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

domino theory
Idea popularized by US president Eisenhower in 1954 that if one country came under communist rule, adjacent countries were likely to fall to communism as well. Used in the USA and Australia to...

domus conversorum
In England, house for converted Jews in Chancery Lane founded by Henry III 1232. Royal pensions and retraining were offered as incentives to conversion. After Jews were expelled from England en...

Don Juan
Character of Spanish legend, Don Juan Tenorio, supposed to have lived in the 14th century and notorious for his debauchery. Tirso de Molina, Molière, Mozart, Byron, and George Bernard Shaw have...

Don Pacifico Affair
Incident in 1850 in which British foreign secretary Lord Palmerston was criticized in Parliament and elsewhere in Europe for using British naval superiority to impose his foreign policy. Palmerston...

Don Quixote de la Mancha
Satirical romance by the Spanish novelist Miguel de Cervantes, published in two parts (1605 and 1615). Don Quixote, a self-styled knight, embarks on a series of chivalric adventures accompanied by...

Donald Duck
Cartoon character created in 1934 by US animator Walt Disney. The belligerent, sailor-suited duck first appeared in a supporting role for the `Silly Symphony` short of The Wise Little Hen. He...

Donald III, Bane
(`fair`) (c. 1039-c. 1100) King of Scotland. He came to the throne in 1093 after seizing it on the death of his brother Malcolm III. He was dethroned in 1094 by his nephew, Malcolm's son, Duncan II. He regained power in 1094...

Donaldson, Stephen Reeder
(1947) US fantasy writer, author of two Thomas Covenant trilogies 1977-83. Other work includes his short-story collection Daughter of Regals (1984) and the Gap series (1990-96), a five-volume...

Donatello
(c. 1386-1466) Italian sculptor of the early Renaissance. He was instrumental in reviving the classical style, as in his graceful bronze statue of the youthful David (about 1433; Bargello, Florence) and his...

Donation of Constantine
Forged 8th-century document purporting to record the Roman emperor Constantine's surrender of temporal sovereignty in Western Europe to Pope Sylvester I (314-25). In the Middle Ages, this...

Donatist
Member of a puritanical Christian movement in 4th-and 5th-century North Africa, named after Donatus of Casae Nigrae, a 3rd-century bishop, later known as Donatus of Carthage. The Donatists...

Dong Biwu
(1886-1975) Chinese communist politician, vice-president 1959-67. After the communist victory in 1949, he became a vice premier and, before becoming vice-president in 1959, was chief justice of the...

Dong Son
Archaeological site in Thanh Hoa province, Vietnam. Excavations at the site in the period 1920-40 revealed a number of ancient bronze drums. The drums found at the site may date from the Han...

Doniphan, Alexander William
(1808-1887) US lawyer and soldier. A successful lawyer, he commanded a Missouri militia regiment in the Mexican War, arriving at Chihuahua after an epic 12-month, 3,000-mile march. After that war, he went...

Donleavy, J(ames) P(atrick)
(1926) US-born Irish writer. His novels, which are about eccentrics, have a fierce comic energy. His picaresque masterpiece The Ginger Man (published in France in 1955) was banned in Ireland,...

Donne, John
(1572-1631) English poet, one of the metaphysical poets. His work consists of love...

Donnelly, Ignatius
(1831-1901) US social reformer, politician, and author. He joined the Republican Party because of its stand against slavery and was elected to the US House of Representatives for Minnesota, 1863-69). However,...

Donner party
Ill-fated US expedition of pioneers from Missouri to California 1846-47, led by George and Jacob Donner. A group of 87 left the main party and travelled across...

Donovan, Hedley Williams
(1914-1990) US editor. A reporter for the Washington Post, he joined Fortune in 1945, and became its managing editor. He was editor in chief of Time, Inc., with responsibility for all its publishing ventures,...

Donovan, Terence Daniel
(1936-1996) English photographer. His trademark style juxtaposed the luxurious with the everyday, glamorous models appearing against harsh and bleak backgrounds. Glances, a collection of his work, was published...

Donovan, William Joseph
(1883-1959) US military leader and public official. Donovan served as US district attorney 1922-24 and as assistant to the US attorney general 1925-29. He was national security adviser to presidents Hoover...

Dooley, Thomas Anthony
(1927-1961) US medical missionary. He founded Medico, an international welfare organization, 1957, after tending refugees in Vietnam who were streaming south after the partition of the country 1954. As well as...

Doolittle, Hilda
(1886-1961) US poet. She went to Europe in 1911, and was associated with Ezra Pound and the English writer Richard Aldington (to whom she was married 1913-37) in founding the Imagist school...

Doomsday Book
Variant spelling of Domesday Book, the English survey of 1086. ...

