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

daimon
In Greek mythology and thought, a supernatural power, sometimes associated with the individual fates of human beings; a guardian spirit. Socrates used the name `daimon` for the voice of...

daimyo
In feudal Japan, a warlord, a major landowner who employed a body of samurai. In wartime these armed forces had to be put at the disposal of the shogun. A daimyo was a vassal whose landholding was...

Dakota
Subgroup of the American Indian Sioux people and dialect of the Siouan language. ...

Dál Cais
In Irish history, a powerful Munster kingdom which rose to power in the second half of the 10th century. It peaked and fell within the reign of Brian Bóruma, who at the start of the 11th century...

Daladier, Edouard
(1884-1970) French Radical politician, prime minister in 1933, 1934, and 1938-40, when he signed the Munich Agreement in 1938 (ceding the Sudeten districts of Czechoslovakia to Germany). After declaring war...

Dalai Lama
(1935) Tibetan Buddhist monk, political ruler of Tibet 1940-59, when he went into exile in protest against Chinese annexation and oppression. He has continued to campaign for self-government, and was...

Dalberg
Noble German family whose ancestors in the 13th century were hereditary chamberlains of the bishop of Worms. The family is now extinct, but its last heiress married an Englishman and her son, John...

Dale, Richard
(1756-1826) American naval officer. As first lieutenant, under John Paul Jones, on the Bonhomme Richard, he was involved in a battle with the Serapis in 1779. After 1783, he alternated between merchant ships...

Daley, Richard Joseph
(1902-1976) US politician and controversial mayor of Chicago 1955-76. He built a formidable political machine and ensured a Democratic presidential victory 1960 when J F Kennedy was elected. He hosted the...

Dalí, Salvador Felippe Jacinto
(1904-1989) Spanish painter, designer, and writer. Originally drawn to many modern movements, in 1929 he joined the surrealists and became one of their most notorious members, renowned for his flamboyant...

Dalin, Olof von
(1708-1763) Swedish poet and historian. He started the journal Den Svenska Argus/The Swedish Argus (1733), modelled on the Spectator. A historical epic, Svenska Friheten/Swedish Freedom (1742), and a history of...

Dallas, Alexander (James)
(1759-1817) US politician and financier. In 1814 James Madison made him secretary to the Treasury. He found the government bankrupt, but left it with a surplus of more than $20 million. He also served for some...

Dallas, George Mifflin
(1792-1864) US diplomat and politician. He entered the diplomatic service 1837, and acted as US ambassador to Russia for two years. He was vice-president of the USA 1845-49, and ambassador...

dalmatic
Outer liturgical vestment of the deacon in the Roman Catholic Church; a mantle worn at Mass and in solemn processions. ...

Dalmau, Luis
(died 1460) Spanish painter of Catalan origin. He was court painter to Alfonso V of Aragon. He assimilated the style of Netherlandish painting (visiting Bruges in 1431), being particularly influenced by Jan van...

Dalriada
In Ireland, the ancient name of the northern district of County Antrim now known as the Route. The Dalriads were, by tradition, descendants of Riada of the Long Wrist, chief of the Gaelic Scots. ...

Dalriada
Ancient name of part of Argyll, in the Strathclyde region, west Scotland, settled by the Dalriads of Ireland in about 498. They were defeated at Magh Rath, County Down, Ireland, in 637 by the Irish...

Dalrymple, David, Lord Hailes
(1726-1792) Scottish judge and historian. He became judge of the Court of Session as Lord Hailes in 1766, but is chiefly remembered for his Annals of Scotland 1776, which deals with the period 1057-1371. He...

Daly, (John) Augustin
(1838-1899) US theatre manager. He began as a drama critic and dramatist before building his own theatre in New York 1879 and another, Daly's, in Leicester Square, London, 1893. ...

