Dawes, Charles G(ates) (b. Aug. 27, 1865, Marietta, Ohio, U.S.—d. April 23, 1951, Evanston, Ill.) U.S. politician. He practiced law in Nebraska before being appointed U.S. comptroller of the currency (1897— 1902). In World War I he headed supply procurement for the American Expeditionary Force in France. In 1923 he chaired the Allied Reparations
Miles Davis, 1969.
\OTAVAFOTO FROM LONDON DAILY EXPRESS/PICTORIAL PARADE
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
518 I Dawes General Allotment Act ► Day-Lewis
Commission and arranged the Dawes Plan. He served as vice president (1925-29) under Calvin Coolidge. He shared the 1925 Nobel Prize for Peace with Sir Austen Chamberlain.
Dawes General Allotment Act or Dawes Severalty Act
(1887) U.S. land-distribution law proposed by Sen. Henry L. Dawes (1816-1903) of Massachusetts as a way to “civilize” and make farmers of the American Indians. Grants of 80 to 160 acres were offered to each Indian head of household, though actual ownership was withheld for 25 years to guard against sales to speculators. The unintended result was a weakened tribal structure, the inability of many nomadic Indians to adjust to an agrarian existence, and a reservation life of poverty, disease, and despondency. Under the provision that made available for public sale any “surplus” reservation land, whites had acquired two-thirds of the Indian land by 1932.
Dawes Plan (1924) Arrangement for Germany’s payment of repara¬ tions to the Allies after World War I, produced by a committee of experts presided over by Charles Dawes. The total amount of reparations was not determined, but payments were to begin at 1 billion gold marks in the first year and rise to 2.5 billion by 1928. The plan, which also provided for the reorganization of the Reichsbank and for an initial foreign loan of 800 million marks to Germany, was later replaced by the more lenient Young Plan.
dawn redwood Coniferous, nonevergreen tree {Metasequoia glyp- tostroboides), the only living species of the genus Metasequoia, of the family Taxodiaceae, native to remote valleys of central China. Both branchlets and leaves grow out in pairs from points along the stem. The bright green, feathery leaves turn reddish brown in autumn. Though Metasequoia fossils are abundant, the tree was thought to be extinct until living specimens were discovered in the 1940s. Only a few thousand are known to have survived, in central China. Since these stands were dis¬ covered, seeds and cuttings have been planted throughout the world.
Dawson, George Geoffrey orig. George Geoffrey Robin¬ son (b. Oct. 25, 1874, Skipton-in-Craven, Yorkshire, Eng.—d. Nov. 7, 1944, London) English journalist, influential editor of The Times of Lon¬ don. While in civil service in South Africa, he became editor of the Johan¬ nesburg Star as part of an effort to promote support for official policies. As editor of The Times in the years 1912-19 and 1923—41, he was asso¬ ciated with a group that sought to shape national policy through personal exchanges with leading statesmen; he saw himself as the “secretary- general of the Establishment.” A firm believer in appeasement, he was instrumental in the policy that led to the Munich agreement of 1938.
Daxue \'da-'shwe\ or Ta hsiieh Chinese "Great Learning" Short Chinese text generally attributed to Confucius and his disciple Zengzi. For centuries it existed only as a chapter of the Liji (see Five Classics); it gained renown when republished as one of the Four Books. It states that world peace is impossible unless a ruler first regulates his own country, but that no ruler can do this without first setting his own household in order, which requires personal virtue. Zhu Xi’s preface explains that the text is a means to personal development, instructing each individual to cultivate benevo¬ lence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom.
day Time required for a celestial body to turn once on its axis; espe¬ cially, the period of the Earth’s rotation. The sidereal day (see sidereal period) is the time required for the Earth to rotate once relative to the background of the stars (i.e., the time between two observed passages of a star over the same meridian of longitude). The apparent solar day is the time between two successive transits of the Sun over the same meridian. Because the orbital motion of the Earth makes the Sun seem to move slightly eastward each day relative to the stars, the solar day is about four minutes longer than the sidereal day. The mean solar day is the average value of the solar day, which changes slightly in length during the year as the Earth’s speed in its orbit varies. See table opposite.
Day, Doris orig. Doris von Kappelhoff (b. April 3, 1924, Cincin¬ nati, Ohio, U.S.) U.S. singer and actress. She worked as a band vocalist in the 1940s and went on to great success as a solo recording artist. She made her film debut in 1948 and starred in musicals such as Calamity Jane (1953), Young at Heart (1955), and The Pajama Game (1957). Playing a sunny, wholesome girl-next-door type, she embodied the idealized Ameri¬ can woman of the 1950s. She played dramatic roles in Love Me or Leave Me (1955) and The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) before starring in
bedroom comedies such as Pillow Talk (1959) and That Touch of Mink (1962). She also hosted The Doris Day Show on television (1968-73).
Day, Dorothy (b. Nov. 8, 1897, New York, N.Y., U.S.—d. Nov. 29, 1980, New York City) U.S. journalist and social reformer. While a schol¬ arship student at the University of Illinois (1914-16), she read widely among socialist authors and soon joined the Socialist Party. In 1916 she returned to New York to work for the radical journals The Call and The Masses. With the birth of her daughter (1927), she broke her ties with radicalism and converted to Roman Catholicism. After writing for the lib¬ eral Catholic journal Commonweal, in 1933 she and Peter Maurin (1877— 1949) cofounded The Catholic Worker, which expressed her view of “personalism.” She sought to aid the poor by establishing urban “hospi¬ tality houses” as part of the Catholic Worker movement. After Maurin’s death, she continued to publish the paper and manage the hospitality houses. Although her outspoken pacifist views were criticized by Catho¬ lic conservatives, she influenced Catholic liberals such as Thomas Merton and Daniel and Phiup Berrigan.
Day-Lewis, C(ecil) (b. April 27, 1904, Ballintubbert, County Leix, Ire.—d. May 22, 1972, Hadley Wood, Hertfordshire, Eng.) Irish-born British poet. Son of a clergyman, Day-Lewis studied at the University of Oxford and in the 1930s became part of a circle of left-wing poets cen¬ tred on W.H. Auden, though he later turned to an individual lyricism expressed in traditional forms. His works include translations of Virgil’s Georgies (1940), Aeneid (1952), and Eclogues (1963) and the verse col¬ lections The Room (1965) and The Whispering Roots (1970). He also wrote the autobiography The Buried Day (1960) and several detective novels under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake. He became poet laureate of England in 1968. He was the father of actor Daniel Day-Lewis.
Days
Day
Derivation
Sunday
from Old English translation of Latin solis dies ("sun's day")
Monday
from Old English translation of Latin lunae dies ("moon's day")
Tuesday
from Old English tlwesdaeg ("Tyr's day")*
Wednesday
from Old English wodnesdaeg ("Woden's da/')*
Thursday
from Old English thursdaeg ("Thor's day")*
Friday
from Old English frTgedaeg ("Frigg's day")*
Saturday
from Old English translation of Latin Saturni dies ("Saturn's day")
*ln translating the Latin names, the Germanic peoples sometimes substituted the names of their own gods. Thus, Martis dies ("Mars's day") became tlwesdaeg ("Tyr's day"), Mercurii dies ("Mercury's day") became wodnes- daeg ("Woden's day"), and Veneris dies ("Venus's day") became frTgedaeg ("Frigg's da/').