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Encyclopedias since 1768

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Davis, Alexander Jackson ... Dawson Creek

Davis, Alexander Jackson: American architect, designer, draftsman, and illustrator who was best known for his innovative, picturesque country houses. He helped establish the familiar type of American rural house in the "carpenter Gothic" style of the mid-19th century.
Davis, Angela: militant American black activist who gained an international reputation during her imprisonment and trial on conspiracy charges in 1970-72.
Davis, Benjamin O., Jr.: pilot, officer, and administrator who became the first African American general in the U.S. Air Force. His father, Benjamin O. Davis, Sr., was the first African American to become a general in any branch of the U.S. military.
Davis, Benjamin Oliver, Sr.: soldier who became the first black general in the U.S. Army.
Davis, Bette: versatile, volatile American actress, whose raw, unbridled intensity kept her at the top of her profession for 50 years.
Davis, Charles Harold: American painter, whose romantic interpretations of the landscape excelled in their cloud effects.
Davis, Charles Henry: U.S. naval officer and scientist.
Davis, David: American politician, a close associate of Abraham Lincoln. He was a Supreme Court justice and senator during the antebellum, American Civil War, and postwar eras.
Davis, Dwight F.: tennis player best known as the donor of the Davis Cup (properly the International Lawn Tennis Challenge Trophy) for competition among teams representing various nations. He later became a United States cabinet member.
Davis, Elmer: news broadcaster and writer, director of the U.S. Office of War Information during World War II.
Davis, Glenn: American world-record holder in the 400-metre hurdles (1956-62) who was the first man to win the Olympic gold medal twice in that event.
Davis, H.L.: American novelist and poet who wrote realistically about the West, rejecting the stereotype of the cowboy as hero.
Davis, Henry Winter: Maryland unionist during the secession crisis, harsh critic of Abraham Lincoln, and coauthor of the congressional plan for Reconstruction during the American Civil War.
Davis, Jefferson: president of the Confederate States of America throughout its existence during the American Civil War (1861-65). After the war, he was imprisoned for two years and indicted for treason but never tried.
Davis, Joe: English billiards and snooker player who was the world snooker champion from 1927 until his retirement in 1946.
Davis, John: English navigator who attempted to find the Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic to the Pacific.
Davis, John W.: conservative Democratic politician who was his party's unsuccessful candidate for the presidency of the United States in 1924.
Davis, Katharine Bement: American penologist, social worker, and writer who had a profound effect on American penal reform in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Davis, Kingsley: American sociologist and demographer who coined the terms population explosion and zero population growth. His specific studies of American society led him to work on a general science of world society, based on empirical analysis of each society in its ...
Davis, Miles: American jazz musician, a great trumpeter who as a bandleader and composer was one of the major influences on the art from the late 1940s.
Davis, Mount: highest point in Pennsylvania, U.S., at an elevation of 3,213 feet (979 metres). The peak is on a ridge of the Allegheny and Appalachian mountains in Somerset county, 15 miles (24 km) south-southwest of Somerset, near the Maryland border.
Davis, Ossie; and Dee, Ruby: American husband-and-wife acting team known for their contributions to African American theatre and film and for their passionate support of civil rights and humanitarian causes. The couple was jointly awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1995.
Davis, Paulina Kellogg Wright: American feminist and social reformer, active in the early struggle for woman suffrage and the founder of an early periodical in support of that cause.
Davis, Raymond, Jr.: American physicist who, with Koshiba Masatoshi, won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2002 for detecting neutrinos. Riccardo Giacconi also won a share of the award for his work on X-rays.
Davis, Rebecca Blaine Harding: American essayist and writer, remembered primarily for her story "Life in the Iron Mills," which is considered a transitional work of American realism.
Davis, Richard Harding: U.S. author of romantic novels and short stories and the best known reporter of his generation.
Davis, Sammy, Jr.: American singer, dancer, and entertainer.
Davis, Sir Colin: English conductor and the foremost modern interpreter of composer Hector Berlioz, whose complete orchestral and operatic works Davis recorded.
