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The History Channel - Encyclopedia Category: History and Culture > History Date & country: 02/12/2007, UK Words: 25833

crime, organized
Illegal operations run like a large business. The best-known such organization is the Mafia. For...

Crimean War
War (1853-56) between Russia and the allied powers of England, France, Turkey, and Sardinia. The war arose from British and French mistrust of Russia's ambitions in the Balkans. It began with an...

criminal damage
Destruction of or damage to property belonging to another without lawful reason. Damaging property by fire is charged as arson. ...

criminal law
Body of law that defines the public wrongs (crimes) that are punishable by the state and establishes methods of prosecution and punishment. It is distinct from civil law, which deals with legal...

Crippen, Hawley Harvey
(1861-1910) US murderer who killed his wife, variety artist Belle Elmore, in 1910. He buried her remains in the cellar of his London home and tried to escape to the USA with his mistress Ethel le Neve (dressed...

Cripps, (Richard) Stafford
(1889-1952) British Labour politician, representing Bristol East 1931-52, and expelled from the Labour Party 1939-45 for supporting a `Popular Front` aga ...

Crispi, Francesco
(1819-1901) Italian prime minister 1887-91 and 1893-96. He advocated the Triple Alliance of Italy with Germany and Austria, but was deposed 1896. ...

Crispin, St
(died c. 285) Christian martyr, the patron saint of shoemakers. With his brother Crispinian, he is said to have left Rome for Gaul, where he worked as a shoemaker. The two brothers were martyred at Soissons;...

Crissa
Town in ancient Greece, situated southwest of Delphi near Mount Parnassus. Remains of its old walls still exist. Some have identified Crissa with Cirrha, but the general opinion is that Cirrha was...

Cristiani Burkard, Alfredo
(1947) El Salvadorean right-wing politician, president 1989-94. He negotiated, in December 1991, an end to the 12-year-long civil war with the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMNL)...

Critchley, Julian Michael Gordon
(1930-2000) UK Conservative Party politician and political journalist. Despite being an MP for over 30 years, he never obtained political office. This was because his liberal, pro-European `one nation`...

Criterion Theatre
Theatre in Piccadilly Circus, London, built underground. It was designed by Thomas Verity to hold an audience of 675 people. It opened in 1874, but was not successful until 1879 when Charles Wyndham...

Criterion, The
English quarterly literary review 1922-39 edited by T S Eliot. His poem The Waste Land was published in its first issue. It also published W H Auden, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and D H Lawrence, and...

Critias
(c. 460-403 BC) Athenian politician and orator. He was one of the Thirty Tyrants installed as rulers of Athens by the Spartans at the end of the Peloponnesian War 404 BC. He was killed while at war against the...

Crittenden, John Jordan
(1787-1863) US politician. He was a senator 1835-41, and in 1841 became Attorney General in William Harrison's cabinet. He served as governor of Kentucky 1848-50. He was Attorney General again 1850-53,...

Crivelli, Carlo
(c. 1435-c. 1495) Italian painter in the early Renaissance style. He was active in Venice and painted extremely detailed, decorated religious works, often festooned with garlands of fruit. The Annunciation (1486;...

Cro-Magnon
Prehistoric human Homo sapiens sapiens believed to be ancestral to Europeans, the first skeletons of which were found in 1868 in the Cro-Magnon cave near Les Eyzies, in the Dordogne region of...

Croat
The majority ethnic group in Croatia. Their language is generally considered to be identical to that of the Serbs, hence Serbo-Croat. The Croats, who are mainly Roman Catholics, had a long...

Croatia
Country in central Europe, bounded north by Slovenia and Hungary, west by the Adriatic Sea, and east by Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia and Montenegro. Government Croatia is a multiparty...

crochet
Craft technique similar to both knitting and lacemaking, in which one hooked needle is used to produce a looped network of wool or cotton. Remains of crocheted clothing have been discovered in...

Crocker, Chester (Arthur)
(1941) US diplomat. He served on the National Security Council 1970-72. As assistant secretary of state for African affairs 1981-89, he pushed for a policy of `constructive...

Crockett, Samuel Rutherford
(1860-1914) Scottish novelist. In 1893 he published The Stickit Minister, followed by The Raiders and The Lilac Sunbonnet, both 1894. Altoge ...

Crockford, William
(1775-1844) British gambler, founder in 1827 of Crockford's Club in St James's Street, which became the fashionable place for London society to gamble. ...

Crocodile
British flame-throwing tank of World War II; a modified version of the Churchill. It was a terrifying weapon, whose mere appearance on the battlefield was often sufficient to induce surrender. The...

