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

Curtis, Benjamin R (Robbins)
(1809-1874) US lawyer and Supreme Court justice. Although he had once argued that a slave-owner should be able to restrain his slave when temporarily in a free state, he was one of the two justices who...

Curtis, Charles
(1860-1936) US Republican vice-president and representative. He became Herbert Hoover's vice-president after 34 years in Congress. He supported the Republican policies even as the impact of the Great...

Curtis, Cyrus Herman K (Kotzschmar)
(1850-1933) US publisher. He founded The Ladies' Home Journal in 1883 and in 1897 bought The Saturday Evening Post, which he developed into another highly successful magazine. His newspaper holdings included...

Curtis, George Ticknor
(1812-1894) US lawyer and historian. He opposed slavery and served as defense attorney in the Dred Scott case in 1857, in which the US Supreme Court held slaves were not citizens and thus had no constitutional...

Curtis, George William
(1824-1892) US writer and editor. His collections of sketches and essays include Nile Notes of a Howadji (1851), Lotus Eating (1852), Potiphar Papers (1853), and Prue and I (1856). He was editor of Putnam's...

Curtis, Natalie
(1875-1921) US ethnomusicologist. She recorded the music of American Indians and black Americans, providing a basic historical source and enhancing respect for their cultures. Her first book, The Indians' Book...

Curtius, Ernst
(1814-1896) German classical archaeologist. He superintended the German excavations at Olympia and wrote The History of Greece 1857-67 (English translation by A W W Ward 1868-73). Born in Lübeck, he became...

Curtius, Manlius
In Roman mythology, a citizen of Rome who rode his horse into a large chasm in the Forum, which immediately closed over him. The chasm was said to appear in 362 BC. The soothsayers announced that it...

curule chair
Chair used by the `curule` magistrates (consuls, praetors, aediles) and later by the emperors in ancient Rome. It was probably Etruscan in origin, and was made like a folding stool with curved...

Curzon Line
Polish-Soviet frontier proposed after World War I by the territorial commission of the Versailles conference 1919, based on the eastward limit of areas with a predominantly Polish population. It...

Curzon, George Nathaniel
(1859-1925) British Conservative politician, viceroy of India 1899-1905. During World War I, he was a member of the cabinet 1916-19. As foreign secretary 1919-24, he negotiated the Treaty...

Curzon, Robert
(1810-1873) English diplomat and traveller, author of Monasteries in the Levant 1849. Succeeded to Barony 1870. ...

Cusack, Cyril James
(1910-1993) Irish actor. He joined the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in 1932 and appeared in many of its productions, including J M Synge's The Playboy of the Western World. In Paris he won an award for his solo...

Cushing, Caleb
(1800-1879) US politician. He was elected to Congress 1835, and, under John Tyler, became the first American ministerial envoy to China. He made a treaty between the...

Cushing, Richard J (James)
(1895-1970) US Catholic prelate. He was Boston's auxiliary bishop from 1939, then archbishop from 1944, then was made a cardinal in 1958. He established numerous schools and charitable...

cushion capital
In Romanesque architecture, a cubical capital (the head of a column) with its lower part and corners truncated or scalloped out, producing some resemblance to a cushion. ...

Cushman, Charlotte (Saunders)
(1816-1876) US stage actor. One of the first major female native-born American actors, she acquired a large range of classic roles, but her most popular role was as Meg Merrilies in an adaptation of Scott's...

Cushman, Pauline
(1833-1893) US actor and Union spy. While pretending to be sympathetic to the South, she secretly worked for the Federal espionage branch, until she was caught with compromising papers. Sentenced to be hanged,...

cusp
In Gothic architecture, a projection carved on the underside of an arch or section of tracery. Cusps divide the arch or tracery into a series of ornamental `foils`. ...

Custer, George Armstrong
(1839-1876) US Civil War general, who became the Union's youngest brigadier general in 1863 as a result of a brilliant war record. He was made a major general in 1865 but, following the end of the American...

custodianship
In the UK, former legal status granted to an adult for the care of children not one's own by birth, separate from adoption. In l984 in the UK effect was given to the provision under the Children's...

custody
The state of being held in confinement by the police or prison authorities. Following an arrest, a person may either be kept in custody or released on bail. ...

custody of children
For the legal control of a minor by an adult, see residence and contact and parental responsibility. ...

Customs and Excise
Government department responsible for taxes levied on imports (customs duty). Excise duties are levied on goods produced domestically or on licences to carry on certain trades (such as sale of wines...

customs duty
Tax imposed on goods coming into the country from abroad. In the UK, it is the responsibility of the Customs and Excise to collect these duties. The taxes collected are paid directly to the European...

customs union
Organization of autonomous countries where trade between member states is free of restrictions, but where a tariff or other restriction is placed on products entering the customs union from...

