(1889–1953) Republican leader in the U.S. Senate from 1939 through 1953.
He was called "Mr. Republican" for his strong support for conservative
political positions.
(To Sail Beyond the Sunset)
William Howard Taft
(1857–1930) 27th president of the United States (1909–13) and 10th chief
justice of the United States (1921–30). During his presidency, he angered and
disappointed the progressives in the Republican Party by failing to carry
forward the reform agenda of his predecessor, Teddy Roosevelt. The resulting
split within the party resulted in his overwhelming defeat for re-election.
(To Sail Beyond the Sunset)
Tagalog
Dominant ethnic group in the Philippines, and the language they speak.
(Starship Troopers)
Talbot Saloon
British touring car manufactured from the 1920s through the 1950s.
Tangaroa
Polynesian sea-god, who separated the sky from the earth. He is a son of
Earth-Mother Papa and Sky-Father Rangi.
(Tunnel in the Sky)
Tannhäuser
(c. 1200 – c. 1270) German lyric poet who became the hero of a legend
preserved in a ballad traceable to 1515. Enticed to the court of Venus,
Tannhäuser lives a life of pleasure, but soon, torn by remorse, he makes a
pilgrimage to Rome to seek remission of his sins. The pope, however, tells him
that, just as his pilgrim's staff will never grow leaves again, so his sins
can never be forgiven. In despair Tannh&amul;user returns to the court of
Venus. Shortly afterward, his discarded staff begins to put forth green
leaves.
(Between Planets, Podkayne of Mars)
Abel Janszoon Tasman
(1603?–1659?) Dutch navigator who discovered Tasmania, New Zealand, Tonga,
and the Fiji Islands.
(Friday)
Tasmania
(Formerly Van Diemen's Land) State of Australia, an island about 150 miles
(240 km) south of Victoria across the Bass Strait. It is named for Dutch
explorer Abel Tasman, who discovered the island in 1642.
(Glory Road)
Tau Ceti
Star in the south-central part of the constellation Cetus (the Whale). It
is a yellow-orange dwarf 11.9 light-years from Earth.
(Time for the Stars)
Tchaka
(c. 1787–1820; also spelled Shaka or Tshaka) Zulu chief (1816–28) who
founded southern Africa's Zulu Empire, and who led his army in a fierce
resistance against European imperialism.
(Starship Troopers)
Edward Teller
(1908– ) Hungarian-born U.S. nuclear physicist who worked on the first
atomic bomb and the world's first thermonuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb. He
was instrumental in founding Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, and was its
director from 1958 to 1960. (Tunnel in the Sky)
Tellus
(Also Terra Mater, Latin "Earth [Our] Mother") Roman earth goddess,
concerned with fertility and the productivity of the earth. In later myths she
is identified with the mother-goddess Cybele.
(The Number of the Beast, Time Enough for Love, To Sail
Beyond the Sunset)
The Terror
(Also Reign of Terror, French La Terreur) The period following the
French Revolution during which the government enacted a program of nearly
indiscriminate executions to rid the country of "enemies" of the Revolution.
At least 300,000 suspects were arrested; 17,000 were officially executed, and
many died in prison.
(Starship Troopers)
Texas
(Nicknamed the Lone Star State) Constituent state of the United States of
America, the second-largest in physical area, situated in the south-central
U.S. along the border with Mexico. Its capital is Austin. The territory was
originally claimed by Spain as part of Mexico. When Mexico achieved
independence from Spain, it consented to a colonial venture led by Stephen
Austin; this colony was the beginning of the Anglo-American settlement of
Texas. The U.S. presence grew steadily, and in 1836 Texans declared the
independent Republic of Texas and defeated Mexico's attempt to keep the
territory through military domination. After a 10-year effort to remain a
viable independent nation, Texas entered the United States in 1845 as the 28th
state. It joined the Confederacy during the Civil War, and was not readmitted
to the Union until 1869.
(Friday, Tunnel in the Sky)
Theta Centauri
Star in the constellation Centaurus; also called Menkent ("shoulder of the
Centaur"). It is an orange giant about 61 light-years from Earth, with an
apparent magnitude of 2.06.
Thoth
(Egyptian Djhuty, also spelled Djhowtey) In Egyptian myth,
god of the moon and of learning. He was said to be the inventor of languages
and of writing. He weighed the hearts of the dead to judge their virtue and
sins. His sacred animals were the ibis and the baboon. In the myth of Osiris,
Thoth protected Isis during her pregnancy and healed the eye of her son Horus.