Croesus
(died 547 BC) Last king of Lydia (in western Asia Minor) 560-547 BC. Famed for his wealth, he expanded Lydian power to its greatest extent, conquering all Anatolia west of the river Halys and entering alliances...

croft
Small farm in the Highlands of Scotland, traditionally farmed cooperatively with other crofters; the 1886 Crofters Act gave security of tenure to crofters. Today, although grazing land is still...

Croft Castle
Castle situated northwest of Leominster, Herefordshire, England. The castle and 555-ha/1,371-acre estate were bought by the National Trust in 1957 with the aid of a government grant. The ancient...

Croghan, George
(born c. 1720) Irish-born trader who came to Philadelphia in 1741, learned Indian languages, and soon built a trade empire on the Pennsylvania frontier. He lost the fortune he had accumulated through trading and...

Croisset, Francis de.
(1877-1937) Belgian dramatist. He made his reputation in Paris as the author of light comedies and travel sketches, including Le Bonheur, Mesdames (1906) and La Féerie cinghalaise/The Sinhalese Enchantment...

Croke, Thomas William
(1824-1902) Irish churchman and prominent nationalist. As Roman Catholic Archbishop of Cashel and Emly, he promoted Irish cultural and political self-determination through Charles Stewart Parnell's Croker, John Wilson
(1780-1857) Irish politician and journalist. He was elected Tory member of Parliament for Downpatrick in 1807, and was secretary to the Admiralty 1809-30. He was a gifted debater and his articles in the...

Croker, Richard
(1841-1922) Irish-born US Democratic politician; political `boss` (manager) of Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party political machine in New York, 1886-1902. Born in Clonakilty, County Cork, he emigrated...

Croker, Thomas Crofton
(1798-1854) Irish writer and collector of Irish legends. Born in Cork, his works include Researches in the South of Ireland (1824), Fairy Legends and Traditions...

Croly, Herbert David
(1869-1930) US editor and author. He wrote extremely influential books The Promise of American Life (1909) and Progressive Democracy (1914), which called on Americans to reexamine the true nature and goals of...

cromlech
Welsh term for a megalithic dolmen, consisting of a flat stone supported horizontally by two or more uprights. The structure is the exposed burial chamber of a long barrow or grave mound of the...

Crommelin, Samuel Louis
(1652-1727) French craftsman. A Huguenot, Crommelin emigrated to Ireland in 1699 after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, invited by King William III. He arrived in Lisburn, County Antrim, with 25...

Crompton, Richmal
(1890-1969) English writer. A writer of marginally feminist novels, such as her third, the semi-autobiographical Ann Morrison (1925), she is remembered for her stories about...

Crompton, Samuel
(1753-1827) English inventor at the time of the Industrial Revolution. He developed the `spinning mule` in 1779, combining the ideas of Richard Arkwright and James Hargreaves. This span a fine, continuous...

Crompton's mule
Advanced spinning machine which made the production of fine yarns by machine possible, developed in 1779 in Bolton, England, by Samuel Crompton. It was a cross between the spinning jenny and a...

Cromwell tank
British cruiser tank produced 1943-44. One of the fastest tanks of World War II, it could reach 65 kph/40 mph though later production had the engine governed so as to keep the speed down to 55...

Cromwell, Henry
(1628-1674) English Parliamentarian, fourth son of Oliver Cromwell. He went to Ireland as a colonel in 1650, was one of the Irish representatives in the Barebones Parliament in 1653, and was lord deputy of...

Cromwell, Oliver
(1599-1658) English general and politician, Puritan leader of the Parliamentary side in the English Civil War. He raised cavalry forces (later called `Ironsides`), which aided the victory at Marston Moor in...

Cromwell, Richard
(1626-1712) Son of Oliver Cromwell, he succeeded his father as Lord Protector but resigned in May 1659, having been forced to abdicate by the army. He lived in exile after the Restoration until...

Cromwell, Thomas
(c. 1485-1540) English politician who drafted the legislation that made the Church of England independent of Rome. Originally in Lord Chancellor Wolsey's service, he became secretary to Henry VIII in 1534 and the...

Cromwell, William N (Nelson)
(1854-1948) US lawyer. Specializing in business law, he consolidated 16 concerns into the National Tube Company, concluded the battle over the Illinois Central Railroad, promoted the Panama Canal, and...

Cromwell's Irish campaign
Whirlwind military campaign conducted by the Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell in Ireland August 1649-May 1650, following the victory of his Parliamentarians in the English Civil War (1641-49). He...

Cronaca, Simone, Il
(1457-1508) Florentine architect. Most of his works are in Florence, though he did spend the years 1475-85 in Rome, where he gained an understanding of classical architecture. His Church of San Salvatore al...

Cronin, A(rchibald) J(oseph)
(1896-1981) Scottish novelist. The success of his novel Hatter's Castle (1931) enabled him to leave his practice as a physician and take up writing full time. His medical stories gave rise in the 1960s to the...