Doone
English family of freebooters who, according to legend, lived on Exmoor, Devon, until they were exterminated in the 17th century. They feature in R D Blackmore's novel Lorna Doone (1869). ...

doppelgänger
(German `double-goer`) apparition of a living person, a person's double, or a guardian spirit. The German composer and writer E T A Hoffman wrote a short story called `Die Doppelgänger`...

DORA
In the UK, acronym for the Defence of the Realm Act, passed in November 1914, which conferred extraordinary powers on the government for the duration of World War I. Their general tenor was to...

Dorat (or Daurat), Jean
(1508-1588) French poet and classical scholar. He was the teacher of several members of La Pléiade and is sometimes counted a member of the group himself. As director of the Collège de Coqueret and professor...

Doré, (Paul) Gustave
(1832-1883) French artist. Chiefly known as a prolific illustrator, he was also active as a painter, etcher, and sculptor. He produced closely worked engravings of scenes from, for example, Rabelais, Dante,...

Dorgeles, Roland.
(1886-1973) French writer. In 1919 he published Les Croix de bois/The Wooden Crosses, a war novel, and Le Cabaret de la belle femme/The Cabaret of the Beautiful Woman, a volume of short stories. He then wrote...

Doria, Andrea
(1466-1560) Genoese soldier. He served the French king Francis I 1519-25, and 1527, but later transferred his services to the Holy Roman emperor Charles V 1527-55, who made him prince of Melfi. In 1528 he...

Dorian
People of ancient Greece. They entered Greece from the north and took most of the Peloponnese from the Achaeans, perhaps destroying the Mycenaean civilization; this invasion appears to have been...

Doric
In classical architecture, one of the five types of column; see order. ...

dormancy
In the UK, state of a peerage or baronetcy when it is believed that heirs to the title exist, but their whereabouts are unknown. This sometimes occurs when a senior line dies out and a cadet line...

dormitory
Originally the sleeping quarters of monks. In some monasteries the dormitories were on the ground floor, giving easy communication with the church, though generally...

Dorneywood
Country house near Burnham Beeches, Buckinghamshire, England. Presented to the nation by Lord Courtauld-Thomson (1865-1954) as an official residence for a minister of...

Dorr, Thomas Wilson
(1805-1854) US lawyer and political reformer. Admitted to the bar (1827), he was elected governor for Rhode Island in 1842. He was at the forefront of a campaign to establish a new, fairer state constitution...

Dorrell, Stephen James
(1952) British Conservative politician. As secretary of state for health 1995-97, his office was beset with problems relating to BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy or `mad cow disease`) and the...

Dors, Diana
(1931-1984) English actor. Promoted as a high-profile sex symbol by the Rank Organization, she enjoyed great personal popularity although generally typecast in blowsy support ...

Dorsen, Norman
(1930) US lawyer and professor. Briefly in private practice, he was president of the American Civil Liberties Union and a professor at New York University law school. His many books include Our Endangered...

Dorset
Title of English poet Thomas Sackville. ...

Dort, Synod of
An assembly of Dutch Calvinists 1618-19 in Dordrecht (Dort), Holland. The main purpose of the assembly was to formulate a response to Arminianism, which it condemned. A victory for strict...

Dos Passos, John Roderigo
(1896-1970) US author. He made his reputation with the war novels One Man's Initiation (1919) and Three Soldiers (1921). His major work is the trilogy USA (1930-36). An epic, panoramic view of US life through...

Dos Santos, José Eduardo
(1942) Angolan left-wing politician, president from 1979, a member of the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). By 1989, he had negotiated the withdrawal of South African and Cuban...

Dossi (or Dosso)
(c. 1479-c. 1542) Italian painter brothers. They were important in the development of landscape in painting. They excelled in fanciful composition, a somewhat romantic background often being enveloped in a strange...

Dost Muhammad
(1793-1863) Ruler of Afghanistan from 1818-39 and again from 1843-63. Dost Muhammad opposed British intervention in Afghanistan, but was defeated and ousted in 1839. He was restored to power in 1843 and...

Dostoevsky, Fyodor Mihailovich
(1821-1881) Russian novelist. Remarkable for their profound psychological insight, Dostoevsky's novels have greatly influenced Russian writers, and since the beginning of the 20th century have been increasingly...

Douaumont
In World War I, French fort near the village of the same name in the département of the Meuse. The fort was the scene of heavy fighting during...

Double Indemnity
Novel 1945 by US writer James M Cain. Narrated by insurance salesman, Walter Neff, the plot concerns a femme fatale Phyllis Nerdlinger, who entraps him into murdering her husband. The subsequent...

double jeopardy
In law, the principle that a person cannot be prosecuted twice for the same offence. It is contained in the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution. In British law a defendant can plead `autrefois...

Doubleday, Abner
(1819-1893) American Civil War military leader and reputed inventor of baseball. He served as major general in the Shenandoah Valley campaign and at the Battles of Bull Run and Antietam 1862, and Gettysburg...