Daly's Theatre
Former theatre in Leicester Square, London, 1893-1937. It was built by the English theatre manager George Edwardes (1852-1915) for Augustin Daly. After Daly left in 1894, Edwardes took over the...

Dalyell (or Dalzell), Thomas
(c. 1599-1685) Scottish soldier. A Royalist, he fought in Ireland in the 1640s and against the Commonwealth army at Worcester in 1651, but after this final defeat in the Civil War he went to serve in the Russian...

Dalzell
Variant spelling of Thomas Dalyell, Scottish soldier. ...

Dalziel
Family of British wood engravers. George (1815-1902), Edward (1817-1905), John (1822-1860), and Thomas Bolton (1823-1906) were all sons of Alexander Dalziel of Wooler, Northumberland. George...

damages
In law, compensation for a tort (such as personal injuries caused by negligence) or breach of contract. In the case of breach of contract the complainant can claim all the financial loss he or she...

Dame
In the UK honours system, the title of a woman who has been awarded the Order of the Bath, Order of St Michael and St George, Royal Victorian Order, or Order of the British Empire. It is also the...

dame school
In Britain, former school for young children run singlehanded by an elderly woman. They dated from the 17th century, and were mainly in rural areas. The standard of instruction was generally very...

Damer House
Elegant three-storey Georgian house with nine bays built by Joseph Damer in the early 18th century in the courtyard of Roscrea Castle, County Tipperary, Republic of Ireland. The superbly carved...

Damien, Father
Name adopted by Belgian missionary Joseph de Veuster. ...

Damiens, Robert François
(1715-1757) French servant who attempted to assassinate Louis XV. He stabbed the king with a knife on 5 January 1757 as he was stepping into his carriage at Versailles. Damiens was caught...

damnation
In Christian and Muslim belief, a state of eternal punishment which will be undergone by those who are not worthy of salvation; sometimes equated with hell. ...

Damnii
Variant spelling of Damnonii, early inhabitants of the British Isles. ...

Damnonii
A British people inhabiting the western peninsula (modern Devon and Cornwall) at the time of the Roman invasions, with Isca Dumnoniorum (modern Exeter) as their capital. Another people of the same...

Damocles
(lived 4th century BC) In classical legend, a courtier of the elder Dionysius, ruler of Syracuse, Sicily. When Damocles made too much of his sovereign's good fortune, Dionysius invited him to a feast where he symbolically...

Damon
(lived 5th century BC) Athenian musician and sophist, teacher and close friend of Pericles. He was banished from Athens about 430 BC. ...

Damon and Pythias
In Greek mythology, devoted friends. When Pythias was condemned to death by the Sicilian tyrant Dionysius, Damon offered his own life as security to allow Pythias the freedom to go and arrange his...

Dana, Charles Anderson
(1819-1897) US journalist who covered the European revolutions of 1848 and earned a reputation as one of America's most able foreign correspondents. During the US Civil War he served as assistant secretary of...

Dana, Richard Henry, Jr
(1815-1882) US author and lawyer. He went to sea and worked for his passage around Cape Horn to California and back, then wrote an account of the journey Two Years before the Mast (1840). He also published The...

Dana, Richard Henry, Sr
(1787-1879) US poet and critic. His first book of verse, The Buccaneer (1827), was followed by Poems and Prose Writings (1833). He was one of the founders...

Danaë
In Greek mythology, daughter of Acrisius, king of Argos. He shut her up in a bronze tower because of a prophecy that her son would kill his grandfather. Zeus bec ...

Danaid
In Greek mythology, one of the 50 legendary daughters of Danaüs. ...

Danakil
Member of a Cushitic-speaking people of Ethiopia and Djibouti. Nomadic and nominally Muslim, Danakil society consists of two classes: landowning nobles and tenant commoners. The component tribes...

Danaüs
In Greek mythology, a king of Argos who had 50 daughters. His twin brother Aegyptus, King of Egypt, had 50 sons. When they demanded their cousins in marriage, Danaüs gave each girl a dagger with...