Cronje, Piet Arnoldus
(1835-1911) Boer commander who fought the British in both South African Wars (1881 and 1899-1902). He was defeated and surrendered his 4,000-strong force to Field Marshal Roberts at...

Cronkite, Walter Leland, Jr
(1916) US broadcast journalist. He was one of the first US journalists to cover World War II, writing about the European front for United Press, a news agency, and was anchor of the national evening news...

Cronus
In Greek mythology, the youngest of the Titans; ruler of...

Cronyn, Hume
(1911-2003) Canadian stage and film actor. He came to New York in 1934 and soon gained a reputation as a character actor, first on the stage and, starting in 1943, in many movies. He was nominated for an...

Crook, George
(1828-1892) US general. He served under the Union general Philip Sheridan in the American Civil War (1861-65), and took part in the destruction of the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia. Made a major general, Crook...

crop
To cut away unwanted portions of a picture. The term comes from traditional manual methods of layout and paste-up; in computing, cropping is an option made available via photo-finishing and...

Cropsey, Jasper (Francis)
(1823-1900) US painter. He concentrated on landscape painting. Considered a member of the Hudson River School of painting, his theatrical and naturalistic canvases, such as View of the Kaaterskill House (1855),...

Crosby, (Henry Sturgis) Harry
(1898-1929) US publisher and poet. He was prominent, along with his wife, Caresse Crosby, in Parisian literary and artistic circles during the 1920s until his suicide. He published works of distinguished...

Crosby, Caresse (born Polly Jacob)
(1892-1970) US publisher and poet. She wrote poetry and collaborated with her husband Harry Crosby in establishing the publishing imprint of Editions Narcisse and then Black Sun Press, which she continued after...

Crosby, Frances Jane
(1820-1915) US hymn-writer. She was blind from infancy and taught at the New York Institution for the Blind from 1847 to 1858. Her best-known hymn is `Safe in the arms of Jesus`. ...

Crosland, (Charles) Anthony (Raven)
(1918-1977) British Labour politician, president of the Board of Trade 1967-69, secretary of state for local government and regional planning 1969-70, secretary of state for the environment 1974-76, and...

cross
Figure or object formed by the intersection (usually at right angles) of two or more lines, surfaces, or pieces of material. The use of the cross as an emblem is of great antiquity in many cultures....

cross-dating
In archaeology, demonstrating the degree to which cultural groups were contemporary by establishing links between them. For example, objects produced by one group might be found in...

cross-elasticity of demand
Measure of the responsiveness of the change in quantity demanded of one good when another good changes in price. For example, the cross-elasticity of demand of oranges for apples measures how...

Cross, Amanda
US writer and teacher; see Carolyn Heilbrun. ...

Cross, Dorothy
(1956) Irish post-modernist artist who uses found objects to create assemblages and installations that explore issues relating to gender and authority. Cross emerged as a significant force in Irish art...

Cross, Gillian (Clare)
(1945) English writer of children's books including Wolf (1990; Carnegie Medal) and The Great Elephant Chase (1992; Whitbread Children's Novel). Other novels include Chartbreak, The Demon Headmaster, The...

Cross, Henri-Edmond
(1856-1910) French painter. He was associated with Georges Seurat and Paul Signac in `Divisionist painting` or pointillism. He settled in the south of France and painted with a brilliance of colour which...

Cross, Samuel Hazzard
(1891-1946) Slavic language specialist and diplomat. He served from the end of World War I until 1926 in a variety of diplomatic posts. In 1930 he became professor of Slavic languages at Harvard, a post he held...

Cross, Wilbur (Lucius)
(1862-1948) US academic and Democratic governor. He taught English at Yale 1894-1930. After retiring, he was elected governor of Connecticut 1931-39. He sponsored public works and relief programs, reduced...

Crosser, Robert
(1874-1957) Scottish-born US Democratic representative. He became a lawyer and Ohio state representative before going to the US House of Representatives 1913-19, and 1923-55. He chaired the Committee on...

crosses, high
Intricately carved tall stone crosses, typically having a circle around the centre. Irish high crosses were the main Irish sculptural form from the 8th to 12th centuries and are widely considered to...

crossing
In architecture, the space formed in a cruciform church by the intersection of the east-west arm (nave and choir) with the north-south arm (transepts). In medieval churches it was often crowned...

Crossley, Archibald M (Maddock)
(1896-1985) US public opinion analyst. With Elmo Roper and George Gallup, in the 1920s he pioneered scientific polling techniques using statistically representative population samples. He was the first to...

Crossman, Richard Howard Stafford
(1907-1974) British Labour politician. He was minister of housing and local government 1964-66 and of health and social security 1968-70. His posthumous `Crossman Papers` (1975) revealed confidential...