Custozza, Battle of
In the Seven Weeks' War, Austrian victory over the Italians 24 June 1866. Italy had allied with Prussia against Austria at the start of the war and set out to recover Venice. Their advance was...

Cuthbert, St
(died 687) English Christian saint. A shepherd in Northumbria, England, he entered the monastery of Melrose, Scotland, after receiving a vision. He travelled widely as a missionary and because of his alleged...

Cutler, Lloyd Norton
(1917-2005) US lawyer. From 1946, he served on numerous national commissions. His most prominent post was as the chief counsel to President Jimmy Carter (1979-81). Born...

Cutler, Timothy
(1684-1765) American Protestant clergyman. Ordained in 1710, he was appointed rector of Yale in 1719, but had to resign three years later, after converting to the Church of England. In 1723, he became rector of...

Cutting, Bronson Murray
(1888-1935) US journalist and senator. He wrote for a newspaper in Santa Fe, New Mexico, using it as a forum to crusade for progressive causes. From 1927, he served as a Republican Senator representing New...

Cutts, John, Baron Cutts of Gowran
(1661-1707) English soldier. He fought with William of Orange in Ireland at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, distinguished himself at the siege of Namur, in the Spanish Netherlands, in 1695, and was third in...

Cutty Sark
British sailing ship, built in 1869, one of the tea clippers that used to compete in the 19th century to see which clippers could bring its cargo most quickly from China to Britain. The name,...

Cuyp, Aelbert
(1620-1691) Dutch painter. His serene landscapes are bathed in a golden light; for example, A Herdsman with Cows by a River (c. 1650; National Gallery, London). He also painted seascapes and portraits. Both his...

cyanogen bromide
Tear gas used by all sides during World War I. Its prime effect is as a lachrymatory agent and irritant, although it is lethal at higher concentrations. It was introduced by the Austrians September...

cyanogen chloride
Toxic nerve gas of World War I. It acts on the nerve centres, particularly those controlling breathing, causing rapid paralysis and death. It was introduced by the French October 1916 to replace...

Cybele
In Phrygian mythology, an earth goddess, Great Mother of the Gods; identified by the Greeks of Asia Minor with the Titan Rhea, mother of Zeus; and honoured in Rome. She was originally androgynous...

Cyclops
In Greek mythology, one of a race of Sicilian giants with one eye in the middle of their foreheads. According to Homer, they lived as shepherds. Odysseus blinded the Cyclops...

Cylon
(lived 7th century BC) Athenian noble. He led an unsuccessful insurrection 632 BC, hoping to make himself tyrant of Athens. Besieged on the Acropolis, Cylon and his supporters took sanctuary at the altar of Athena. The...

Cymbeline
Play by Shakespeare, first acted about 1610 and printed in 1623. It combines various sources to tell the story of Imogen (derived from Ginevra in Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron), the daughter of the...

Cymbeline (or Cunobelin)
(lived 1st century AD) King of the Catuvellauni (AD 5-40), who fought unsuccessfully against the Roman invasion of Britain. His capital was at Colchester. ...

Cynewulf
(lived 8th century or 9th century) Anglo-Saxon poet. He is thought to have been a Northumbrian monk and is the undoubted author of `Juliana` and part of the `Christ` in the Exeter Book (a collection of poems now in Exeter...

cynic
Member of a school of Greek philosophy (cynicism), founded in Athens about 400 BC by Antisthenes, a disciple of Socrates, who advocated a stern and simple morality and a complete disregard of...

Cynosarges
Ancient gymnasium outside Athens, Greece. Sacred to Heracles, a hero of Greek mythology, it was for the use of those who were not of pure Athenian blood. The Greek philosopher Antisthenes, who...

Cynoscephalae
Two hills near Larisa in Thessaly, Greece. Here in 197 BC, Philip V king of Macedonia was defeated by the Roman consul Flaminius, losing control of Greece to Rome. ...

Cynossema
Promontory in the Thracian Chersonesus, Greece. It was believed to be the tomb of Hecuba, the wife of King Priam, who in Greek mythology had been previously changed into a dog. ...

Cynthius
Alternative name of Italian author Giambattista Cinzio Giraldi. ...

Cyprian, St
(c. 210-258) Christian martyr, one of the earliest Christian writers, and bishop of Carthage about in 249. He wrote a treatise on the unity of the church. His feast day is 16 September. ...

Cyprus
Island in the Mediterranean Sea, off the south coast of Turkey and west coast of Syria. Government Under the 1960 constitution, power is shared between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, but in 1963 the...

Cypselus
(lived 7th century BC) Greek ruler, the first tyrant of Corinth, about 657-627 BC. He confiscated and redistributed the lands of the nobles, imposed a tithe on revenue and possibly struck...

