shortly after Pass- over, in the Jewish calendar. The Israeli parliament declared that day Yom Hashoah ve Hagevurah (Holocaust Remembrance and Heroism Day), marking not only destruction but resistance.
Holocene Vho-l3-,sen\ Epoch formerly Recent Epoch Latest inter¬ val of the Earth’s geologic history, dating from 10,000 years ago to the present. The younger of the two epochs that constitute the Quaternary Period, the Holocene follows the last glacial stage of the Pleistocene Epoch. It is characterized by relatively warm climatic conditions. During this epoch humans have refined the skills that have led to the present level of civilization.