Crothers, Rachel
(1878-1958) US playwright. Her first success on Broadway was The Three of Us (1906) and for the next 30 years she wrote a Broadway hit virtually every season, usually producing and directing as well. Her last...

Croton
Greek town (now Crotone) on the east coast of Bruttium (now Calabria, Italy). It was founded by Achaeans 710 BC and quickly prospered because it had the only harbour between Tarentum (now Taranto)...

Crow
Member of an American Indian people who migrated from North Dakota to Montana in the 1600s. Formerly part of the Hidatsa (a Plains Indian people), they comprised three bands: Mountain, River, and...

Crow Dog
(born Kargi Sunka) (c. 1835-c. 1910) American Indian Brûle Sioux chief. His conviction for the murder of Chief Spotted Tail was set aside by a landmark US Supreme Court ruling, which stated that the US g ...

crowding out
In economics, a situation in which an increase in government expenditure results in a fall in private-sector investment, either because it causes inflation or a rise in interest rates (as a result...

Crowley (or Crole), Robert
(c. 1518-1588) English archdeacon of Hereford in 1559, and four years later prebendary of St Paul's, London. He produced the first printed metrical version of the psalter and also brought out a fine typographical...

Crowley, John
(1942) US writer of science fiction and fantasy. His work includes Little, Big (1980) and Aegypt (1987), which contain esoteric knowledge and theoretical puzzles. Other novels include The Deep (1975),...

crown
In architecture, the highest point of an arch, vault, or dome. The term also refers to a type of steeple formed by curved buttresses converging onto a central pinnacle, and thus resembling a crown....

crown
Official headdress worn by a king or queen. The modern crown originated with the diadem, an embroidered fillet worn by Eastern rulers, for which a golden band...

Crown colony
Any British colony that is under the direct legislative control of the Crown and does not possess its own system of representative government. Crown colonies are administered by a crown-appointed...

crown court
In England and Wales, any of several courts that hear serious criminal cases referred from magistrates' courts after committal proceedings. They replaced quarter sessions and assizes, which were...

Crown Estate
Title (from 1956) of land in UK owned by the monarch. The income from it was handed to Parliament by George III in 1760 in exchange for an annual payment ( ...

Crown jewels
Symbols of royal authority. The British set (except for the Ampulla and the Anointing Spoon) were broken up at the time of Oliver Cromwell, and the current set dates from the Restoration. In 1671...

Crown Proceedings Act
UK act of Parliament 1947, which provides that the crown (as represented by, for example, government departments) can be sued like a private individual. Service personnel also have a right to sue...

Crown Prosecution Service
Body established by the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985, responsible for prosecuting all criminal offences in England and Wales. It is headed by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), and...

Crowquill, Alfred
Pseudonym of English writer and illustrator Alfred Forrester. ...

Crows over Wheatfield
Oil painting by Vincent van Gogh 1890 (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam). The dark stormy sky and violent use of impasto has often been said to express the torment of van Gogh's mind in the last year of...

Crowther, Samuel Adjai
(1809-1892) African missionary bishop. He was rescued from slavery, converted to Christianity in Sierra Leone, and travelled to England, where he was ordained. Returning to his home territory of Yoruba (now...

Crucible, The
Drama by Arthur Miller 1953. Inspired by the contemporary McCarthy persecutions of artists and writers, Miller dramatized the story of the Salem witch-hunt in Puritan New England, 1692. John...

crucifix
In the Christian religion, a cross with the figure of Jesus on it. The crucifix is usually used to portray the agony Jesus suffered when he died. Crucifixes are particularly associated with the...

crucifixion
Death by fastening to a cross, a form of capital punishment used by the ancient Romans, Persians, and Carthaginians, and abolished by the Roman emperor Constantine. Specifically, the Crucifixion...

Cruden, Alexander
(1701-1770) Scottish compiler of a biblical Concordance (1737). ...

Cruelty, Theatre of
Theory advanced by Antonin Artaud in his book Le Théâtre et son double/Theatre and its Double (1938) and adopted by a number of writers and directors. It aims to substitute gesture and sound for...

Cruft, Charles
(1852-1938) British dog expert. He organized his first dog show 1886, and from that year annual shows bearing his name were held in Islington, London. In 1948 the show's venue moved to Olympia and in 1979 to...

Cruikshank, George
(1792-1878) English painter and illustrator. He is remembered for his political cartoons and illustrations for Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. From 1835 he published the Comic...

cruise missile
Long-range guided missile that has a terrain-seeking radar system and flies at moderate speed and low altitude. It is descended from the German V1 of World War II. Initial trials in the 1950s...

Crump, (Edward Hull) `Boss`
(1874-1954) US Democratic mayor, US representative and political boss. As Democratic mayor of Memphis 1911-17, he took over public utilities and opposed the Ku Klux Klan, but resigned after failing to enforce...