(Translated by https://www.hiragana.jp/)
Encyclopedia - Britannica Online Encyclopedia
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  • damage, malicious (law)
    ...blame. Within the disaster community the establishment of solidarity is a concern that dampens scapegoating, at least until the immediate emergency is past. Third, there is much less looting and vandalism than is popularly supposed. Even among persons who converge from outside the community there is more petty pilfering for souvenirs than serious crime. Fourth, initially an altruistic......
  • damage stability (nautical science)
    ...a passenger liner of similar size and type, sank within a period of 20 minutes after being hit by two torpedoes on May 7, 1915. Its fault lay not in insufficient subdivision but in lack of damage stability. Longitudinal bulkheads in the vicinity of the torpedo hits limited the flooding to one side, causing the ship to heel quickly to the point where normal hull openings were submerged.......
  • damages (law)
    in law, money compensation for loss or injury caused by the wrongful act of another. Recovery of damages is the objective of most civil litigation....
  • Dāmājī (Gaikwar ruler)
    The rule of Damaji (died 1768) at Baroda was followed by a period of some turmoil. The Gaekwads still remained partly dependent on Pune and the peshwa, especially to intervene in moments of succession crisis. The eventual successor of Damaji, Fateh Singh (ruled 1771–89), did not remain allied to the peshwa for.....
  • Damaliscus dorcas dorcas (mammal)
    ...species, D. hunteri (Hunter’s hartebeest, or hirola), found in eastern Kenya and southwestern Somalia; and the subgenus Damaliscus, consisting of two species, D. dorcas (the bontebok [subspecies D. dorcas dorcas] and the blesbok [subspecies D. dorcas phillipsi]) and D. lunatus (topi), ranging widely from Senegal to Ethiopia and to South Africa....
  • Damaliscus hunteri (mammal)
    ...Africa. Modern classifications are not uniform, but generally two subgenera and three species are recognized: the subgenus Beatragus, consisting of a single species, D. hunteri (Hunter’s hartebeest, or hirola), found in eastern Kenya and southwestern Somalia; and the subgenus Damaliscus, consisting of two species, D. dorcas (the bontebok [subspecies D.......
  • Damaliscus lunatus (mammal)
    (genus Damaliscus), any of a few species of antelope belonging to the family Bovidae (order Artiodactyla) and inhabiting sub-Saharan grasslands, floodplains, and dense brush from western to eastern Africa and southward to southern Africa. Modern classifications are not uniform, but generally two subgenera and three species are recognized: the subgenus Beatragus, consisting of a sing...
  • Damaliscus pygargus phillipsi (mammal)
    antelope that is classed as a type of sassaby....
  • Daman (India)
    town, Damān and Diu union territory, western India. The town, together with numerous villages in the surrounding area, forms an enclave in southeastern Gujarāt state and is situated on the Gulf of Khambhāt (Cambay) of the Arabian Sea. The town of Damān, which has a fort, is the centre of business activities. The surrounding area is ...
  • Damān and Diu (union territory, India)
    union territory of India, comprising two widely separated districts on the country’s western coast. Damān, with an area of 28 square miles (72 square km), is an enclave on the state of Gujarāt’s southern coast, situated 100 miles (160 km) north of Bombay. Diu, an island 15 square miles (40 square km) in area, lies off the southern c...
  • Daman Ganga River (river, India)
    ...Haveli is undulating and hilly, reaching elevations of 1,000 feet in the northeast and east near the Western Ghāts. Lowland areas are limited to the central plains, which are crossed by the Damānganga River and its tributaries. The only navigable river in Dādra and Nagar Haveli, the Damānganga rises in Mahārāshtra and flows northwestward through the......
  • Damānganga (river, India)
    ...Haveli is undulating and hilly, reaching elevations of 1,000 feet in the northeast and east near the Western Ghāts. Lowland areas are limited to the central plains, which are crossed by the Damānganga River and its tributaries. The only navigable river in Dādra and Nagar Haveli, the Damānganga rises in Mahārāshtra and flows northwestward through the......
