House sparrow (Passer domesticus)
ERIC HOSKING
tury ad). His first poetry volume, A Shropshire Lad (1896)—with its much-anthologized “When I was One-and Twenty”—was based on Classical and traditional models; its lyrics express a Romantic pessimism in a spare, simple style. It gradually grew popular, and his second vol¬ ume, Last Poems (1922), was extremely successful. Other works include the lecture The Name and Nature of Poetry (1933) and the posthumous collection More Poems (1936). His brother is the novelist and playwright Laurence Housman
(1865-1959).
Houston City (pop., 2000:
1,953,631), southern Texas, U.S. An inland port, it is linked by the Hous¬ ton Ship Channel to the Gulf of Mexico and to the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway at Galveston. Founded in 1836, it was named for Sam Houston; it was the capital of the Republic of Texas (1837-39). The state’s largest city and leading port, it is a cen¬ tre for oil, petrochemical, and aerospace research and development (see also NASA). The area is also important for rice, cotton, and cattle. It has several institutions for higher learning, including Rice University and Bay¬ lor College of Medicine. Houston is home to a symphony orchestra and ballet, an opera, and various theatre companies.
Houston, Charles H(amilton) (b. Sept. 3, 1895, Washington, D.C., U.S.—d. April 22, 1950, Washington, D.C.) U.S. lawyer and educator. He graduated from Amherst College and taught for two years at Howard University before serving as an officer in World War I. At Harvard Law School he became the first African American editor of the Harvard Law Review. Houston practiced law with his father (1924-50), also serving as special counsel to the NAACP (1935^40). Before the U.S. Supreme Court, in State ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1939), he successfully challenged racial segregation in public schools in areas where no “separate but equal” facili¬ ties existed; the decision was a forerunner of Brown v. Board of Educa¬ tion (1954). He was a teacher and mentor of Thurgood Marshall.
A.E. Housman, detail of a drawing by William Rothenstein, 1906; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, LONDON
2, 1793, Rockbridge county, Va.,
Houston, Sam(uel) (b. March U.S.—d. July 26, 1863, Huntsville,
Texas) U.S. politician. After the death of his father in 1807, Houston moved with his family to a farm in rural Tennessee. In his mid-teens he ran away and lived for nearly three years with the Cherokee Indians.
After service in the War of 1812 he practiced law in Nashville and was elected to the U.S. House of Repre¬ sentatives (1823-27). He was elected governor of Tennessee in 1827. After his marriage failed in 1829, he resigned his office and sought refuge among the Cherokee, who formally adopted him into the tribe. He twice traveled to Washington, D.C., to expose fraud perpetrated by govern¬ ment agents against the Indians. In 1832 he was sent by Pres. Andrew Jackson to Texas, then a Mexican province, to negotiate treaties with the Indians there. When U.S. settlers in Texas began an armed rebellion in 1835, the provisional Texas government chose him to command its army, and he defeated the Mexicans at San Jacinto, securing Texan indepen¬ dence. He served as president of the Republic of Texas (1836-38, 1841— 44) and helped it to win statehood (1845); he then served in the U.S. Senate (1846-59). He was elected governor in 1859, but his pro-Union views were opposed by Democratic state leaders, who voted to secede in 1861. After he refused to swear allegiance to the Confederacy, he was deposed. The city of Houston was named in his honour.
Sam Houston, photograph by Mathew Brady
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, WASHINGTON, D.C.
