Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Balikpapan ... Ballina

Balikpapan: bay and seaport, Kalimantan Timur propinsi ("province"), Indonesia, situated on the eastern coast of Indonesian Borneo, facing the Makasar Strait. It is the site of a major oil refinery that processes both imported and local crude oils. There are producing ...
Balinese: people of the island Bali, Indonesia. They differ from other Indonesians in adhering to the Hindu religion, though their culture has been heavily influenced by the Javanese. Their language belongs to the Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) linguistic family.
Balkan Entente: (Feb. 9, 1934), mutual-defense agreement between Greece, Turkey, Romania, and Yugoslavia, intended to guarantee the signatories' territorial integrity and political independence against attack by another Balkan state (i.e., Bulgaria or Albania). The agreement provided for a Permanent Council, composed of ...
Balkan League: (1866-68), an alliance organized by the Serbian prince Michael III (Mihailo Obrenovic). Concluded by the governments of Serbia, Romania, Montenegro, and Greece and a Bulgarian revolutionary society, it tried to drive the Turks from the Balkans and to unite the ...
Balkan League: (1912-13), alliance of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro, which fought the First Balkan War against Turkey (1912-13). Ostensibly created to limit increasing Austrian power in the Balkans, the league was actually formed at the instigation of Russia in order to ...
Balkan Mountains: chief range of the Balkan Peninsula and Bulgaria and an extension of the Alpine-Carpathian folds. The range extends from the Timok River valley near the Yugoslav (Serbian) border, spreading out eastward for about 330 miles (530 km) into several spurs, ...
Balkan Wars: (1912-13), two successive military conflicts that deprived the Ottoman Empire of almost all its remaining territory in Europe.
Balkanization: division of a multinational state into smaller ethnically homogeneous entities. The term also is used to refer to ethnic conflict within multiethnic states. It was coined at the end of World War I to describe the ethnic and political fragmentation ...
Balkans: easternmost of Europe's three great southern peninsulas, comprising the countries of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, and Moldova.
Balkh: village in northern Afghanistan that was formerly Bactra, the capital of ancient Bactria. It lies 14 miles (22 km) west of the city of Mazar-e Sharif and is situated along the Balkh River. A settlement existed at the site as ...
Balkhash, Lake: lake, situated in east-central Kazakstan. The lake lies in the vast Balqash-Alakol basin at 1,122 feet (342 m) above sea level and is situated 600 miles (966 km) east of the Aral Sea. It is 376 miles (605 km) long ...
balkline billiards: group of billiard games played with three balls (red, white, and white with a spot) on a table without pockets, upon which lines are drawn parallel to all cushions and usually either 14 or 18 in (36 or 46 cm) ...
ball: spherical or ovoid object for throwing, hitting, or kicking in various sports and games. The ball is mentioned in the earliest recorded literatures and finds a place in some of the oldest graphic representations of play. It is one of ...
ball bearing: one of the two members of the class of rolling, or so-called antifriction, bearings (the other member of the class is the roller bearing). The function of a ball bearing is to connect two machine members that move relative to ...
ball cactus: any of 25 species of the genus Notocactus, family Cactaceae, native in grasslands of South America. Small, globose to cylindroid, they are commonly cultivated as potted plants. N. scopa and N. leninghausii, silver ball and golden ball cacti respectively, are ...
ball lightning: a rare aerial phenomenon in the form of a luminous sphere that is generally several centimetres in diameter. It usually occurs near the ground during thunderstorms, in close association with cloud-to-ground lightning. It may be red, orange, yellow, white, ...
Ball State University: public, coeducational institution of higher learning located in Muncie, Ind., U.S. The university comprises the colleges of applied sciences and technology, sciences and humanities, fine arts, architecture and planning, communication, information, and media, and business as well as the teachers ...
Ball, Albert: British fighter ace during World War I who achieved 43 victories in air combat.
Ball, Hugo: writer, actor, and dramatist, a harsh social critic, and an early critical biographer of German novelist Hermann Hesse (Hermann Hesse, sein Leben und sein Werk, 1927; "Hermann Hesse, His Life and His Work").
Ball, John: one of the leaders of the Peasants' Revolt in England.
Ball, Lucille: radio and motion-picture actress and longtime comedy star of American television, best remembered for her classic television comedy series I Love Lucy.
Ball, Sir Alexander John, 1st Baronet: rear admiral, a close friend of Admiral Lord Nelson, who directed the blockade of Malta (1798-1800) and served as civil commissioner (governor) of the island (1802-09).
Ball, Thomas: sculptor whose work had a marked influence on monumental art in the United States, especially in New England.
ball-and-socket joint: in vertebrate anatomy, a joint in which the rounded surface of a bone moves within a depression on another bone, allowing greater freedom of movement than any other kind of joint. It is most highly developed in the large shoulder ...