  • Damanhūr (Egypt)
    city, capital of Al-Buḥayrah muḥāfaẓah (governorate) in the western Nile River delta, Lower Egypt. Its name is derived from the ancient Egyptian Timinhor (“City of Horus”) and has historically applied to several centres in Egypt, mostly in the delta. The capital of a Ptolemaic nom...
  • Damão (India)
    town, Damān and Diu union territory, western India. The town, together with numerous villages in the surrounding area, forms an enclave in southeastern Gujarāt state and is situated on the Gulf of Khambhāt (Cambay) of the Arabian Sea. The town of Damān, which has a fort, is the centre of business activities. The surrounding area is ...
  • damar (varnish resin)
    any of a variety of hard varnish resins obtained from coniferous and hardwood trees characteristic of Southeast and East Asia. These include the conifer genus Agathis (family Araucariaceae), such flowering plants as Shorea (especially S. wiesneri) and other genera of the family Dipterocarpaceae, and a few species of the family Burseraceae....
  • Damar, Al- (The Sudan)
    town, northeastern Sudan. It lies on the right (east) bank of the Nile River, about 155 miles (250 km) northeast of Khartoum. Located at an elevation of 1,158 feet (353 metres), it is a local commercial centre for the date-producing areas to the north. The town’s industries include date packing, distilling of alcohol and liqueurs, and canning of other local produce, such as tomatoes, mangoe...
  • Damara (people)
    a seminomadic people of mountainous central Namibia. They speak a Khoisan (click) language, but culturally they are more like the peoples of central and western Africa, though their origin is obscure. When first encountered by Europeans, in the 17th and 18th centuries, many of the Bergdama were clients of the Khoekhoe and Herero. Knowing the...
  • Damaraland (historical region, Namibia)
    historical region of Namibia; the name is in part a misnomer, as it was originally applied to lands of north-central Namibia predominantly occupied by the Herero and Khoisan (Hottentot) people rather than the Bergdama (Damara), the latter having been displaced and subjugated by the other two when the Bergdama were first visited by a European in 1791. The territory encompassing ...
  • Damaran Belt (geological region, Africa)
    ...and Pilbara blocks in Western Australia. Linear belts, up to several thousand kilometres long, that are frequently though not exclusively of Proterozoic age include the Limpopo, Mozambique, and Damaran belts in Africa, the Labrador Trough in Canada, and the Eastern Ghats belt in India. Several small relict areas, spanning a few hundred kilometres across, exist within or against Phanerozoic......
  • Damari, Shoshana (Israeli singer)
    Israeli singer (b. 1923, Damar, Yemen—d. Feb. 14, 2006, Tel Aviv, Israel), introduced pop music to Israel in 1948 and helped to create a unique sense of cultural identity for the newly formed state. Damari was known for her distinctive Yemenite accent and Middle Eastern sound, and her many nationalistic songs made her a particularly popular entertainer among Israeli soldiers. Her first hit ...
  • ḍamaru (drum)
    ...by a network of thongs. A waisted, or hourglass, drum is seen on one of the Bharhut reliefs, the oldest Indian temple reliefs (2nd century bc). The modern Indian damaru is an hourglass-shaped clapper drum—when it is twisted its heads are struck by the ends of one or two cords attached to the shell. Barrel and shallow-nailed drums are....
  • Damas, Léon (French Guiana writer)
    ...assimilation. Its leading figure was Léopold Sédar Senghor (elected first president of the Republic of Senegal in 1960), who, along with Aimé Césaire from Martinique and Léon Damas from French Guiana, began to examine Western values critically and to reassess African culture....
  • Damascene, Saint John (Christian saint)
    Eastern monk and theological doctor of the Greek and Latin churches whose treatises on the veneration of sacred images placed him in the forefront of the 8th-century Iconoclastic Controversy, and whose theological synthesis made him a preeminent intermediary between Greek and medieval Latin culture....
  • damascening (art)
    art of encrusting gold, silver, or copper wire on the surface of iron, steel, bronze, or brass. A narrow undercut is made in the surface of the metal with a chisel and the wire forced into the undercut by means of a hammer. The name is derived from the city of Damascus, which was celebrated for its damascened wares as early as the 12th century. The armourers of northern Italy u...