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Hovenweep ► Howe I 901
Hovenweep Vho-v3n-,wep\ National Monument National monu¬ ment, southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah, U.S. Established in 1923 and covering 785 acres (318 hectares), it consists of six groups of pre-Columbian Indian ruins, whose towers are excellent examples of Pueblo Indian architecture of the period ad 1100-1300. Hovenweep is a Ute Indian word meaning “deserted valley.”
hovercraft See air-cushion vehicle
Hovhaness \ho-'va-n9s\, Alan or Alan Hovaness orig. Alan Vaness Chakmakjian (b. March 8, 1911, Somerville, Mass., U.S.—d. June 21, 2000, Seattle, Wash.) U.S. composer. He started to compose as a child. Studies at the New England Conservatory led him to pursue an interest in non-Western music, which began to influence his own work only after he destroyed his early compositions. Affected by the music of his Armenian heritage and his own lifelong mysticism, he com¬ posed some 500 works in addition to the 1,000 or more early pieces he destroyed in 1943. His compositions included some 60 symphonies and many other orchestral works, often on sacred themes, sometimes incor¬ porating aleatory or natural sounds, as in And God Created Great Whales
(1970).
Howard, Catherine See Catherine Howard Howard, Henry See Earl of Surrey
Howard, John Winston (b. July 26, 1939, Sydney, N.S.W., Austl.) Prime minister of Australia (from 1996) and leader of the Liberal Party. Howard became a solicitor to the New South Wales Supreme Court. In 1974 he was elected to Parliament as a member of the Liberal Party and served under Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser as minister for business and consumer affairs (1975-77) and as federal treasurer (1977-83). Howard became leader of the Liberal Party in 1985, but, after failing to unseat the Labor Party in 1987, he was defeated in his bid to retain leadership in 1989. He regained power in 1995 and engineered the defeat of Labor in the elections of March 1996. He was reelected in 1998, 2001, and 2004.
Howard, Leslie orig. Leslie Howard Steiner (b. April 3, 1893, London, Eng.—d. June 1, 1943, at sea) British actor. He became a popu¬ lar stage actor in London and later on Broadway, where he won acclaim for Her Cardboard Lover (1927), The Petrified Forest (1935), and Ham¬ let (1936). He was noted for his quiet, persuasive English charm. He made his U.S. film debut in Outward Bound (1930) and later starred in Of Human Bondage (1934), Pygmalion (1938), Intermezzo (1939), and Gone with the Wind (1939). He died during World War II (1939-45) when his plane was shot down en route from Lisbon to London.
Howard, Oliver O(tis) (b. Nov. 8,1830, Leeds, Maine, U.S.—d. Oct. 26, 1909, Burlington, Vt.) U.S. Army officer. He graduated from West Point and served in the American Civil War as a major general of Maine volunteers, fighting at Bull Run,
Antietam, Chancellorsville, and Get¬ tysburg. He commanded the Army of the Tennessee (1864) and marched with William T. Sherman through Georgia. During Reconstruction he was named commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau. He helped found Howard University (1867), which was named in his honour, and served as its president (1869-74). He resigned to return to military service, fighting against the Indians (1877) and later serving as superintendent at West Point (1880-82).
Howard, Ron (b. March 1, 1954,
Duncan, Okla., U.S.) U.S. actor and director. He became a child star of television and films, appearing in The Music Man (1962) and on television’s Andy Griffith Show (1960-68) and Happy Days (1974-80). He returned to movies in American Graffiti (1973), made his directorial debut with Grand Theft Auto (1977), and went on to direct such successful films as Splash (1984), Cocoon (1985), Par¬ enthood (1989), Apollo 13 (1995), and A Beautiful Mind (2001, Academy Award). He heads his own production company.
Howard family Famous English family, founded by William Howard, a lawyer in the county of Norfolk who was summoned to Parliament in 1295. The head of the Howard family, the duke of Norfolk, is the premier duke and hereditary earl marshal of England. The earls of Suffolk, Car¬ lisle, and Effingham and Lord Howard of Glossop and Lord Stafford rep¬ resent the family in its younger lines. Thomas Howard, 3rd duke of Norfolk, held high offices under Henry VIII, who married two of Howard’s nieces, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. The 4th duke of Norfolk was executed for intrigues against Elizabeth I, but Charles, 2nd Lord Howard of Effingham (1536-1624), was lord high admiral under Elizabeth and commanded the fleet that defeated the Spanish Armada. The family’s Roman Catholicism kept it from prominence during certain periods.