2,407 articles
Vilhjalmur Stefansson
Vilhjalmur Stefansson was a Canadian-born explorer, anthropologist, and author who participated in multiple polar expeditions and commanded the Canadian Arctic Expedition between 1913 and 1918.
Violet Brown
Violet Brown (née Moss, Mosse), Jamaican supercentenarian (10 March 1900 – 15 September 2017), oldest verified living person from April to September 2017 at 117 years 189 days, first verified Jamaican supercentenarian and oldest verified Jamaican ever.
Visa policy of Australia
Australia's visa policy: rules under the Migration Act 1958 and Migration Regulations 1994 governing visitor, student, skilled, family and humanitarian visas, the points test, fees, and recent policy changes.
Visa policy of Mexico
The visa policy of Mexico is grounded in the Migration Law (Ley de Migración), allowing exempt nationals 180 days to enter for tourism or business without a visa.
Visa policy of the Philippines
Visa policy of the Philippines: EO 408 visa-free rules (30 days general; 14-day Indian and Chinese regimes from June 2025), 9(a) visas, BI extensions and fees, balikbayan privilege, and the eVisaPH platform.
Visayans
Visayans (Bisaya) are the ethnolinguistic peoples of the central Philippines, divided into Cebuano, Waray, Hiligaynon, Kinaray-a, and Aklanon groups speaking related Bisayan Austronesian languages; Spaniards once called them Pintados, and tens of millions live in the Visayas and on Mindanao.
Visible minority
Visible minority: Canadian legal and census category (Employment Equity Act) for non-Indigenous, non-white persons; coined by Kay Livingstone in 1975; 26.5% of Canada in 2021; now termed racialized groups.
Viv Nicholson
Viv Nicholson, born Vivian Asprey (1936–2015), British football pools winner whose "spend, spend, spend" vow after the 1961 Littlewoods £152,319 jackpot made her famous; her life inspired an autobiography, BBC play, and West End musical.
Vlachs
Vlachs: Romance-speaking Balkan peoples, chiefly Aromanians plus Megleno-Romanians and Istro-Romanians; historically transhumant herders; scattered across Greece, Albania, North Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Romania; disputed populations, endangered languages.
Vlahii
Vlahii (Romanian, "the Vlachs"): exonym of Celtic origin for Romance-speaking Balkan populations, attested from the 9th century; also a village in Constanța County, Romania, and a Pleiades ancient fort record (BAtlas 22 E4).
Vokkaliga (ಒಕ್ಕಲಿಗ)
Vokkaliga (ಒಕ್ಕಲಿಗ), also Okkaliga or Gowda, is a group of landowning agrarian castes of southern Karnataka, India; the classic example of Srinivas's dominant caste, largely rural-OBC classified, and a major force in Karnataka politics.
Volga Germans
Volga Germans: German-speaking settlers invited to Russia by Catherine II's 1763 manifesto, founding 106 Volga villages; later organized in a 1924-1941 ASSR, deported by Stalin in 1941, with diasporas in the Americas, Kazakhstan, and Germany.
Volga Tatars
Volga Tatars (Kazan Tatars), a Turkic Muslim people of the middle Volga and Tatarstan, descended from Volga Bulgars and Kipchaks; Islamic since 922, ruled by the Kazan Khanate until Ivan IV's 1552 conquest, distinct from Crimean and Siberian Tatars.
Voluntary association
Voluntary association: a group people join by choice to pursue shared interests, also called a normative organization in Etzioni's typology. Covers Tocqueville's account, legal meaning, social capital research, and modern sector statistics.
Wabanaki Confederacy
The Wabanaki Confederacy, also called Wabenaki, was an alliance of Algonquian-speaking Indigenous nations, including the Mi'kmaq, Penobscot, and Abenaki, in Maine, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Quebec.
Waif
Waif: a homeless, neglected person, especially a thin child, and in old English law unclaimed property or stray animals; from Anglo-French and Old Norse veif, the source of 'waifs and strays'.
Wakhi people
Wakhi people: an Indo-Iranian, East Iranian-speaking ethnic group of the Pamirs, living in Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor, Tajikistan, Pakistan's Hunza, and Xinjiang; traditionally Ismaili agropastoralists with transhumance to high pastures.
Walkabout
Walkabout is an Australian English term from 1828 for Aboriginal movement into the bush, used pejoratively by settlers for aimless wandering while carrying Indigenous meanings of purposeful travel through Country for food, ceremony, and renewal.
Walloons
Walloons: French-speaking people of southern Belgium (Wallonia, ~3.5 million, 55% of Belgian territory), distinct from the Flemish by language and history; name from Frankish "Walha"; former industrial heartland.
Walser people
Walser, who are a group of Alemannic-speaking Alpine people, originated in Switzerland's Upper Valais. They colonized high mountain valleys across the Alps starting in the 12th century.
Wampanoag
Wampanoag (Wôpanâak): Indigenous people of southeastern Massachusetts and eastern Rhode Island, led historically by Massasoit Ousamequin, parties to the 1621 Plymouth harvest event and King Philip's War (1675–1676), with the Mashpee and Aquinnah tribes federally recognized today.
WAR (newspaper)
WAR, later The Insurgent, was the neo-Nazi tabloid of Tom Metzger's White Aryan Resistance, published from Fallbrook, California from the 1980s; it billed itself as the most racist newspaper on earth and promoted Third Position politics.
Wariʼ
The Wariʼ, also called the Pakaa Nova after the Pacaas Novos river, are an indigenous people of Rondônia, Brazil, first recorded in 1798 and known for funerary cannibalism.
Washoe people
The Washoe people (Waší·šiw, 'people from here'), also called Washo, are an Indigenous people of the Lake Tahoe Basin in California and Nevada, speaking the isolate Washo language; organized as the federally recognized Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California.
WaterAid
WaterAid is an international WASH charity and federation founded in the UK on 21 July 1981 by water industry figures led by David Kinnersley; it works in 22 countries, has reached 28.9 million people with clean water, and co-led the 2025 $40 million #TeamWater campaign.
Wealth and religion
Wealth and religion: the reciprocal link between economic conditions and religiosity. Wealthier countries score lower on prayer, attendance, and religion's importance (correlation about -0.80); income gains causally reduce attendance, while religious affiliation and belief shape wealth accumulation.
Week
The week is a seven-day time cycle standing between day and month. It derives from Babylonian lunar divisions and the planetary week, was standardized in Rome and adopted by Constantine in 321 CE, and is numbered today under ISO 8601 (Monday first, 52 or 53 weeks).
Welsh people
Welsh people are the people of Wales, UK; in Census 2021 55.2% had a Welsh-only identity, 17.8% spoke Welsh, 93.8% were White, and identity is shaped by the Welsh language, St David's Day, eisteddfodau, rugby, and a diaspora with hiraeth.
Wendat people
Wendat (Huron, Huron-Wendat, Ouendat), an Iroquoian-speaking people of south-central Ontario at early 17th century contact; horticultural-hunting villages, ossuary burials, French alliances, epidemics; today the Huron-Wendat Nation at Wendake, Quebec.
Werner Goldberg
Werner Goldberg, a German Mischling of half-Jewish ancestry, served briefly as a Wehrmacht private in World War II; his 1939 Berliner Tageblatt photo as "The Ideal German Soldier" was used in recruitment posters before his discharge.