Balla, Giacomo: Italian artist and founding member of the Futurist movement in painting.
ballad: short narrative folk song whose distinctive style crystallized in Europe in the late Middle Ages and persists to the present day in communities where literacy, urban contacts, and mass media have not yet affected the habit of folk singing.
ballad opera: characteristic English type of comic opera, originating in the 18th century and featuring farcical or extravaganza plots. The music was mainly confined to songs or interludes interspersed in spoken dialogue. It was based at first on ballads or folk songs ...
ballad revival: the interest in folk poetry evinced within literary circles, especially in England and Germany, in the 18th century. Actually, it was not a revival but a new discovery and appreciation of the merits of popular poetry, formerly ignored or despised ...
ballad stanza: a verse stanza common in English ballads that consists of two lines in ballad metre, usually printed as a four-line stanza with a rhyme scheme of abcb, as in The Wife of Usher's Well, which begins: There lived a wife ...
ballade: one of several formes fixes ("fixed forms") in French lyric poetry and song, cultivated particularly in the 14th and 15th centuries (compare rondeau; virelai). Strictly, the ballade consists of three stanzas and a shortened final dedicatory stanza. All the stanzas ...
Balladur, Edouard: French neo-Gaullist politician, prime minister of France from 1993 to 1995.
Ballance, John: prime minister of New Zealand (1891-93) who unified the Liberal Party, which held power for 20 years; he also played a major role in the enactment of social welfare legislation.
Ballanche, Pierre-Simon: religious and social philosopher who influenced the Romantic writers and played an important part in the development of French thought in the early decades of the 19th century. The Romantics were attracted by his rejection of 18th-century rationalism and by ...
Ballangrud, Ivar: Norwegian speed skater who, with Clas Thunberg of Finland, dominated speed-skating competitions in the 1920s and '30s. He won seven Olympic medals in his career, as well as four world championships and four European championships.
Ballantyne, R.M.: Scottish author chiefly famous for his adventure story The Coral Island (1858). This and all of Ballantyne's stories were written from personal experience. The heroes of his books are models of self-reliance and moral uprightness. Snowflakes and Sunbeams; or, The ...
Ballarat: city, central Victoria, Australia, on the Yarrowee River. The area was first settled in 1838 by sheepherders and developed rapidly after the discovery of rich alluvial gold deposits in 1851. In 1854, two years after its founding, Ballarat (its name ...
Ballard Family: printers who from 1560 to 1750 virtually monopolized music printing in France.
Ballard, Hank: American rhythm-and-blues singer and songwriter best remembered for songs that were frequently as scandalous as they were inventive, most notably the salacious Work with Me, Annie (1954). He also wrote The Twist (1959), which ...
Ballard, J.G.: British author of science fiction set in ecologically unbalanced landscapes caused by decadent technological excess.
Ballard, Robert: American oceanographer and marine geologist whose pioneering use of deep-diving submersibles laid the foundations for deep-sea archaeology. He is best known for discovering the wreck of the Titanic in 1985.
ballet: theatrical dance in which a formal academic dance technique-the danse d'ecole-is combined with other artistic elements such as music, costume, and stage scenery. The academic technique itself is also known as ballet.
Ballet comique de la reine: court entertainment that is considered the first ballet. Enacted in 1581 at the French court of Catherine de Medicis by the Queen, her ladies, and the nobles of the court to celebrate the betrothal of her sister, it fused the ...
ballet d'action: ballet in which all the elements of production (e.g., choreography, set design, and costuming) are subordinate to the plot and theme. John Weaver, an English ballet master of the early 18th century, is considered the originator of pantomime ballet, a ...
ballet movement: in classical ballet, any of the formalized actions of a dancer that follow specific rules regarding the positions of the arms, feet, and body. Ballet choreography is based on combinations of these fundamental movements. Some movements, like the plie and ...
ballet position: any of the five positions of the feet fundamental to all classical ballet. The term may also denote the various poses of the body. First used by Thoinot Arbeau in 1588, codified by Pierre Beauchamp c. 1680, and set down ...
Ballet Rambert: oldest existing ballet company in England. Since the 1930s the Ballet Rambert has been an important training ground for young talent; among the famous artists who gained early experience with the company were the dancers Alicia Markova and Margot Fonteyn ...
Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo: ballet company founded in Monte-Carlo in 1932. The name Ballets Russes had been used by the impresario Sergey Diaghilev for his company, which revolutionized ballet in the first three decades of the 20th century. Under the direction of Colonel W. ...
Ballets Russes: ballet company founded in Paris in 1909 by the Russian impresario Sergey Diaghilev. The original company included the choreographer Michel Fokine and the dancers Anna Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky; the choreographer George Balanchine joined in 1925. Music was commissioned of ...
balletto: in music, genre of light vocal composition of the late 16th-early 17th centuries, originating in Italy. Dancelike and having much in common with the madrigal, a major vocal form of the period, it is typically strophic (stanzaic) with each of ...
Ballia: town, eastern Uttar Pradesh state, northern India. It lies along the Ganges River, 75 miles (120 km) northeast of Varanasi (Benares). An ancient settlement, the town has occasionally been moved northward because of changes in the river's course. Ballia is ...
Ballina: urban district, County Mayo, Ireland, on the River Moy. The town, the largest in Mayo, has a modern Roman Catholic cathedral and the remains of an Augustinian friary founded about 1375. Salmon and trout fishing nearby are notable. Hand tools, ...