  • Damascius (Greek philosopher)
    Greek Neoplatonist philosopher and last in the succession of Platonic scholars at the Greek Academy at Athens, which was founded by Plato about 387 bc....
  • Damascus (Syria)
    city, capital of Syria. Located in the southwestern corner of the country, it has been called the “pearl of the East,” praised for its beauty and lushness; the 10th-century traveler and geographer al-Maqdisī lauded the city as ranking among the four earthly paradises. Upon visiting the city in 1867, Mark Twain wrote...
  • Damascus carpet
    usually small floor covering, often attributed to Damascus, Syria, in the 16th or 17th century in continuation of the rug art of the Mamlūk rulers of that land. The usual Damascus field pattern is a grid of small squares or rectangles (hence the European term chessboard carpets), each of which includes a hexagon or octagon filled with tiny radial motifs that surround a star interlace. Among...
  • Damascus Document (biblical literature)
    one of the most important extant works of the ancient Essene community of Jews at Qumrān in Palestine. The Essenes fled to the Judaean desert wilderness around Qumrān during Antiochus IV Epiphanes’ persecution of Palestinian Jews from 175 to 164/163 bc. Though a precise date for the composition of the Damascus Document has not been deter...
  • Damascus Gate (gate, Jerusalem)
    ...walls dating chiefly to the period of the Crusades but in some places to Byzantine, Herodian, and even Hasmonean times. The Old City may be entered through any of seven gates in the wall: the New, Damascus, and Herod’s gates to the north, the St. Stephen’s (or Lion’s) Gate to the east, the Dung and Zion gates to the south, and the Jaffa Gate to the west. An eighth gate, the...
  • Damascus, Great Mosque of (mosque, Damascus, Syria)
    the earliest surviving stone mosque, built between ad 705 and 715 by the Umayyad Caliph al-Walīd I. The mosque stands on the site of a 1st-century Hellenic temple to Jupiter and of a later church of St. John the Baptist. Some Syrio-Roman fragments remain in the structure, as does a shrine supposedly enclosing a relic honoured by Muslims as well as Christians...
  • Damascus International Airport (airport, Damascus, Syria)
    ...Aleppo, and Baghdad. A rail line north to Ḥimṣ (Homs) ties in with the national railroad system; along with the trucking industry, it transports imported products to the city. Damascus International Airport, located some 20 miles (32 km) east of the city, is served by many commercial airlines that offer direct flights to major regional and international cities. Inner-city......
  • Damascus rug
    usually small floor covering, often attributed to Damascus, Syria, in the 16th or 17th century in continuation of the rug art of the Mamlūk rulers of that land. The usual Damascus field pattern is a grid of small squares or rectangles (hence the European term chessboard carpets), each of which includes a hexagon or octagon filled with tiny radial motifs that surround a star interlace. Among...
  • Damascus steel (metallurgy)
    one of the famous steels of the pre-industrial era, typically made into weapon blades. Manufacture involved a secret carburization process in which a form of wrought iron was heated to red heat in contact with various carbonaceous materials in closed vessels. The result was an iron-carbon alloy containing as much as 1.8 percent carbon. It is probable that the carburized product was then annealed t...
  • Damascus, University of (university, Damascus, Syria)
    ...education for the vast majority of Damascene children. Private schools supplement the public schools, and there is a separate system run by the United Nations for Palestinian refugee children. The University of Damascus was founded in 1923 through the joining of four older institutions of higher learning and was a pioneer in the Arab world for introducing Arabic as the sole language of......
  • Damascus ware
    ...of this type of ceramic decoration is intimately tied to the complex and much controverted problem of the growth of several distinctive Ottoman schools of pottery: İznik, Rhodian, and Damascus ware. Both in technique and in design, Ottoman ceramics are the only major examples of pottery produced in the late Islāmic period....
