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

crusade
Any one of a series of wars 1096-1291 undertaken by Christian Europeans to take control of Palestine, the ...

Crusader
British cruiser tank, developed 1940. Although it was fast, it was initially unreliable and even when modifications had been made it was under-armoured. It was withdrawn from combat May 1943 and...

Crusader, Operation
In World War II, British operation in Libya Nov-Dec 1941 to relieve the besieged garrison of Tobruk and destroy the German Afrika Korps. Although the Afrika Korps were not destroyed, German and...

Cruwell, Ludwig
(1892-1953) German general. Cruwell served in World War I and remained in the post-war Reichsheer. He was promoted to major-general December 1939 and by 1940 commanded a Panzer division. He became commander...

Cruz, Juana Inés de la, Sor
(1651-1695) Mexican poet and dramatist. A nun from the age of 17, she was both poet and writer, defending her secular writings in her eloquent Respuesta a Sor Filotea/Response to Sister Philotea (1691), which...

Cruz, Penélope
(1974) Spanish actor. After working in Spanish television and cinema throughout the 1990s, she achieved her first international hit with Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar's drama Todo sobre mi madre/All...

crypt
In architecture, a vaulted structure under a church used for burial. The first crypts were subterranean chapels in the catacombs. They were most common between the 6th and 13th centuries. One of the...

crystal gazing
Method of divination by looking fixedly into a crystal, mirror, or pool of liquid. Visions of the future or answers to questions are supposed to appear within the crystal. In the past, precious...

Crystal Palace
Glass and iron building designed by Joseph Paxton, housing the Great Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park, London. It was later rebuilt in modified form at Sydenham Hill in 1854 but burned down in 1936. ...

CSCE
Abbreviation for Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, known after December 1994 as the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). ...

Ctesiphon
Ancient city (now Tak-i-Kesra) in Mesopotamia (now part of Iraq), on the River Tigris, about 32 km/20 mi southeast of Baghdad. Building materials from its ruins were used to build Bahgdad. The...

Ctesiphon, Battle of
In World War I, unsuccessful British attempt to dislodge Turkish forces from Ctesiphon, 19 km/12 mi southeast of Baghdad, 22 November 1915. The British lost over 4,500 troops, over half their force...

Cuba
Island country in the Caribbean Sea, the largest of the West Indies, off the south coast of Florida and to the east of Mexico. Government The 1976 constitution created a socialist state with the...

Cuban missile crisis
Confrontation in international relations in October 1962 when Soviet rockets were installed in Cuba and US president John F Kennedy compelled Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, by military threats and...

Cubas Grau, Raül
(1943) Paraguayan politician and president 1998-99. He emphasized the urgency of his administration's aim of rejuvenating the economy and tackling the scourge of drug trafficking and poverty within the...

cubism
Revolutionary style of painting created by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso in Paris between 1907 and 1914. It was the most radical of the developments that revolutionized art in the years of...

Cubitt, Thomas
(1788-1855) English builder and property developer. One of the earliest speculators, Cubitt, together with his brother Lewis Cubitt (1799-1883), rebuilt much of Belgravia, London, an area of Brighton, and the...

Cuchulain (or Cú Chulainn)
(lived 1st century AD) Legendary Celtic hero. A stupendous fighter in Irish hero-tales, he was the chief figure in a cycle associated with his uncle Conchobar mac Nessa, King of Ulster. While still a little boy, he...

Cudlipp, Hugh
(1913-1998) Welsh publishing and newspaper magnate, a dynamic pioneer of British tabloid journalism. He was chair of Odhams Press, Daily Mirror Newspapers, and the International Publishing Corporation. Cudlipp...

Cudworth, Ralph
(1617-1688) English philosopher and leading member of the Cambridge Platonists. He opposed the materialism of Thomas Hobbes, and tried to combine the science of his day with the Platonic tradition in...

Cueva, Juan de la
(1543-1609) Spanish dramatist and poet. He wrote lyrical and epic poetry, and plays that treat classical and national themes in a romantic, epic style, published in Primera parte de las...

Cuffe, Paul
(1759-1817) US seaman and reformer. He became a ship and property owner in 1806, settling on the Westport River where he built a public schoolhouse and served as a minister among the Quakers. He led a voyage to...

Culdee
Member of an ancient order of Christian monks that existed in Ireland and Scotland from before the 9th century to about the 12th century AD, when the Celtic church, to which they belonged, was...

Cullen, Countee
(1903-1946) US poet. He was one of the leading contributors to the Harlem Renaissance. His particular style - as seen in such works as `Color` (1925) and `Copper Sun` (1927) - was more derived from...