Doubleday, Frank Nelson
(1862-1934) US publisher. He rose through the ranks at Charles Scribner's Sons and in 1897, with Samuel S McClure, founded Doubleday & McClure. An aggressive businessman, he attracted top authors and also...

doughboy
Nickname for a US infantry soldier in the two world wars, especially World War I. ...

Doughty, Charles Montagu
(1843-1926) English travel writer, author of Travels in Arabia Deserta (1888), an account of an astonishing and dangerous journey in an unusual literary style, written after two years in the Middle East...

Doughty, Thomas
(1793-1856) US painter. Based in Philadelphia, he was a leather merchant until 1820. He painted landscapes, and was associated with the Hudson River School. He is remembered for his treatment of light in...

Douglas
Scottish family that can be traced back to the 12th century. The dukes of Hamilton, Buccleuch, and Queensbury, and the earls of Morton, Home, and Wemyss, are members of the Douglas family. There are...

Douglas-Hamilton
Family name of dukes of Hamilton, seated at Lennoxlove, East Lothian, Scotland. ...

Douglas-Home, Alec
(1903-1995) British Conservative politician. He was foreign secretary 1960-63, and succeeded Harold Macmillan as prime minister in 1963. He renounced his peerage (as 14th Earl of Home) and re-entered the...

Douglas-Home, William
(1912-1992) Scottish dramatist. He is noted for his comedies, which include The Chiltern Hundreds (1947), The Secretary Bird (1968), Lloyd George Knew My Father (1972), and The Kingfisher (1977). He was the...

Douglas, (George) Norman
(1868-1952) Austrian-born British novelist and travel writer. His travel books include Siren Land (1911) and Old Calabria (1915), dealing with Italy; his novel South Wind (1917) is set in his adopted island...

Douglas, Denzil
(1953) St Kitts' centre-left politician, prime minister of St Kitts and Nevis from 1995. He led the St Kitts Labour Party (SKLP) to victory in July 1995, ending the 15-year-old premiership of the...

Douglas, Gavin (or Gawin)
(c. 1475-1522) Scottish poet. He translated into Scots Virgil's Aeneid (1513), including the thirteenth book added by Maffeo Vegio. He wrote the allegorical The Palace of Honour (c. 1501). His language is more...

Douglas, James Henderson, Jr
(1899-1988) US government official. He was a lawyer and investment banker before holding administrative posts in the Army Air Force during World War II. As Eisenhower's, Air Force secretary, he helped establish...

Douglas, Keith Castellain
(1920-1944) English poet. During World War II he served as a tank commander in North Africa, where he wrote some of his finest poems, published after his death in Alamein to Zem Zem (1946). His Collected Poems...

Douglas, Lloyd Cassel
(1877-1951) US novelist. Among his novels expressing selfnessness are Magnificent Obsession (1929) and Invitation to Live (1940). The Robe (1942) and The Big Fisherman (1949) are big novels...

Douglas, O
(1877-1948) Scottish novelist. Her first novel, Olivia in India (1913), written after a visit to India, was followed by The Setons (1917), a picture of Glasgow suburban life. Other novels include Penny Plain...

Douglas, Paul Howard
(1892-1976) US senator and economist. He taught economics at the University of Chicago before his election to the Senate as a Democrat for Illinois. He shaped much of the 1960s Civil Rights legislation and was...

Douglas, Stephen Arnold
(1813-1861) US politician. He served in the US House of Representatives 1843-47 and as US senator for Illinois 1847-61. An active Democrat, he urged a compromise on slavery, and debated Abraham Lincoln...

Douglas, William Orville
(1898-1980) US Supreme Court justice and author. He was appointed to the US Supreme Court by President Franklin D Roosevelt in 1939, and served an unprecedented 36.5 years on the bench, during which time he was...

Douglass, Frederick
(1817-1895) US antislavery campaigner and influential African-American leader. An advocate of the American Civil War 1861-65, he issued a call to African Americans to take up arms against the South and...

Doukhobor
Member of a Christian sect of Russian origin, now mainly found in Canada, also known as `Christians of the Universal Brotherhood`. They were long persecuted, mainly for refusing military service...

Doulton, Henry
(1820-1897) English ceramicist. He developed special wares for the chemical, electrical, and building industries, and established the world's first stoneware-drainpipe factory in 1846. From 1870 he created...

Doumer, Paul
(1857-1932) French politician. He was elected president of the Chamber in 1905, president of the Senate in 1927, and president of the republic in 1931. He was assassinated by Gorgulov, a White Russian emigré. ...

Doumergue, Gaston
(1863-1937) French prime minister December 1913-June 1914 (during the time leading up to World War I); president 1924-31; and premier again February-November 1934...