  • damask
    patterned textile, deriving its name from the fine patterned fabrics produced in Damascus (Syria) in the European Middle Ages. True damask was originally wholly of silk, but gradually the name came to be applied to a certain type of patterned fabric regardless of fibre. Single damask has one set each of warps and wefts, or fillings, and may be woven in one or...
  • damask rose (plant)
    Attar of rose, used in perfumes, is obtained from the rose blossoms, especially those of the damask rose (R. damascena). Rose hips, particularly those of R. rugosa, are a source of vitamin C and are sometimes used in preserves....
  • damasked steel (metallurgy)
    one of the famous steels of the pre-industrial era, typically made into weapon blades. Manufacture involved a secret carburization process in which a form of wrought iron was heated to red heat in contact with various carbonaceous materials in closed vessels. The result was an iron-carbon alloy containing as much as 1.8 percent carbon. It is probable that the carburized product was then annealed t...
  • Damaskinos (archbishop of Athens)
    archbishop of Athens and regent of Greece during the civil war of 1944–46, under whose regency came a period of political reconstruction. He was a private in the army during the Balkan Wars (1912) and was ordained priest in 1917....
  • Dámaso de Alonso, Luis Antonio (American actor)
    (LUIS ANTONIO DÁMASO DE ALONSO), U.S. actor (b. Dec. 11, 1905, Ciudad Juárez, Mexico--d. May 15, 1994, Beverly Hills, Calif.), specialized in portraying charismatic and dashing Latin lovers, most notably in the 1927 silent-film classic Camille opposite Norma Talmadge, but he was also featured in swashbuckling talkie roles, including that of the Spanish sea captain in The Se...
  • Damastes (Greek mythological figure)
    in Greek legend, a robber dwelling somewhere in Attica—in some versions, in the neighbourhood of Eleusis. His father was said to be Poseidon. Procrustes had an iron bed (or, according to some accounts, two beds) on which he compelled his victims to lie. Here, if a victim was shorter than the bed, he stretched him by hammering or racking the body to fit. Alternatively, if the victim was long...
  • Damasus I, Saint (pope)
    pope from Oct. 1, 366, to Dec. 11, 384. During his rule the primacy of the Roman see was asserted....
  • Damasus II (pope)
    pope from July 17 to Aug. 9, 1048. His brief reign, delayed by a rival claimant to the papal throne, occurred during a period when the German emperors and factions of the Roman nobility vied for control of the papacy....
  • D’Amato, Constantine (American boxing trainer)
    Born into poverty in North Carolina, Patterson grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He learned to box while in a school for emotionally disturbed children and soon began training with Constantine (“Cus”) D’Amato, who later worked with Mike Tyson. Patterson won New York Golden Gloves titles in 1951 and 1952 and earned the gold medal as a middleweight at the 1952 Olympic Games in Hels...
  • D’Amato, Cus (American boxing trainer)
    Born into poverty in North Carolina, Patterson grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He learned to box while in a school for emotionally disturbed children and soon began training with Constantine (“Cus”) D’Amato, who later worked with Mike Tyson. Patterson won New York Golden Gloves titles in 1951 and 1952 and earned the gold medal as a middleweight at the 1952 Olympic Games in Hels...
  • Damaturu (Nigeria)
    town, capital of Yobe state, northeastern Nigeria. Damaturu became the capital of newly created Yobe state in 1991. The town lies in a plains region that is covered by savanna and that supports crops of millet, sorghum (Guinea corn), and peanuts (groundnuts). The town is a market centre on the road between Potiskum and Maiduguri. Pop. (1991 prelim.) 141,897....
  • Damāvand, Qolleh-ye (mountain, Iran)
    extinct volcanic peak of the Elburz Mountains, Iran, about 42 miles (68 km) northeast of Tehrān. Estimates of its height vary from about 18,400 feet (5,600 m) to more than 19,000 feet (5,800 m), and it dominates the surrounding ranges by 3,000 to 8,000 feet (900 to 2,450 m). Its steep, snowcapped cone is formed of lava flows and ash and is crowned by a small crater with sulfuric deposits. B...