Cyrano de Bergerac, Savinien
(1619-1655) French writer. Joining a corps of guards at the age of 19, he performed heroic feats. He is the hero of a classic play by Edmond Cyrenaic
Member of a school of Greek hedonistic philosophy founded in about 400 BC by Aristippus of Cyrene. He regarded pleasure as the only absolutely worthwhile thing in life but taught that self-control...

Cyrenaica
Area of eastern Libya, colonized by the Greeks in the 7th century BC; later held by the Egyptians, Romans, Arabs, Turks, and Italians. Present cities in the region are Benghazi, Darnah, and Tobruk....

Cyrene
City in Cyrenaica, on the North African coast (now Libya). The city was situated about 13 km/8 mi from the coast on a plateau 550 m/1,800 ft above sea level. It was founded about 630 BC by colonists...

Cyriac of Ancona
(1391-1452) Italian merchant and antiquarian. Having a keen interest in classical Greece, he travelled in Italy, Egypt, Greece, and the Near East, drawing monuments, copying inscriptions, and collecting...

Cyril and Methodius, Sts
Two brothers, both Christian saints: Cyril (826-869) and Methodius (815-885). Born in Thessalonica, they were sent as missionaries to what is today Moravia. They invented a Slavonic alphabet,...

Cyril of Alexandria, St
(376-444) Bishop of Alexandria from 412, persecutor of Jews and other non-Christians, and suspected of ordering the murder of Hypatia (c. 370-c. 415), a philosopher whose influence was increasing at the...

Cyril of Jerusalem, St
(c. 315-386) One of the fathers of the early Christian Church and bishop of Jerusalem from 351. His Catechesis (instructions to catechumens) contains discourses to candidates for baptism and to the newly...

Cyrus the Younger
(c. 424-401 BC) Persian commander. Second son of Darius II, King of Persia, he attempted to seize the throne from his brother Artaxerxes II 401 BC and was killed. Cyrus was given special command over the satrapies...

Cythera
One of the Ionian Islands of Greece, lying between the most southerly point of the Peloponnese and Crete; approximate area 260 sq km/100 sq mi. The capital, at the southern end of the island, is...

Cytorus
Town on the coast of Paphlagonia, Asia Minor. A commercial settlement of the city of Sinop (on the south shore of the Black Sea), it stood on a mountain of the same name,...

Cyzicus
Peninsula, about 14 km/9 mi in length, jutting out from the south coast of the Sea of Marmora, 110 km/68 mi southwest of Istanbul. It was an island when the city of Cyzicus was founded here 756 BC...

czar
Alternative spelling of tsar, an emperor of Russia. ...

Czarniecki, Stephen
(1599-1665) Polish general. He strenuously defended Kraków when Poland was invaded by Sweden in 1654, but had to surrender the city to the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus. He then organized a guerrilla war...

Czartoryski, Adam Jerzy
(1770-1861) Polish statesman and general. The most famous member of the Czartoryski family, he campaigned for the restoration of an independent Polish state. In 1830 he headed the Polish November Insurrection,...

Czech Brethren
Followers of the religious reformer Jan Huss in Bohemia. They were the radical but peaceful side of the Hussite church of Bohemia. After the suppression of the militant Taborites in 1434, the Czech...

Czech literature
The literature of Czechoslovakia and the Czech republic. Czech writing first flourished in the 14th century but was effectively suppressed by the Habsburg dynasty. The tradition revived in the 19th...

Czech Republic
Landlocked country in east-central Europe, bounded north by Poland, northwest and west by Germany, south by Austria, and east by the Slovak Republic. Government The 1992 constitution, which came...

Czechoslovakia
Former country in eastern central Europe, which came into existence as an independent republic in 1918 after the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian empire at the end of World War I. It consisted...

Czolgosz, Leon
(1873-1901) US assassin. Following a mental breakdown in 1898, he shot and killed President William McKinley in Buffalo, New York, in 1901 and was electrocuted...

DA
Abbreviation for district attorney. ...

Da Costa, Izaak
(1798-1860) Dutch poet and theologian. The ideas and manner of his earlier poetry echo those of Willem Bilderdijk. In 1822 Da Costa became a Calvinist, and his later work, marked by a sincere religious and...

da Vinci
Italian painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and scientist; see Leonardo da Vinci. ...

Dabrowska, Maria
(1889-1965) Polish novelist. Her best-known work, the four-volume novel cycle Noce i dnie/Nights and Days (1932-34), is an epic of life and customs of the Polish gentry between 1863 and World War I. She...

Dabrowski, Jan Henryk
(1755-1818) Polish patriot and general. He took part in the Polish campaigns against Russia and Prussia 1792-94 under General Kosciuszko, organized an uprising in Prussian Poland in support of Napoleon in...

Dabrowski, Joseph
(1842-1903) Polish-born US Catholic priest. Following his ordination in Rome in 1869, he did some pastoral work among Polish Americans in Wisconsin. In 1887, he founded the Seminary of Saints Cyril and...