Danbury Hatters Case
US Supreme Court case (Loewe v. Lawler) of 1908 dealing with the right of the federal government to prohibit certain trade union activities. Dietrich Loewe, owner of the Danbury Hat Co. in...

Danby, Thomas Osborne
(1631-1712) British Tory politician. He entered Parliament 1665, acted as Charles II's chief minister 1673-78 and was created earl of Danby 1674, but was imprisoned in t ...

dance
In Hindu tradition, the world was created by Shiva, whose aspects include Lord of the Dance, and dance often forms part of worship in a temple, along with music and songs of praise (bhajan and...

dance of death
Popular theme in painting of the late medieval period, depicting an allegorical representation of death (usually a skeleton) leading the famous and the not-so-famous to the grave. One of the...

Dance, George, the Elder
(1695-1768) English architect to the city of London. He designed the Mansion House (1739-53), and three London churches: St Matthew, Bethnal Green (1743-6); St Leonard, Shoreditch (1736-40); and St...

Dance, George, the Younger
(1741-1825) English architect. He is best remembered for his unorthodox designs for Newgate Prison (1770-80), London (demolished 1902). An exponent of the neoclassical tradition, he retained a highly...

Dandolo
Venetian family that produced four doges (rulers), of whom the most outstanding, Enrico (c. 1120-1205), became doge in 1193. He greatly increased the dominions of the Venetian republic and...

dandy
Male figure conspicuous for tasteful fastidiousness, particularly in dress. The famous Regency dandy George (`Beau`) Brummell (1778-1840) helped to give literary currency to the figure of the...

Dane
People of Danish culture from Denmark and northern Germany. There are approximately 5 million speakers of Danish (including some in the USA), a Germanic language belonging to the Indo-European...

Dane, Clemence
(1888-1965) English novelist and dramatist. Her play A Bill of Divorcement (1921) was highly successful; it was followed by Will Shakespeare (1921);Wild December (1933), about the Brontë family of writers; and...

Dane, Nathan
(1752-1835) US legal scholar. He was a delegate to the Continental Congress (1785-87) and was elected to the Massachusetts state senate (1790-98). He revised many Massachusetts laws and wrote General...

Danebury
Large Celtic hill fort, 5 km/3 mi northwest of Stockbridge, Hampshire, England. Excavation has uncovered numerous huts and underground storage pits, demonstrating that Danebury was in permanent...

danegeld
In English history, a tax imposed from 991 onwards by Anglo-Saxon kings to pay tribute to the Vikings. After the Norman Conquest (1066), the tax was revived and was levied until 1162; the Normans...

Danelaw
11th-century name for the area of northern and eastern England settled by the Vikings in the 9th century. It occupied about half of England, from the River Tees to the River Thames. Within its...

Dangerfield, Thomas
(c. 1650-1685) English criminal and conspirator. Taking advantage of the panic created by the Popish Plot, he pretended to have discovered the so-called `Meal-tub Plot` against Charles II. He was convicted...

Daniel
(lived 6th century BC) Jewish folk hero and prophet at the court of Nebuchadnezzar; also the name of a book of the Old Testament, probably compiled in the 2nd century BC. It includes stories about Daniel and his...

Daniel, Arnaut
(lived 1180-1200) French poet, one of the Provençal troubadours. His output consists almost entirely of love songs, notable for their delicacy of sentiment, the extreme refinement and complexity of their verse...

Daniel, Glyn Edmund
(1914-1986) Welsh archaeologist, broadcaster, writer, and editor. He was prominent in the development of archaeology and the study of its history. His books include Megaliths in History 1973, France before the...

Daniel, Père Gabriel
(1649-1728) French writer and Jesuit theologian. His Histoire de France (1713) was harshly criticized by the philosopher Voltaire; his Entretiens de Cléandre et d'Eudoxe (1694) was an attempt to refute Blaise ...