  • Damazin, Ad- (The Sudan)
    town, east-central Sudan, on the western bank of the Blue Nile River. Irrigation made possible by the Ruṣayriṣ (Roseires) dam to the east of Ad-Damazin has increased the agricultural potential of The Sudan. Industries include flour mills, sugar refineries, and oilseed mills. The town is connected with Al-Garef, Sinjah, and Sannār by a road and a railway route. A domestic airpo...
  • Damazin, Ed- (The Sudan)
    town, east-central Sudan, on the western bank of the Blue Nile River. Irrigation made possible by the Ruṣayriṣ (Roseires) dam to the east of Ad-Damazin has increased the agricultural potential of The Sudan. Industries include flour mills, sugar refineries, and oilseed mills. The town is connected with Al-Garef, Sinjah, and Sannār by a road and a railway route. A domestic airpo...
  • Damba (Angola)
    town, northwestern Angola. In a fertile area, it is a market centre for coffee, rice, and sugarcane. The Kongo peoples of the town’s hinterland cultivate beans and cassava (manioc). About 1950 Damba was the site of an unsuccessful government-sponsored African resettlement project; the area was subsequently resettled with immigrants from Portuga...
  • Dambadeniya dynasty (Sri Lankan dynasty)
    rulers of most of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) from 1255 to about 1330 whose seat was at Dambadeṇiya. Arising in opposition to the Malay usurper Māgha, who seized power in northern Ceylon in 1215, the Dambadeṇiya dynasty is of uncertain origin....
  • dambo (grassland)
    ...on the infertile plateaus and escarpments. Woodland, with species of acacia tree, covers isolated, more fertile plateau sites and river margins; grass-covered, broad depressions, called madambo (singular: dambo), dot the plateaus; grassland and evergreen forest are found in conjunction on the highlands and on the Mulanje and Zomba massifs....
  • d’Amboise, Jacques (American dancer)
    American dancer and choreographer of the New York City Ballet (1949–84), admired for his energetic, virile interpretations of both character and classical roles....
  • Dâmboviţa (county, Romania)
    județ (county), southern Romania. The Transylvanian Alps (Southern Carpathians) and the sub-Carpathians rise above settlement areas in intermontane valleys and lowlands of the county. Dâmbovița is drained by the Ialomița, Dâmbovița, and Argeș rivers. Târgoviște is the county ca...
  • Dâmboviţa River (river, Romania)
    ...across the Danube Plain to enter the Danube near Olteniţa. Its length is 203 miles (327 km), and the area of its basin is 4,850 square miles (12,550 square km). Its major tributary is the Dâmboviţa, which flows through Bucharest on a parallel course. A dam on the Argeș at Căpăţâneni creates Lake Vidraru, which is a reservoir for the......
  • dambuster (bomb)
    British aeronautical designer and military engineer who invented the innovative “dambuster” bombs used in World War II....
  • Dame à la licorne, La (tapestry)
    ...Âge), housed in the Hôtel de Cluny, a Gothic mansion (1485–1500) that holds a collection of medieval works of art, including the renowned six-panel tapestry La Dame à la licorne (“The Lady and the Unicorn”)....
  • “Dame aux camélias, La” (play by Dumas)
    ...Augier. Dumas fils is best remembered for his romanticization of the courtesan in La Dame aux camélias (1848; The Lady with the Camellias), the novel and play on which the libretto of Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata was based, but the moralizing Les......
  • “Dame Blanche, La” (opera by Boieldieu)
    ...composition at the conservatory. His main operas of this period were Jean de Paris (1812), Le Petit Chaperon rouge (1818; “Little Red Riding Hood”), and his masterpiece, La Dame blanche (1825; “The White Lady”). Composed on a libretto by Eugène Scribe, derived from Sir Walter Scott’s novels The Lady of the Lake, Guy Manner...
  • Dame Care (novel by Sudermann)
    ...was eventually able to attend the University of Königsberg. After a short period as a tutor in Berlin, he worked as a journalist, then turned to writing novels. Frau Sorge (1887; Dame Care), dealing with the growing up of a sensitive youth, and Der Katzensteg (1889; Regina) are the best known of his early novels. He won renown, however, with his......