Cullen, Paul
(1803-1878) Irish Roman Catholic archbishop of Armagh from 1849, translated to Dublin in 1852; he was created the first Irish cardinal in 1866. He aided the Irish Catholic politician Daniel O'Connell, and...

Culloden, Battle of
Defeat in 1746 of the Jacobite rebel army of the British prince Charles Edward Stuart (the `Young Pretender`) by the Duke of Cumberland on a stretch of moorland in Inverness-shire, Scotland....

Cullom, Shelby M (Moore)
(1829-1914) US Republican governor, representative and senator. He served Illinois in the US House of Representatives 1865-67, as governor 1877-83, and as US senator 1883-1913. He helped establish the...

cultural anthropology
Subdiscipline of anthropology that analyses human culture and society, the nonbiological and behavioural aspects of humanity. Two principal branches are ethnography (the study at first hand of...

cultural resource management
The legally mandated protection of archaeological sites located on public lands that are threatened by destruction, usually through development. The term is mainly used in the USA. ...

Cultural Revolution
Chinese mass movement from 1966 to 1969 begun by Communist Party leader Mao Zedong, directed against the upper middle class - bureaucrats, artists, and academics - who were killed, imprisoned,...

culture
In sociology and anthropology, the way of life of a particular society or group of people, including patterns of thought, beliefs, behaviour, customs, traditions, rituals, dress, and language, as...

Culzean Castle
Castle 6 km/4 mi west of Maybole, South Ayrshire, Scotland. In 1775 Robert Adam was employed to reconstruct the old castle, and to build a brew-house which was replaced a century later by the...

Cumae
Ancient Greek city in Italy, on the west coast of Campania about 16 km/10 mi west of Naples. It was Italy's earliest Greek colony, founded about 750 BC by colonists from Chalcis, in Euboea. The...

Cuman
Member of a powerful alliance of Turkic-speaking peoples of the Middle Ages, which dominated the steppes in the 11th and 12th centuries and built an empire reaching from the River...

Cumberland, Ernest Augustus
(1771-1851) King of Hannover from 1837, the fifth son of George III of Britain. A high Tory and an opponent of all reforms, he attempted to suppress the constitution but met with open resistance that had to be...

Cumberland, Richard
(1732-1811) English dramatist. He wrote more than 50 plays, ranging from tragedy to sentimental comedy and comic opera, the most successful being The West Indian (1771), produced by David Garrick at Covent...

Cumberland, William Augustus
(1721-1765) British general who ended the Jacobite rising in Scotland with the Battle of Culloden in 1746; his brutal repression of the Highlanders earned him the nickname of `Butcher`. Third son of George...

Cumming
Variant spelling of Comyn, a Norman family that came to England with William the Conqueror. ...

Cumming, Rose Stuart
(1887-1968) Australian-born interior decorator. Caught by World War I in New York, she opened an antiques and decorating shop in 1921. During a 45-year career, her eclectic, exotically colourful and...

Cummings, Bruce Frederick
(1889-1919) English writer and biologist. Under the pseudonym W N P Barbellion he wrote his Journal of a Disappointed Man (1919; published shortly before...

Cummings, E(dward) E(stlin)
(1894-1962) US poet and novelist. His work is marked by idiosyncratic punctuation and typography (often using only lower case letters in his verse, for example), and a subtle, lyric celebration of life. Before...

Cummings, Homer (Stillé)
(1870-1956) US attorney general and author. He was named attorney general 1933-39 by President Franklin Roosevelt. During his tenure, one of the longest in that office, he established uniform rules of...

cumulative preference share
Preference share whose entitlement to dividend is carried forward to a subsequent year whenever a dividend is not paid. ...

Cumyn
Variant spelling of Comyn, a Norman family that came to England with William the Conqueror. ...

Cunaxa, Battle of
Battle between the Persian Artaxerxes II and his brother Cyrus the Younger 401 BC, in which Cyrus was killed. The battle took place at a site about 100 km/60 mi north of Babylon (now in Iraq). An...

Cunedda, Wledig
British chieftain. He came with his sons and followers from Scotland to northwest Wales to defend Britain against barbarian invaders from Ireland. He laid the foundations of the kingdom of Gwynedd,...

Cunego, Domenico
(1727-1794) Italian engraver. His etchings of Italian paintings include some of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescoes and Raphael's La Fornarina and Galatea. Cunego studied as a painter, but soon abandoned...

cuneiform
Ancient writing system formed of combinations of wedge-shaped strokes, usually impressed on clay. It was probably invented by the Sumerians, and was in use in Mesopotamia as early as...

Cunliffe, John
(1933) English writer and illustrator of books for children, the creator of the characters `Postman Pat` (from 1981) and `Rosie and Jim` (from 1991). ...

