Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Dawson River ... de Kooning, Elaine

Dawson River: river in eastern Queensland, Australia. It rises in the Carnarvon Range and flows southeast, northeast, and north for about 400 miles (640 km) through a 50-mile-wide valley to join the Fitzroy River near Duaringa. The Dawson Valley Irrigation Project (inaugurated ...
Dawson, George Geoffrey: English journalist, editor of The Times from 1912 to 1919 and from 1923 until his retirement in 1941. He changed his surname from Robinson to Dawson following an inheritance in 1917.
Dawson, Sir John William: Canadian geologist who made numerous contributions to paleobotany and extended the knowledge of Canadian geology.
dawsonite: a carbonate mineral, NaAlCO₃ (OH)₂, that is probably formed by the decomposition of aluminous silicates. Of low-temperature, hydrothermal origin, it occurs in Montreal, where it was first discovered; near Monte Amiata, Tuscany, Italy; and in Algiers. In the oil shale ...
Dax: town, Landes departement, Aquitaine region, southwestern France. It lies on the left bank of the Adour River, 88 miles (142 km) southwest of Bordeaux and 50 miles (80 km) north of the Pyrenees frontier with Spain. The town is a ...
Daxue: brief Chinese text generally attributed to the ancient sage Confucius (551-479 BC) and his disciple Zengzi. For centuries the text existed only as a chapter of the Liji ("Collection of Rituals"), one of the Wujing ("Five Classics") of Confucianism. When ...
day: time required for a celestial body to turn once on its axis; especially the period of the Earth's rotation. The sidereal day is the time required for the Earth to rotate once relative to the background of the stars-i.e., the ...
day lily: any plant of the genus Hemerocallis of the family Liliaceae, consisting of about 15 species of perennial herbs distributed from central Europe to eastern Asia. Members of the genus have long-stalked clusters of funnel- or bell-shaped flowers that range in ...
Day of the Dead: holiday in Mexico, also observed to a lesser extent in other areas of Latin America and in the United States, honouring dead loved ones and making peace with the eventuality of death by treating it familiarly, without fear and dread. ...
Day, Benjamin Henry: American printer and journalist who founded the New York Sun, the first of the "penny" newspapers in the United States.
Day, Clarence: American writer whose greatest popular success was his autobiographical Life with Father.
Day, Doris: American singer and motion-picture actress whose performances in movie musicals of the 1950s and sex comedies of the early '60s made her a leading Hollywood star.
Day, Dorothy: American journalist and reformer, cofounder of the Catholic Worker and an important lay leader in its associated activist movement.
Day, John: Elizabethan dramatist whose verse allegory The Parliament of Bees shows unusual ingenuity and delicacy of imagination.
Day, Stephen: founder of the first printing press in England's North American colonies.
Day, William R.: statesman and justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1903-22).
day-care centre: institution that provides supervision and care of infants and young children during the daytime, particularly so that their parents can hold jobs. Such institutions appeared in France about 1840, and the Societe des Creches was recognized by the French government ...
Day-Lewis, C.: one of the leading British poets of the 1930s; he then turned from poetry of left-wing political statement to an individual lyricism expressed in more traditional forms.
Dayak: the non-Muslim indigenous peoples of southern and western Borneo (modern Kalimantan). Most of them live along the banks of the larger rivers. Dayak is a generic term that has no precise ethnic or tribal significance and that is applied to ...
Dayan, Moshe: soldier and statesman who led Israel to dramatic victories over its Arab neighbours and became a symbol of security to his countrymen.
Dayananda Sarasvati: Hindu ascetic and social reformer who was the founder (1875) of the Arya Samaj, a Hindu reform movement advocating a return to the temporal and spiritual authority of the Vedas, the earliest scriptures of India.
dayflower: any member of the genus Commelina (family Commelinaceae), which includes about 100 species of weak-stemmed herbs of wide distribution, only a few of which are of horticultural interest. Commelina coelestis, C. diffusa, and C. erecta are often grown as ground ...
daylight saving time: system for uniformly advancing clocks, especially in summer, so as to extend daylight hours during conventional waking time. In the Northern Hemisphere, clocks are usually set ahead one hour in late March or in April and are set back one ...
Dayr al-Bahri: Egyptian archaeological site in the necropolis of Thebes. Comprising a bay in the cliffs, it lies on the west bank of the Nile, east of the Valley of the Kings; its name (Arabic for "northern monastery") refers to a monastery ...
Dayr al-Madinah: ancient site on the west bank of the Nile, at Thebes in Upper Egypt. It is known primarily as the location of a settlement for craftsmen who laboured on the royal tombs, especially those in the nearby Valley of the ...
Dayr az-Zawr: town, eastern Syria. The town is situated on the right bank of the Euphrates River; its name, meaning "monastery of the grove" (zawr, "tamarisk"), is probably derived from the ancient city of Auzara, or Azuara, situated nearby. The Ottomans built ...