  • dame school (education)
    small private school for young children run by women; such schools were the precursors of nursery, or infant, schools in England and colonial America. They existed in England possibly before the 16th century in both towns and rural areas and survived into the 19th century. The school was frequently the teacher’s home, in which the children were taught the alphabet and some reading from the...
  • Dame Sirith (Middle English fabliau)
    ...The Fox and the Wolf, taken indirectly from the Old French Roman de Renart. In the same manuscript with this work is Dame Sirith, the earliest English fabliau. Another sort of humour is found in The Land of Cockaygne, which depicts a utopia better than heaven, where rivers run......
  • Damer, El- (The Sudan)
    town, northeastern Sudan. It lies on the right (east) bank of the Nile River, about 155 miles (250 km) northeast of Khartoum. Located at an elevation of 1,158 feet (353 metres), it is a local commercial centre for the date-producing areas to the north. The town’s industries include date packing, distilling of alcohol and liqueurs, and canning of other local produce, such as tomatoes, mangoe...
  • Dameron, Tadd (American musician and composer)
    black American jazz pianist, arranger, composer, and bandleader, especially noted during the bop era for the melodic beauty and warmth of the songs he composed....
  • Dameron, Tadley Ewing (American musician and composer)
    black American jazz pianist, arranger, composer, and bandleader, especially noted during the bop era for the melodic beauty and warmth of the songs he composed....
  • dame’s gillyflower (plant)
    (Hesperis matronalis), Eurasian plant of the mustard family (Brassicaceae) that is widely naturalized in North America and Great Britain. A garden ornamental with flowers of violet-like fragrance, dame’s rocket reaches about 90 cm (3 feet) in height. It bears narrow, toothed leaves and upright spires of four-petaled, usually distinctly veined, flowers of lilac, purple, or sometimes ...
  • Dames, Paix des (Europe [1529])
    (French: “Peace of the Ladies”; Aug. 3, 1529), agreement ending one phase of the wars between Francis I of France and the Habsburg Holy Roman emperor Charles V; it temporarily confirmed Spanish (Habsburg) hegemony in Italy. After a series of successes, Charles had defeated the French forces at Pavia in Italy in 1525 and forced Francis to sign the...
  • Dames Point Bridge (bridge, Jacksonville, Florida, United States)
    ...360 metres (1,200 feet). It, too, employs a single plane of cables, but these remain in one plane that fans out down the centre of the deck. The longest cable-stayed bridge in the United States is Dames Point Bridge (1987), designed by Howard Needles in consultation with Ulrich Finsterwalder and crossing the St. Johns River in Jacksonville, Florida. The main span at Dames Point is 390 metres......
  • dame’s rocket (plant)
    (Hesperis matronalis), Eurasian plant of the mustard family (Brassicaceae) that is widely naturalized in North America and Great Britain. A garden ornamental with flowers of violet-like fragrance, dame’s rocket reaches about 90 cm (3 feet) in height. It bears narrow, toothed leaves and upright spires of four-petaled, usually distinctly veined, flowers of lilac, purple, or sometimes ...
  • dame’s violet (plant)
    (Hesperis matronalis), Eurasian plant of the mustard family (Brassicaceae) that is widely naturalized in North America and Great Britain. A garden ornamental with flowers of violet-like fragrance, dame’s rocket reaches about 90 cm (3 feet) in height. It bears narrow, toothed leaves and upright spires of four-petaled, usually distinctly veined, flowers of lilac, purple, or sometimes ...
  • Dāmghān (Iran)
    town, northern Iran. It lies at an elevation of 3,900 feet (1,200 metres), just southeast of the Elburz Mountains on a large, barren gravel plain. It is on the road and railway between Tehrān and Meshed. Possibly the oldest mosque in Iran, the Tārīk Khāneh (c. 9th century), and several to...
  • Damia (classical goddess)
    in Roman religion, deity of fruitfulness, both in the earth and in women. She was identified with various goddesses who had similar functions. The dedication day of her temple on the Aventine was celebrated May 1. Her temple was cared for and attended by women only, and the same was the case at a second celebration, at the beginning of December, in the house of the pontifex maximus, where the pont...