Davis, Stuart: American abstract artist whose idiosyncratic Cubist paintings of urban landscapes presaged the use of commercial art and advertising by Pop artists of the 1960s.
Davis, Thomas Osborne: Irish writer and politician who was the chief organizer and poet of the Young Ireland movement.
Davis, Victor: Canadian swimmer, an aggressive competitor who won four Olympic medals.
Davis, William Morris: U.S. geographer, geologist, and meteorologist who founded the science of geomorphology, the study of landforms.
Davison, Wild Bill: American jazz cornet player who recorded some 800 songs and traveled extensively in his 70-year career.
Davison, William: secretary to Queen Elizabeth I of England, chiefly remembered in connection with the execution of Mary Queen of Scots.
Davisson, Clinton Joseph: American experimental physicist who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1937 with George P. Thomson of England for discovering that electrons can be diffracted like light waves, thus verifying the thesis of Louis de Broglie that electrons behave both ...
Davitt, Michael: founder of the Irish Land League (1879), which organized resistance to absentee landlordism and sought to relieve the poverty of the tenant farmers by securing fixity of tenure, fair rent, and free sale of the tenant's interest.
Davos: town, Graubunden canton, eastern Switzerland, consisting of two villages, Davos-Platz and Davos-Dorf, in the Davos Valley, on the Landwasser River, 5,118 feet (1,560 metres) above sea level. The town is mentioned in historical documents of 1160 and 1213; it was ...
Davout, Louis-Nicolas, Duc D'auerstedt, Prince D'eckmuhl: French general who was one of the most distinguished of the Napoleonic field commanders.
Davy lamp: safety lamp (q.v.) devised by Sir Humphry Davy in 1815.
Davy, Edward: physician, chemist, and inventor who devised the electromagnetic repeater for relaying telegraphic signals and invented an electrochemical telegraph (1838).
Davy, Sir Humphry, Baronet: English chemist who discovered several chemical elements (including sodium and potassium) and compounds, invented the miner's safety lamp, and became one of the greatest exponents of the scientific method.
Dawani: jurist and philosopher who was chiefly responsible for maintaining the traditions of Islamic philosophy in the 15th century.
Dawes General Allotment Act: (Feb. 8, 1887), U.S. law providing for the distribution of Indian reservation land among individual tribesmen, with the aim of creating responsible farmers in the white man's image. It was sponsored in several sessions of Congress by Sen. Henry L. ...
Dawes Plan: arrangement for Germany's payment of reparations after World War I. On the initiative of the British and U.S. governments, a committee of experts, presided over by an American financier, Charles G. Dawes, produced a report on the question of German ...
Dawes, Charles G.: 30th vice president of the United States (1925-29) in the Republican administration of President Calvin Coolidge. An ambassador and author of the "Dawes Plan" for managing Germany's reparations payments after World War I, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for ...
Dawes, William Rutter: English astronomer known for his extensive measurements of double stars and for his meticulous planetary observations.
Dawlish: town ("parish"), Teignbridge district, administrative and historic county of Devon, England, on the English Channel. It became fashionable in the 19th century and is featured in the novels of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen. Located back from the seacoast above ...
dawn horse: extinct genus (Hyracotherium) of ancestral horses that flourished in North America and Europe during the Early Eocene Epoch (57.8 to 52 million years ago). The North American species were formerly grouped separately in the genus Eohippus, but all known species ...
dawn redwood: (species Metasequoia glyptostroboides), coniferous, nonevergreen tree and only living species of the genus Metasequoia, of the deciduous cypress family (Taxodiaceae), native to remote valleys of central China. In the dawn redwood, both branchlets and leaves grow out in pairs from ...
Dawson: city, western Yukon Territory, Canada. It lies at the confluence of the Klondike and Yukon rivers, near the Alaska, U.S., boundary, 165 miles (265 km) south of the Arctic Circle. The community, named for George M. Dawson, the geologist-explorer, developed ...
Dawson Creek: city, northeastern British Columbia, Canada. The city lies along Dawson Creek near the Alberta border. It has the Mile "Zero" post marking the beginning of the Alaska Highway and is a terminus of the British Columbia Railway from Vancouver (741 ...