Dayton: city, seat (1899) of Rhea county, southeastern Tennessee, U.S. It lies on Richland Creek near the Tennessee River, 36 miles (58 km) northeast of Chattanooga. Originally called Smith's Crossroads (c. 1820), it was renamed Dayton in the 1870s. The Rhea ...
Dayton: city, seat (1803) of Montgomery county, southwestern Ohio, U.S., 54 miles (87 km) northeast of Cincinnati, on a low floodplain of the Great Miami River, at the confluence of the Stillwater and Mad rivers and of Wolf Creek. It is ...
Dayton, Jonathan: youngest member of the U.S. Constitutional Convention, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and developer of large tracts in what later became the state of Ohio. The city of Dayton, Ohio, is named for him.
Dayton, University of: private, coeducational institution of higher learning in Dayton, Ohio, U.S. The university is affiliated with the Marianist (Society of Mary) order of the Roman Catholic church. It is composed of the College of Arts and Sciences and schools of business ...
Daytona Beach: city, Volusia county, northeastern Florida, U.S., on the Atlantic Ocean and Halifax River (a tidewater lagoon, part of the Intracoastal Waterway), about 90 miles (145 km) south of Jacksonville. The area was originally inhabited by Timucua Indians. Creek peoples lived ...
Dazai Osamu: novelist who emerged at the end of World War II as the literary voice of his time. His dark, wry tone perfectly captured the confusion of postwar Japan, when traditional values were discredited and the younger generation nihilistically rejected all ...
dazhuan: in Chinese calligraphy, script evolved from the ancient scripts jiaguwen and guwen by the 12th century BC and developed during the Zhou dynasty (12th century-256/255 BC). It is the earliest form of script to ...
Dbus-Gtsang: one of three regions into which the area of Central Asia inhabited by Tibetans is traditionally divided. Dbus and Gtsang were provinces in the days of the early kings of central Tibet, c. 7th century. The area of Dbus encompassed ...
DC-3: transport aircraft, the world's first successful commercial airliner, readily adapted to military use during World War II. The DC-3, first flown in 1935, was a low-wing twin-engine monoplane that in various conformations could seat 21 or 28 passengers or carry ...
DDT: a synthetic insecticide belonging to the family of organic halogen compounds, highly toxic toward a wide variety of insects as a contact poison that apparently exerts its effect by disorganizing the nervous system.
De Amicis, Edmondo: novelist, short-story writer, poet, and author of popular travel books and children's stories.
de Beer, Sir Gavin: English zoologist and morphologist known for his contributions to experimental embryology, anatomy, and evolution.
De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd.: world's largest producer and distributor of diamonds. De Beers is closely associated with the Anglo-American Corporation of South Africa, a large holding company with major interests in gold and coal mining. Headquarters are in Kimberley, S.Af.
De Bono, Emilio: Italian general, an early convert to Fascism who helped the party's founder and chief, Benito Mussolini, gain power.
de Broglie wave: any aspect of the behaviour or properties of a material object that varies in time or space in conformity with the mathematical equations that describe waves. By analogy with the wave and particle behaviour of light that had already been ...
de Chirico, Giorgio: Italian painter who, with Carlo Carra and Giorgio Morandi, founded the style of Metaphysical painting.
De Forest, Lee: American inventor of the Audion vacuum tube, which made possible live radio broadcasting and became the key component of all radio, telephone, radar, television, and computer systems before the invention of the transistor in 1947. Although bitter over the financial ...
De Gasperi, Alcide: politician and prime minister of Italy (1945-53) who contributed to the material and moral reconstruction of his nation after World War II.
De Geer, Charles: Swedish entomologist.
De Geer, Gerhard, Friherre: Swedish geologist, originator of the varve-counting method used in geochronology.
De Grey River: river in northwestern Western Australia. It rises as the Oakover River in the Robertson Range, 150 miles (240 km) southeast of Marble Bar, and flows north. Midway in its course, it turns northwest to join the Nullagine River and becomes ...
de Havilland, Olivia: American motion-picture actress remembered for the lovely and gentle ingenues of her early career as well as for the later, more substantial roles she fought to secure.
De Havilland, Sir Geoffrey: English aircraft designer, manufacturer, and pioneer in long-distance jet flying. He was one of the first to make jet-propelled aircraft, producing the Vampire and Venom jet fighters.
de Klerk, F.W.: politician who as president of South Africa (1989-94) brought the apartheid system of racial segregation to an end and negotiated a transition to majority rule in his country. He and Nelson Mandela jointly received the 1993 Nobel Prize for Peace ...
de Kooning, Elaine: American painter, teacher, and art critic who is perhaps best known for her portraits.