  • Damian, Saint (Christian martyr)
    martyrs and patron saints of physicians. They were brothers, perhaps twins, but little is known with certainty about their lives or martyrdom....
  • Damião, Frei (Brazilian monk)
    , Italian-born Brazilian Roman Catholic monk who walked from town to town in northeastern Brazil preaching to poor villagers, who considered him a saint capable of performing miracles (b. Nov. 5, 1898--d. May 31, 1997)....
  • Damien, Father (Belgian priest)
    Belgian priest who devoted his life to missionary work among the Hawaiian lepers....
  • Damiens, Robert-François (French regicide)
    French fanatic who in 1757 made an unsuccessful attempt on the life of King Louis XV....
  • Damietta (Egypt)
    city, capital of Dumyāṭ muḥāfaẓah (governorate), in the Nile River delta, Lower Egypt, on the Mediterranean coast. Damietta, the port of the governorate, is located 8 miles (13 km) from the Mediterranean, on the right (east) bank of the Damietta branch of the Nile. The name is a corruption of the ancient C...
  • Damietta (river, Egypt)
    ...distributaries. The flow has since been controlled and redirected, so that the river now flows across the delta to the sea through two main distributaries, the Rosetta and the Dumyāṭ (Damietta) branches....
  • Daming calendar (chronology)
    Beginning in 504, Zu Gengzhi actively advocated his father’s calendar (the Daming calendar) and finally succeeded in getting it officially adopted in 510. His astronomical observations with gnomons allowed him to measure the angular distance between Polaris and the celestial north pole. Although none of his complete mathematical writings is extant, some scholars suggest that the mathematica...
  • Daminozide (dimethylamino)
    Daminozide, also known as Alar, is a plant growth regulator used to improve the appearance and shelf life of apples. Because of its carcinogenicity in animals (Table 1), concerns have been raised that daminozide may produce tumours in children who consume apples. As a result, the use of daminozide has greatly decreased....
  • Dāmir, Al- (The Sudan)
    town, northeastern Sudan. It lies on the right (east) bank of the Nile River, about 155 miles (250 km) northeast of Khartoum. Located at an elevation of 1,158 feet (353 metres), it is a local commercial centre for the date-producing areas to the north. The town’s industries include date packing, distilling of alcohol and liqueurs, and canning of other local produce, such as tomatoes, mangoe...
  • Damīrī, ad- (Muslim theologian)
    Muslim theologian, best known for his encyclopaedia of animals....
  • Damīrī, Muḥammad ibn Mūsā Kamāl ad-Dīn ad- (Muslim theologian)
    Muslim theologian, best known for his encyclopaedia of animals....
  • Dammām, Al- (Saudi Arabia)
    city, eastern Saudi Arabia. It lies on the Persian Gulf northwest of Bahrain Island and forms a larger metropolitan and industrial complex with Al-Khubar, Al-Qaṭīf, and Al-Ẓahrān. The discovery of immense oil reserves in the locality in 1938 led to the radical transformation of the once small coastal settlement into a boomtown that is now a major seaport, a petroleum an...
  • Damman, Ad- (Saudi Arabia)
    city, eastern Saudi Arabia. It lies on the Persian Gulf northwest of Bahrain Island and forms a larger metropolitan and industrial complex with Al-Khubar, Al-Qaṭīf, and Al-Ẓahrān. The discovery of immense oil reserves in the locality in 1938 led to the radical transformation of the once small coastal settlement into a boomtown that is now a major seaport, a petroleum an...
  • dammar (varnish resin)
    any of a variety of hard varnish resins obtained from coniferous and hardwood trees characteristic of Southeast and East Asia. These include the conifer genus Agathis (family Araucariaceae), such flowering plants as Shorea (especially S. wiesneri) and other genera of the family Dipterocarpaceae, and a few species of the family Burseraceae....