Cunningham, Alan Gordon
(1887-1983) British general of World War II. Although he led the British offensive against the Italians in Ethiopia 1940-41 with great success, Cunningham failed to show his usual drive during Operation...

Cunningham, Alexander
(1814-1893) English archaeologist. A major general in the Indian army, he was the first director general of archaeology in India and was director of the India Archaeological Survey 1861-65. The survey,...

Cunningham, Allan
(1784-1842) Scottish poet and biographer. Among his works are Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry (1822), Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors,...

Cunningham, Andrew Browne
(1883-1963) British admiral in World War II, commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean 1939-42, maintaining British control; as commander-in-chief of the Allied Naval Forces in the Mediterranean...

Cunningham, Evelyn
US writer and reporter, best known as the `Lynching Editor` of the Pittsburgh Courier in the 1940s and 1950s, when it was the most influential newspaper in black America. She earned her name for...

Cunningham, John
(1917-2002) British air ace of World War II. He was among the first pilots to be given airborne radar for night fighting. His successes with this led to his nickname `Cats-Eyes Cunningham`, a public...

Cunningham, John A
(`Jack`) (1939) British Labour politician, secretary of state for agriculture 1997-98, minister for the cabinet office and chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster from 1998. He was arguably the most experienced...

Cunningham, John Henry Dacres
(1885-1962) British admiral in World War II. He was commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean 1943-46, First Sea Lord 1946-48, and became admiral of the fleet in 1948. KCB 1941. In 1940 he assisted in the...

Cunningham, Michael
(1952) US writer. His novels include A Home at the End of the World (1990; filmed 2004), Flesh and Blood (1995), and The Hours (1998, filmed 2002), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the...

Cunningham, Peter
(1816-1869) English writer and editor, the son of the Scottish writer Allan Cunningham. His chief publication was a Handbook for London (1849), to which later guides have been much indebted. He wrote about the...

Cunninghame-Graham, Robert
Later name of Scottish poet Robert Graham. ...

Cunninghame-Graham, Robert Bontine
(1852-1936) Scottish writer, politician, and adventurer. He wrote many travel books based on his experiences in Texas and Argentina 1869-83 and in Spain and Morocco 1893-98. He became...

Cuno, Wilhelm Carl Josef
(1876-1933) German industrialist and politician who was briefly chancellor of the Weimar Republic in 1923. ...

Cunobelin
King of the Catuvellauni; see Cymbeline. ...

Cuomo, Mario Matthew
(1932) US Democrat politician. He was governor of New York State 1983-95. One of his party's foremost thinkers, he was for many years seen as a future president. His key concern was that rich and poor...

cup and ring mark
Type of prehistoric carving found on stone monuments and portable objects. The markings appear to belong to the Bronze Age and are distributed over a wide geographical area, from India to Ireland....

Cupid
In Roman mythology, the god of love (Greek Eros); son of the goddess of love, Venus, and either Mars, Jupiter, or Mercury. Joyous and mischievous, he is generally represented as a winged, naked boy...

Cupitt, Don
(1934) English theologian and university lecturer. An Anglican priest and world-renowned theologian, Cupitt has become well known in Britain for his numerous television appearances. Recognized as one of...

curate
In the Christian church, literally, a priest who has the cure of souls in a parish, and the term is so used in mainland Europe. In the Church of England, a curate is an unbeneficed cleric who acts...

Curel, François
(1854-1928) French dramatist. The majority of his dramas are problem plays, dealing with passions and conflicts aroused by abstract ideas. His greatest popular success was L'Ame en folie 1919, but more...

Cures
Sabine city, 40 km/25 mi from Rome, on the left bank of the Tiber, birthplace of the legendary king Numa Pompilius. Cures was probably destroyed 589 by the Lombards (the Germanic people who invaded...

Curia
Roman Senate House, situated in the Forum Romanum (see under forum). ...

curia regis
Government by institutions of the royal court or household. In medieval times there was no separation of powers, and administrative and judicial powers were controlled by the court. Although some...

Curia Romana
The judicial and administrative bodies through which the pope carries on the government of the Roman Catholic Church. It includes certain tribunals; the chancellery, which issues papal bulls;...

Curiae
Oldest divisions of the people of Rome, dating back to the time of the kings (before 510 BC). There were 30 curiae, probably originally made up of families, and these formed the basis of the...

Curley, James Michael
(1874-1958) US Democratic politician. He was a member of the US House of Representatives 1912-14, several times mayor of Boston between 1914 and 1934, when he was elected governor. He lost a bid for the US...

