Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Banbridge: town, seat, and district (established 1973), formerly within County Down, N.Ire. Located on the River Bann, the town of Banbridge came into existence following the building of a stone bridge across the river in 1712. It is the main agricultural ...
Banbury: town, Cherwell district, administrative and historic county of Oxfordshire, England. It lies along the River Cherwell. For centuries Banbury was noted for its ale, cheese, and Banbury cakes, a spiced currant pastry. Part of the original 16th-century cake house remains, ...
Banchieri, Adriano: one of the principal composers of madrigal comedies, choral pieces that suggest plots and action to be imagined by the performers and listeners.
Banco National Park: national park, southeastern Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast). It lies immediately north of Abidjan, the national capital. Declared a national park in 1953, Banco preserves both flora and fauna in some 116 square miles (300 square km). Gigantic rain-forest trees occupy ...
Bancroft: village, Hastings county, in the hills of southeastern Ontario, Canada. Bancroft lies 60 miles (95 km) northeast of Peterborough. It originated as a farming settlement called York River in 1855, but later became a lumbering community and was renamed in ...
Bancroft, Ann: American explorer who was the first woman to participate in and successfully finish several arduous expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic.
Bancroft, Edward: secretary to the American commissioners in France during the American Revolution who spied for the British.
Bancroft, George: American historian whose comprehensive 10-volume study of the origins and development of the United States caused him to be referred to as the "father of American history."
Bancroft, Hubert Howe: historian of the American West who collected and published 39 volumes on the history and peoples of western North America. His work remains one of the great sources of information on the West.
Bancroft, Sir Squire: British actor and manager whose espousal of careful craft in the writing and staging of plays did much to lay the foundations of modern theatrical production.
band: (from Middle French bande, "troop"), in music, an ensemble of musicians playing chiefly woodwind, brass, and percussion instruments, in contradistinction to an orchestra, which contains stringed instruments. Apart from this specific designation, the word band has wide vernacular application, from ...
band: in cultural anthropology, theoretical type of human social organization consisting of a small number of nuclear families (usually no more than 30 to 50 persons in all) who are loosely organized for purposes of subsistence and security. They may also ...
band theory: in solid-state physics, theoretical model describing the states of electrons, in solid materials, that can have values of energy only within certain specific ranges. The behaviour of an electron in a solid (and hence its energy) is related to the ...
Band, the: Canadian-American band that began as the backing group for both Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan, then branched out on its own in 1968. The Band's pioneering blend of traditional country, folk, old-time string band, blues, and rock music brought them ...
band-pass filter: arrangement of electronic components that allows only those electric waves lying within a certain range, or band, of frequencies to pass and blocks all others. The components may be conventional coils and capacitors, or the arrangement may be made up ...
Banda: city, southern Uttar Pradesh state, northern India, near the Ken River (a tributary of the Yamuna). An agricultural marketplace, Banda lies at a road junction on a major rail line. The city's trade has been declining, and the road leading ...
Banda: a people of the Central African Republic, some of whom also live in Congo (Kinshasa) and Cameroon and possibly in The Sudan. The Banda speak a language of the Adamawa-Ubangi subgroup of the Niger-Congo language family that is related to ...
Banda Aceh: kotamadya (municipality), capital of Aceh semiautonomous province, Indonesia. It is located on the Aceh River at the northwestern tip of the island of Sumatra, facing the Andaman Sea.
Banda Islands: island group, Maluku provinsi (province), Indonesia. They lie in the Banda Sea, southeast of Ambon Island and south of Ceram. The largest of the nine islands, which have a total land area of 17 square miles (44 square km), is ...
Banda Sea: portion of the western South Pacific, bounded by the southern islands of the Moluccas of Indonesia (Alor, Timor, Wetar, Babar, Tanimbar, and Kai on the south and Ceram, Buru, and Sula on the north). It occupies a total of 180,000 ...
Banda Singh Bahadur: first Sikh military leader to wage an offensive war against the Mughal rulers of India, thereby temporarily extending Sikh territory.
Banda, Hastings Kamuzu: first president of Malawi (formerly Nyasaland) and the principal leader of the Malawi nationalist movement. He ruled Malawi from 1963 to 1994, combining totalitarian political controls with conservative economic policies.
Bandama River: longest and, commercially, most important river in Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast); with its major tributaries, the Red Bandama (Marahoue) and the Nzi, it drains half of the surface area of the country. It rises as the White Bandama in the ...