  • dammar pine (plant)
    (Agathis australis), a resinous timber conifer of the family Araucariaceae, native to the North Island of New Zealand. The tree sometimes reaches 45 metres (150 feet) in height, with a diameter up to 7 m (23 ft)....
  • Dammartin (medieval countship, France)
    medieval French countship, whose seat was at Dammartin-en-Goële, northwest of Meaux (in the modern département of Seine-et-Marne)....
  • Dammastock (mountain, Switzerland)
    ...of the canton’s area is reckoned as productive. Forests occupy part of the canton, and more than 20 percent of the unproductive area in Uri is covered with glaciers. The highest summit in Uri is the Dammastock (11,909 feet [3,630 m]), north of the Furka Pass....
  • dammer (varnish resin)
    any of a variety of hard varnish resins obtained from coniferous and hardwood trees characteristic of Southeast and East Asia. These include the conifer genus Agathis (family Araucariaceae), such flowering plants as Shorea (especially S. wiesneri) and other genera of the family Dipterocarpaceae, and a few species of the family Burseraceae....
  • dammūsa (lizard)
    ...locusts and other insects. Many lizards, including skinks, geckos, agamids, and collared lizards, are found in the sand. Lively and pretty, a salmon-coloured lizard, the dammūsa seeks the black beetle for food and literally dives and swims in the slipfaces of the sand dunes. An agamid lizard (......
  • damnatio memoriae (Roman imperial politics)
    ...also renounced their allegiance, Nero lost his nerve and committed suicide. He brought the Julio-Claudian dynasty to an ignominious end by being the first emperor to suffer damnatio memoriae—his reign was officially stricken from the record by order of the Senate....
  • damnation (religion)
    ...of people are not saved, does this not mean that God is responsible for creating humans only to have them suffer and is he not guilty of the worst kind of cruelty by being the sole agent of human damnation?...
  • Damnation de Faust, La (cantata by Berlioz)
    Among Berlioz’s dramatic works, two became internationally known: La Damnation de Faust (1846) and L’Enfance du Christ (1854). Two others began to emerge from neglect after World War I: the massive two-part drama Les Troyens (1855–58), based on Virgil’s story of Dido and Aeneas, and th...
  • Damnation of Theron Ware, The (work by Frederic)
    ...range from the American Revolution (In the Valley, 1890) to the American Civil War (The Copperhead, 1893, and Marsena and Other Stories, 1894). Of his New York State novels, The Damnation of Theron Ware (1896; English title Illumination), the story of the decline and fall of a Methodist minister, brought him his greatest fame. Three other novels,......
  • “Damnés de la terre, Les” (work by Fanon)
    ...blancs (1952; Black Skin, White Masks) reflected his personal frustrations with racism. The publication shortly before his death of his book Les Damnés de la terre (1961; The Wretched of the Earth) established Fanon as a prophetic figure, the author of a social gospel that urged colonized peoples to purge themselves of their degradation in a “collective...
  • Damnonii (people)
    The early inhabitants belonged to the great Celtic tribe known to the Romans as Damnonii; they may have been the ancestors of the Picts who lived there afterward. Later the historic county was part of the district of Mannan, disputed land in central Scotland. Near the end of the 7th century St. Serf, who had come to the Fife peninsula to convert the Picts, visited Tullibody, Tullicoultry, and......
  • Damocles (Greek courtier)
    a courtier of Dionysius I of Syracuse, in Sicily, tyrant from 405 to 367 bc. The courtier is known to history through the legend of the “Sword of Damocles.”...
  • Dāmodar River (river, India)
    river in northeastern India, rising with its many tributaries, notably the Bokāro and Konār, in the Choṭa Nāgpur plateau of south-central Bihār state. It follows a generally eastward course for 368 miles (592 km) through West Bengal to join the Hooghly River southwest of Calcutta....
  • Dāmodar Valley (valley, India)
    ...in its entirety lies between the basins of the Ganges and Son rivers to the north and the Mahānadi River to the south; through its centre, from west to east, runs the coal-bearing, faulted Dāmodar Valley. Numerous streams have dissected the uplands into a peneplain (an area reduced almost to a plain by erosion) with isolated hills....

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