Curll, Edmund
(1675-1747) English bookseller. He lived chiefly by piratical publishing and was convicted for publishing obscene works in 1725. The Scottish writer John Arbuthnot said of his biographies that they added a new...

Curnow, Allen
(1911-2001) New Zealand poet, dramatist, anthologist, and critic. Associated with the important Phoenix group in the 1930s, as a poet and critic he has influentially explored the possibilities of cultural...

Curragh `Mutiny`
Demand in March 1914 by the British general Hubert Gough and his officers, stationed at Curragh, Ireland, that they should not be asked to take part in forcing Protestant Ulster to participate in...

Curran, Charles E (Edward)
(1934) US Catholic theologian. His increasingly liberal views on sexual morality caused controversy, especially after a 1968 encyclical condemning birth control. In 1979 the Vatican began investigating...

Curran, John Philpot
(1750-1817) Irish judge and orator. He was a staunch supporter of the Irish politician Henry Grattan and defended many Irish rebels, notably after the 1798 rising. He became a barrister in 1775 and was created...

Curran, Joseph (Edwin)
(1906-1981) US labour leader. He joined the International Seaman's Union (ISU) in 1935. He led a strike in defiance of the ISU in 1936, and led 35,000 members of the ISU into his new National Maritime Union...

currency
The type of money in use in a country; for example, the US dollar, the Australian dollar, the UK pound sterling, and the Japanese yen. In 2002 the twelve European countries known as the eurozone had...

current account
In economics, that part of the balance of payments concerned with current transactions, as opposed to capital movements. It includes trade (visibles) and service transactions, such as investment,...

current account at a bank
Type of account at a bank where money is deposited for transactions rather than savings purposes. Little or no interest is given but the customer is offered a chequebook, cheque card, and standing...

current asset
Any asset of a business that could be turned into cash in a limited period of time, generally less than a year. Current assets include stocks, accounts receivable or billings, short-term...

current liability
Amount a business owes currently to its creditors and suppliers that falls due within one year from the balance sheet date. They are disclosed in a company's accounts on the balance sheet. Current...

current prices
Series of prices that express values pertaining to a given time but have not been adjusted to take account of changes in purchasing power, unlike constant prices. ...

current ratio
In a company, the ratio of current assets to current liabilities. It is a general indication of the solvency of a company, the adequacy of its working capital, and its ability to meet day-to-day...

Currie, Arthur William
(1875-1933) Canadian soldier, the first Canadian officer to become a general. His success at commanding a Canadian brigade in the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915 led to his promotion to general and from 1917 he...

Currie, Edwina
(1946) UK Conservative Party politician, writer, and broadcaster. She was member of Parliament for Derbyshire South 1983-97, serving in Margaret Thatcher's government from 1985 until her resignation as...

Currier and Ives
Partnership of US printmakers Nathaniel Currier (1813-1888) and J Merritt Ives (1824-1895). They produced many series of hand-coloured lithographs in New York. Topical events, racing, hunting,...

Currier, Nathaniel
(1813-1888) US lithographer. He established his own lithography firm, issuing his first print in 1835. He made James Ives his partner in 1857 and the firm Currier & Ives became a household name, their...

Curry, Jabez (Lamar Monroe)
(1825-1903) US representative and educator. He supported universal education in the South, for blacks and whites. He served in the US House of Representatives as a States Rights Democrat for Alabama 1857-61,...

Curry, John Steuart
(1897-1946) US painter. A well known Regionalist of the 1930s and a painter for the US government's Federal Art Project, Curry worked mainly in the genre of the American Scene. Although he settled on the urban...

cursus
British prehistoric field monument. These earthworks, of unknown origin and purpose, consist of a long, narrow area enclosed by small banks. Aerial surveys have revealed several cursi in the Thames...

cursus honorum
In the Roman Republic, the sequence in which politicians held the major magistracies. The ascending order in which the offices could be held was quaestor, praetor, consul, and censor. The...

curtain wall
In a building, an external, lightweight, non-loadbearing wall (either glazing or cladding) that is hung from a metal frame rather than built up from the ground like a brick wall; the framework it...

Curtin, Andrew Gregg
(1817-1894) US politician. He was secretary to the commonwealth of Pennsylvania 1855, and Republican governor 1860. During the Civil War he supported President Abraham Lincoln. He was minister to Russia 1869,...

Curtin, John Joseph Ambrose
(1885-1945) Australian Labor politician, prime minister and minister of defence 1941-45. He was elected leader of the Labor Party in 1935. As prime minister, he organized the mobilization of Australia's...

Curtin, Philip (De Armond)
(1922) US historian. He pioneered the study of African economic history and helped mainstream African history in American curricula. He wrote prolifically on the African colonial period, the slave trade,...