(Citizen of the Galaxy)
Thousand Nights and a Night
(Also translated as The Thousand and One Nights or The Arabian
Nights) Collection of Arabic stories of uncertain date and authorship
whose tales of Aladdin, Ali Baba, and Sindbad the Sailor have almost become
part of Western folklore. In the frame story, King Shahryar, discovering that
his wife has been regularly unfaithful, kills her; and then, seeking revenge
on all womankind, he marries and kills a new wife each day. His vizier's
daughter, Shahrazad (Scheherazade), however, insists that her father give her
in marriage to the king. Each evening she tells Shahryar a story, but breaks
off before the end, promising to finish it the following night. The stories
are so enthralling that the king keeps postponing her execution until,
recognizing Shahrazad's virtue as well as her cleverness, he finally abandons
his cruel plan. The most famous English translation of the stories is by the
explorer and scholar Sir Richard Burton (1821–1890).
(Farnham's Freehold)
Threadneedle Street
Street in London, England, situated roughly between St. Paul's Cathedral
and the Tower of London. The main building of the Bank of England is on this
street. The name may be a corruption of Thryddanen or Thryddenal Street,
meaning "third street" from Cheapside.
(The Cat Who Walks Through Walls)
Three Men in a Boat
Comic novel about a boating expedition down the Thames River with three
friends and their dog, Montmerency, written by Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927)
and published by J.W. Arrowsmith (England) in 1889. [Library of Congress call
number PR4825.J3T5]
(Have Space Suit — Will Travel)
The Three Musketeers
Novel by Alexandre Dumas père (1802–1870) about the adventures of
four members of the king's guard (the three of the title, and a brash newcomer
who becomes their colleague and friend) during the reign of King Louis XIII of
France. Written in 1844, it is still popular today, in the English editions as
much as in the original French.
(Orphans of the Sky)
Thule
1. Former name for Dundas, Greenland,
site of a major U.S. air base and communications center. It is situated on
Cape Atholl and the southern shore of Wolstenholme Fjord, an inlet of Baffin
Bay.
2. In ancient Roman literature, Ultima
Thule was the northernmost part of the habitable world.
(Citizen of the Galaxy, The Door Into Summer, Starman
Jones, Tunnel in the Sky)
Howard Thurston
(1869–1936) Professional magician who began his career in a circus
sideshow and eventually performed throughout Europe, Australia, and Asia. He
was famous for large-scale illusions, such as making an automobile filled with
beautiful women disappear, and floating an assistant above the stage to
disappear over the footlights.
(Time Enough for Love)
Titan
Largest moon of Saturn, the only satellite in the solar system known to
have clouds and a dense atmosphere. It was discovered by Christiaan Huygens in
1655. It is named for the Titans, in Greek myth the children of Uranus
(Heaven) and Gaea (Earth).
(Podkayne of Mars, The Puppet Masters, The Rolling
Stones)
Tivoli
Pleasure garden in Copenhagen, which contains restaurants, pavilions,
open-air theaters, an amusement park, a boating lake, and extensive flower
gardens. The park was opened in 1843 by writer-architect Georg Carstensen
(1812–59).
("Gulf")
Tokyo
Capital of Japan, situated at the head of Tokyo Bay on the Pacific coast
of central Honshu. The site has been inhabited since ancient times; the small
fishing village of Edo existed for centuries, but only developed into a city
when it became the capital of the Tokugawa shogunate (1603–1867). Until 1868,
the city was called Edo.
(To Sail Beyond the Sunset)
J.R.R. Tolkien
(1892–1973) English scholar who wrote the fantasy novels The Hobbit
(1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954–55), which inspired a widespread
popular interest in fantasy and folklore. The Lord of the Rings is
firmly grounded in Tolkien's philological research; he developed the Elvish
language for this and other stories about his elaborately developed world of
Middle Earth. The Hobbit was written to entertain his own children, but
also provides a background to the events in the later novel.
(The Number of the Beast)
Clyde William Tombaugh
(1906–1997) U.S. astronomer who discovered Pluto in
1930. He also discovered several clusters of stars and galaxies, studied the
distribution of extragalactic nebulae, and studied the surfaces of Mars,
Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Moon.
(Have Space Suit — Will Travel)
Toowoomba
City in southeastern Queensland, Australia, on the Great Dividing Range.