Doura-Europus
Ancient city in Mesopotamia, now a site on the banks of the Euphrates in modern Syria. The city was founded 300 BC but was abandoned after the destruction of PalmyraAD 272. Paintings dating from the...

Douris
(lived early 5th century BC) Greek vase painter of the Attic School. He was an exponent of the Red Figure style and excelled in decorating drinking cups. A work of moving beauty is the Eos Receiving the Body of her Dead Son,...

dove
Person who takes a moderate, sometimes pacifist, view on political issues. The term originated in the US during the Vietnam War. Its counterpart is a hawk. In more general usage today, a dove is...

Dove Cottage
Small house at Grasmere in the English Lake District where the poet William Wordsworth settled with his sister Dorothy in 1799, and later with his wife Mary Hutchinson in 1802. Wordsworth wrote much...

Dove, Mabel
(1905-1984) Ghanaian politician and journalist, the first woman to be elected to a national assembly in West Africa. She joined the Convention People's Party (CPP) in 1950 and wrote for the party newspaper, the...

Dove, Rita
(1953) US poet and novelist. She joined the English faculty at the University of Virginia. Her poetry and her novels blend the lyrical and personal with the precise and the contemporary. She became the...

Dover Patrol
Sub-unit of the British Navy based at Dover and Dunkirk throughout World War I. Its primary task was to close the English Channel to German vessels while escorting Allied ships...

Dover, Thomas
(1664-1742) British physician and sea captain. Dover is chiefly remembered for rescuing Alexander Selkirk, the model for Daniel Defoe's castaway Robinson Crusoe, from five years' solitude on Juan Fernandez...

Dow Jones average
New York Stock Exchange index, the most widely used indicator of US stock market prices. The average (no longer simply an average but today calculated to take into account changes in the constituent...

Dow Jones Index
Scale for measuring the average share price and percentage change of 30 major US industrial companies. It has been calculated and published since 1897 by the financial news publisher...

Dow, Lorenzo
(1777-1834) US Protestant evangelist. He began preaching as an independent and later as a Methodist, evangelizing in the southern USA. He retired to a farm in Connecticut, where he wrote contentious pamphlets...

dowager
The style given to the widow of a British peer or baronet. She may take the style of `Dowager Countess of Blankshire` (so as not to be confused with the wife of the current holder of the title);...

Dowden, Edward
(1843-1913) Irish scholar and critic. He was an expert on Shakespeare, he published Shakspeare: His Mind and Art (1875) and Shakspeare Primer (1877). He also edited many of...

Dowiyogo, Bernard
(1946) Nauruan politician, president 1976-78, 1989-95, 1996, and from 1998. In 1973 he established himself as leader of a loose opposition group, the Nauru Party, in an assembly filled with...

Downes, (Edward) Olin
(1886-1955) US writer on music and critic. As critic for the Boston Post 1906-24 and the New York Times 1924-55, he was an advocate of contemporary European masters (his Sibelius the Symphonist was...

Downey, Sheridan
(1884-1961) US senator. A lawyer, he began his political career as a Republican, but became a liberal Democrat. Elected to the US Senate as a Democrat for California he supported old age pension plans and...

Downing Street
Street in Westminster, London, leading from Whitehall to St James's Park, named after Sir George Downing (died 1684), a diplomat under Cromwell and Charles II. Number 10 is...

Downing Street Declaration
Statement, issued jointly by UK prime minister John Major and Irish premier Albert Reynolds on 15 December 1993, setting out general principles for holding all-party talks on securing peace in...

Downing, Andrew Jackson
(1815-1852) US landscape gardener and horticulturist. He learned horticulture in his family's nursery and wrote the standard text, The Fruits and Fruit Trees of America (1845). He used his time as editor of The...

Downing, George
(c. 1623-1684) English soldier and politician. He was one of Oliver Cromwell's principal advisers on foreign policy during the Protectorate, and worked for Charles II after the Restoration, arresting various...

Downing, Major Jack
US journalist and writer; see Seba Smith. ...

dowry
Property or money given by the bride's family to the groom or his family as part of the marriage agreement; the opposite of bridewealth (property or money given by the groom's to the bride's...

dowsing
Ascertaining the presence of water or minerals beneath the ground with a forked twig or a pendulum. Unconscious muscular action by the dowser is thought to move the twig, usually held with one fork...

Dowson, Ernest Christopher
(1867-1900) English poet. He was one of the Decadents poets of the 1890s, and author of the lyric with the refrain `I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion`. His books of verse include Dilemmas...

Doxiadis, Constantinos Apostolos
(1913-1975) Greek architect and town planner. He designed Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. ...

Doyle, Arthur Conan
(1859-1930) Scottish writer. He created the detective Sherlock Holmes and his assistant Dr Watson, who first appeared in A Study in Scarlet (1887) and featured in a number of subsequent stories, including The...