Dachau
Site of a Nazi concentration camp during World War II, in Bavaria, Germany. The first such camp to be set up, it opened early in 1933 and functioned as a detention and forced labour camp until...

Dacia
Ancient region covering much of modern Romania. The various Dacian tribes were united around 60 BC, and for many years posed a threat to the Roman empire; they were finally conquered by the Roman...

dacoit
Historically a member of an armed gang of robbers, formerly active in India and Burma (now Myanmar). ...

Dada
Artistic and literary movement founded in 1915 in a spirit of rebellion and disillusionment during World War I and lasting until about 1922. Although the movement had a fairly short life and was...

Dadd, Richard
(1817-1886) English painter. In 1843 he murdered his father and was committed to an asylum, but continued to paint minutely detailed pictures of fantasies and fairy tales, such as The Fairy Feller's Master...

Daddi, Bernardo
(died 1350) Italian painter, active in Florence. Although he was influenced by Giotto - who was probably his teacher - his work leans towards the charm of colour and delicacy of line of Sienese painting. An...

Dade, Francis Langhorne
(c. 1793-1835) US soldier. During a surprise attack in 1835 by a group of Seminoles and blacks, his 115-man force was almost annihilated. Dade was killed and only three of his soldiers survived. Dade County in...

Daedalus
In Greek mythology, a talented Athenian artisan. He made a wooden cow to disguise Pasiphae, wife of King Minos of Crete, when she wished to mate with a bull, and then constructed a Labyrinth to...

daemon
To the early Greeks, a god as he appeared in his dealings with humans. In classical times the word came to mean a lesser deity, inferior to the Olympians, but taking a personal interest in...

Dafydd ap Gwilym
(c. 1340-c. 1400) Welsh poet. His work exhibits a complex but graceful style, concern with nature and love rather than with heroic martial deeds, and has references to classical and Italian poetry. Some of his themes...

Dagda
In Irish mythology, the father-deity in the lore of the hero-tales. He is presented as being of huge stature and strength, and his attributes were a club, magic harp, and the Undry, a wonderful...

Daglish, Eric Fitch
(1892-1966) English artist and author. He wrote a number of natural history books, and illustrated both these and classics by Izaak Walton, Henry Thoreau, Gilbert White, and W H Hudson...

Dagobert I
(605-639) Merovingian king of the Franks from 629. He was the son of Clotaire II, and was a patron of the arts and a legal reformer. Dagobert made Paris his capital. He reunited the Frankish empire, but it...

Dahl, Johann Christian Clausen
(1788-1857) Norwegian landscape painter in the Romantic style. He trained in Copenhagen but was active chiefly in Dresden from 1818. The first great painter of the Norwegian landscape, his style recalls that of...

Dahl, Roald
(1916-1990) British writer, of Norwegian ancestry. He is celebrated for short stories with a twist, such as Tales of the Unexpected (1979), and for his children's books, including James and the Giant Peach...

Dahlberg, Edward
(1900-1977) US writer. After university, he joined the US expatriates in Paris in the 1920s. The 1960s saw him produce bitter social and literary criticism, verse, and an autobiography. From 1964 until his...

Dahlgren, John (Adolphus Bernard)
(1809-1870) US naval officer and inventor. He joined the navy in 1826. From 1847 on, he experimented with naval weaponry design. He became a rear admiral and was commandant of the Washington Navy...

Dahlmann, Friedrich Christoph
(1785-1860) German historian and politician. He was professor at Göttingen 1829-37, and at Bonn from 1842, and was one of the leading liberals at the Frankfurt Parliament in 1848. His chief works include...

Dahmer, Jeffrey Lionel
(1960-1994) US serial killer. He admitted to acts of dismemberment, necrophilia, and cannibalism to 17 men and boys, and at his trial in 1992 he was sentenced to 15 life sentences. He was beaten to death by a...

Dahomey
Former name (until 1975) of the People's Republic of Benin. ...

Daiches, David
(1912-2005) Scottish literary critic and scholar. His works include Critical Approaches to Literature (1956), The Paradox of Scottish Culture (1964), and Literature and Western Civilization (1973). He wrote...

Dáil Éireann
Lower house of the legislature of the Republic of Ireland (Oireachtas). It consists of 166 members elected by adult suffrage through the single transferable vote system of proportional...

Daily Mail
UK tabloid newspaper, founded by Lord Northcliffe in 1896. Politically, the paper is conservative but often takes an independent line. It is the flagship newspaper of the Daily Mail and General...

Daily Telegraph, The
British broadsheet newspaper, the first penny paper to be published in London, founded in 1855 by Arthur B Sleigh. In 1937 the Daily Telegraph, itself politically conservative, amalgamated with the...