It was originally called The Swamps; its current name may have derived from
the Aboriginal toowoom (melon). Founded as a village in 1849, it was
declared a town in 1858, a municipality in 1860, and a city in 1904.
(Friday)
Evangelista Torricelli
(1608–1647) Italian physicist and mathematician who invented the barometer
and whose work in geometry contributed to the eventual development of integral
calculus. He was an assistant to Galileo Galilei during the last years of
Galileo's life, then succeeded him as professor of mathematics at the
Florentine Academy.
(The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress)
Tours
City in west central France on the Loire River. It is the center of
tourism for the Loire Valley and its historic châteaus. In the Battle of
Tours, 732 CE, Charles Martel, ruler of the Frankish kingdom, defeated Moorish
invaders from Spain in what proved to be the turning point for the advance of
Islam into western Europe.
(Starship Troopers)
Tristan
(Also called Tristram) Hero of a medieval romance based on a Celtic legend
(itself inspired by an actual Pictish king). In the legend, the young Tristan
ventures to Ireland to ask the hand of the princess Iseult (or Isolde) for his
uncle, King Mark of Cornwall. On the homeward journey Tristan and Iseult
inadvertently drink the love potion prepared by the queen for her daughter and
the king. The two undergo many misadventures and tragedies because of the
conflict between their imperishable love and their duty to King Mark, finally
dying in each other's arms. The story was grafted onto the Arthurian mythos in
the 13th century, with Tristan becoming one of the Knights of the Round Table.
(Have Space Suit — Will Travel)
Trojan horse
Book II of the Aeneid by the Roman poet Vergil describes how the Greeks,
at the end of the Trojan War, deceived the Trojans by building a giant wooden
horse ostensibly as an offering to the goddess Athena, then pretended to lift
their siege and sail away. In fact, Greek soldiers were hidden inside the
horse. When the Trojans brought the horse within their city walls as a prize
of war, the hidden Greeks waited until the residents were asleep, and then
emerged to open the gates for the rest of the army. The term "Trojan horse"
has come to mean any deceitful means of getting within an enemy's defenses.
(Starship Troopers)
Leon Trotsky
(1879–1940; original name Lev Davidovich Bronshtein) Communist theorist
and revolutionary. He was a leader in Russia's October Revolution in 1917, and
served as commissar of foreign affairs and war in the early Soviet Union
(1917–1924). After Lenin's death, however, he lost a power struggle with
Joseph Stalin, and was removed from the government and exiled. He was
assassinated by a Stalinist agent.
(Farnham's Freehold)
Harry S Truman
(1884–1972) 33rd president of the United States (1945–53), who succeeded
Franklin Roosevelt upon Roosevelt's death in office. Truman led the U.S. to
the final stages of World War II, authorizing the use of atomic bombs to end
the fighting in Japan; vigorously opposed Soviet expansionism in Europe; and
sent U.S. forces to turn back a Communist invasion of South Korea. He
continued Roosevelt's liberal domestic policies, and advanced the cause of
civil rights by desegregating the Armed Forces and supporting fair employment
legislation.
(To Sail Beyond the Sunset)
Joseph Patrick Tumulty
(1879–1954) Private secretary, press secretary, and chief of staff for
President Woodrow
Wilson from 1911 to 1921.
(To Sail Beyond the Sunset)
Alan M. Turing
(1912–1954) British mathematician and logician who made major
contributions to mathematics, cryptography, and logic; and particularly to
cognitive science and artificial intelligence. He proposed that computers
should be considered to have true intelligence if a human submitted questions,
not knowing whether the entity answering the questions was a computer or
another human, and after a fixed time the interrogator could not decide
whether the answers were coming from a human or a machine. This method is
called the Turing Test in his honor.
(Time Enough for Love)
Tycho Crater
Crater on the near side of the moon, the center of an extensive system of
bright rays that dominate the southern highlands, extending for more than
1,600 miles (2,600 km). The crater is located at 43 degrees south latitude and
11 degrees west longitude. It measures 53 miles (85 km) across and is about
2.5 miles (4 km) deep. It is named for Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe
(1546–1601).
(Between Planets, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress,
"Searchlight")
The Heinlein
Society was founded by Virginia Heinlein on behalf of her husband, science
fiction author Robert Anson Heinlein, to "pay forward" the legacy of Robert A. Heinlein to future generations of "Heinlein's Children."