Daniel, Peter Vivian
(1784-1860) US Supreme Court justice. He served the Virginia legislature (1812-35) and was a US district judge (1836-41). President Van Buren made him US Supreme Court justice (1842-60). He supported...

Daniel, Samuel
(1562-1619) English poet. His works include the sonnet sequence Delia (1592) and several masques for the court (1604-14), such as The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses (1604), The Queen's Arcadia (1605), and...

Daniels, Josephus
(1862-1948) US newspaperman, politician, and public official. A prominent progressive Democratic editor of the Raleigh News and Observer, he instituted reforms as secretary of the navy (1913-21). He was...

Daniels, Robert Vincent
(1926) US Slavic specialist, politician, and author. He was a long-standing and prominent academic at the University of Vermont. He was also a Vermont state senator and a member of the Democratic...

Danilevski, Nikolai Yakovlevich
(1822-1885) Russian scientist and thinker, an anti-Darwinist. He was the first to develop (in Russia and Europe, in 1871) a philosophy of history as a series of distinct civilizations; this was later built...

Danilo I Petrovic-Njegos
(1826-1860) Prince of Montenegro 1852-60. Fierce war was waged with the Turks from 1852 until, after their defeat at Grahovo, in what was then Yugoslavia, in 1858, Danilo obtained the nomination of a European...

Daninos, Pierre
(1913-2005) French author. Originally a journalist, he was liaison agent with the British Army at Dunkirk in 1940, and created in Les Carnets du Major Thompson/The Notebooks of Major Thompson (1954) a humorous...

Danish literature
Danish writers of international fame emerged in the 19th century: Hans Christian Andersen, the philosopher S&osla;ren Kierkegaard, and the critic Georg Brandes (1842-1927), all of whom played a...

Dankl, Victor
(1854-1941) Austrian general; commander-in-chief of Austrian troops in northern Italy in World War I. Dankl joined the Austro-Hungarian cavalry 1874 and became a general of the Austrian cavalry 1912. In...

Dannay, Frederic
US writer; see Ellery Queen. ...

Dannevirke
Ancient line of defensive earthworks in Schleswig, north Germany, built by the Danes under Godfred during the reign of Charlemagne, in 808; it formed...

Danse, La
Last of three entrées which make up Jean-Philippe Rameau's opéra-ballet Les Fêtes d'Hébé (libretto by A G de Montdorge), first produced at the Paris Opéra, France, on 21 May 1739. It is...

Dante Alighieri
(1265-1321) Italian poet. His masterpiece La divina commedia/The Divine Comedy (1307-21) is an epic account in three parts of his journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, during which he is guided part...

Danti, Vincenzo
(1530-1576) Italian goldsmith and sculptor. He worked mostly in Florence, his finest work being a bronze group in the baptistery there, the Beheading of St John the Baptist (1571). These and all his other...

Danton, Georges Jacques
(1759-1794) French revolutionary. Originally a lawyer, during the early years of the Revolution he was one of the most influential people in Paris. He organized the uprising 10 August 1792 that overthrew Louis...

Danu
In Celtic mythology, the mother-goddess and land-goddess. Her name parallels those of goddesses in other Indo-European languages as well as the names of various European rivers, such as the...

Danube Commission
Organization that ensures the freedom of navigation on the River Danube, from Ulm in Germany to the Black Sea, to people, shipping, and merchandise of all states, in conformity with the Danube...

Danube School
Collective name given to various 16th-century artists working in the region of the River Danube in southern Germany and Austria. Though they never worked as a formal group, they are united by a...

Daphne
In Greek mythology, a river nymph who was changed by her mother, the earth goddess Gaia, into a laurel tree to escape Apollo's amorous pursuit. Determined to possess her, Apollo fashioned her...

Daphnis
In Greek mythology, a Sicilian shepherd, the son of Hermes and a Sicilian nymph. He was the reputed inventor of pastoral poetry. He was loved by a naiad, who punished him with blindness for his...

Darboy, Georges
(1813-1871) French prelate, archbishop of Paris from 1863. He upheld the theory of episcopal independence and although opposed to the doctrine of papal infallibility, he submitted on its adoption. During the...

Darby, Abraham
(1677-1717) English iron manufacturer who developed a process for smelting iron ore using coke instead of the more expensive and scarce charcoal (1709). He employed the cheaper iron to cast strong thin pots for...

Darcy, Patrick
(1598-1668) Irish lawyer and politician. An expert in constitutional matters, Darcy argued strongly for the legislative independence of the Irish parliament. As a Catholic, he was debarred...

Dardanelles campaign
In World War I, unsuccessful Allied naval operations 1915 against the Turkish-held Dardanelles, a narrow channel between Asiatic and European Turkey, forming a passage between the Mediterranean...

Dardanelles Commission
British Royal Commission appointed 1916 to enquire into the failure of the Dardanelles and Gallipoli expeditions in World War I. The Commission's final report 1919 concluded that planning had been...

Dare, Virginia
(born 1587) First English child born in America. She was the granddaughter of John White, the governor of Roanoke colony (now in North Carolina). White returned to England soon after her birth, leaving Dare in...

Dares Phrygius
In Greek mythology, a priest of Hephaestus at Troy. An account of the destruction of Troy earlier than the Homeric poems was attributed to him. ...

Dargin
Member of a people of the northern Caucasus, numbering 350,000 (1994 est), living mainly in Dagestan. They speak Dargin, a North Caucasian language, and their religion is Islam. ...

Dargue, Herbert Arthur
(1886-1942) US aviator. During the 1920s and 1930s, he developed a broad vision of the uses and importance of air power. He was in command of the 1st Air Force at Mitchell Field, New York, at the...

Dariganga
A Mongolian people numbering only 30,000. Their language is a dialect of Khalka, the official language of Mongolia. In the past, the Dariganga were nomads, and lived by breeding camels for use in...

Darío, Rubén
(1867-1916) Nicaraguan poet. His first major work Azul/Azure (1888), a collection of prose and verse influenced by French Symbolism, created a sensation. He went on to establish modernismo, the...

Darius I the Great
(c. 558-486 BC) King of Persia 521-486 BC. A member of a younger branch of the Achaemenid dynasty, he won the throne from the usurper Gaumata (died 522 BC) and reorganized the government. In 512 BC he marched...

Darlan, Jean Louis Xavier François
(1881-1942) French admiral and politician. He entered the navy 1899, and was appointed admiral and commander-in-chief 1939. He commanded the French navy 1939-40, took part in the evacuation of Dunkirk,...

Darley, George
(1795-1846) Irish poet, critic, and mathematician. Born in Dublin and educated at Trinity College, Darley later moved to London. His first volume of poetry, The Errors of Ecstasie, appeared in 1822. He wrote...

Darling, Alistair Maclean
(1953) British Labour politician and lawyer, secretary of state for trade and industry from 2006. A low-profile but dependable `Brownite` with an acute legal bra ...

Darling, Grace Horsley
(1815-1842) English heroine. She was the daughter of a lighthouse keeper on the Farne Islands, off Northumberland. On 7 September 1838 the Forfarshire w ...

Darnton, Robert Choate
(1939) US historian. He gained a PhD from Oxford in 1964 and, after a spell as a journalist, he turned to teaching at Harvard and Princeton. His main field...

Darragh, Lydia
(1729-1789) Irish-born American nurse. She emigrated to Philadelphia where she became known as a skilful nurse and midwife. Although a Quaker, she rejected their extreme pacifism and this led to her...

Dart, Raymond Arthur
(1893-1988) Australian-born South African palaeontologist and anthropologist who in 1924 discovered the first fossil remains of the australopithecenes, early hominids, near Taungs in Botswana. Dart named them...