Bandar Lampung: port city, kotamadya (municipality), and capital of Lampung provinsi (province), Indonesia. It lies at the head of Lampung Bay on the south coast of Sumatra. Bandar Lampung was created in the 1980s from the amalgamation of the former provincial capital, ...
Bandar Seri Begawan: capital of Brunei. The city lies along the Brunei River near its mouth on Brunei Bay, an inlet of the South China Sea. It is an agricultural trade centre and river port. After suffering extensive damage during World War II, ...
Bandar-e 'Abbas: port city on the Strait of Hormuz, the main maritime outlet for much of southern Iran. It lies on the northern shore of Hormuz Bay opposite the islands of Qeshm, Larak, and Hormuz. The inhabitants are mainly Arabs and African ...
Bandar-e Bushehr: port city, southwestern Iran. It lies near the head of the Persian Gulf at the northern end of a flat and narrow peninsula that is connected with the mainland by tidal marshes. Bandar-e Bushehr rose to prominence during the reign ...
Bandaranaike, S.W.R.D.: statesman and prime minister of Ceylon (1956-59), whose election marked a significant change in the political history of modern Ceylon.
Bandaranaike, Sirimavo R.D.: stateswoman who, upon her party's victory in the 1960 Ceylon general election, became the world's first woman prime minister. She left office in 1965 but returned to serve two more terms (1970-77, 1994-2000) as prime minister. The family she founded ...
banded-iron formation: chemically precipitated sediment, typically thin bedded or laminated, consisting of 15 percent or more iron of sedimentary origin and layers of chert, chalcedony, jasper, or quartz. Such formations occur on all the continents and usually are older than 1.7 billion ...
bandeira: Portuguese slave-hunting expedition into the Brazilian interior in the 17th century. The bandeirantes (members of such expeditions) were usually mamelucos (of mixed Indian and Portuguese ancestry) from Sao Paulo who went in search of profit and adventure as they penetrated ...
Bandeira, Manuel: poet who was perhaps the principal figure in the Brazilian literary movement known as Modernismo.
Bandelier National Monument: archaeological area and scenic wilderness of the Pajarito Plateau in north-central New Mexico, U.S. It lies along the Rio Grande 20 miles (32 km) west-northwest of Santa Fe. Established in 1916, it occupies an area of 53 square miles (137 ...
Bandelier, Adolph: Swiss-American anthropologist, historian, and archaeologist who was among the first to study the American Indian cultures of the southwestern United States, Mexico, and Peru-Bolivia. His works, particularly those relating to the Southwest and Peru-Bolivia, are still of considerable value.
Bandello, Matteo: Italian writer whose Novelle (stories) started a new trend in 16th-century narrative literature and had a wide influence in England, France, and Spain.
Banderas, Antonio: Spanish-born film actor whose good looks, sensuality, and emotional range have made him a leading international star.
bandhani work: Indian tie dyeing, or knot dyeing, in which parts of a silk or cotton cloth are tied tightly with wax thread before the whole cloth is dipped in a dye vat; the threads are afterward untied, the parts so protected ...
bandicoot: any of about 22 species of Australasian marsupial mammals comprising the family Peramelidae. (For Asian rodents of this name, see bandicoot rat.) Bandicoots are 30 to 80 cm (12 to 31 inches) long, including the 10- to 30-centimetre (4- to ...
bandicoot rat: any of five Asiatic species of rodents closely associated with human populations. The greater bandicoot rat (Bandicota indica) is the largest, weighing 0.5 to 1 kg (1.1 to 2.2 pounds). The shaggy, blackish brown body is 19 to 33 cm ...
Bandiera, Attilio; and Bandiera, Emilio: followers of Giuseppe Mazzini who led an abortive revolt against Austrian rule in Italy and whose execution made a profound impression on the Italian revolutionary movement.
Bandinelli, Baccio: Florentine Mannerist sculptor whose Michelangelo-influenced works were favoured by the Medici in the second quarter of the 16th century.
Bandirma: port and town, northwestern Turkey, on the Sea of Marmara. It was used in the 13th century by the Latin crusaders as a base of operation against the Greeks of Asia Minor and was taken by the Ottomans in the ...
Bandon: town, County Cork, Ireland, 17 miles (27 km) southwest of Cork. Founded in 1608 by Richard Boyle, later Earl of Cork, Bandon was initially populated by English and Scottish settlers. Parts of the original town wall remain; the ruins of ...
Bandon, River: river in County Cork, Ireland, flowing in a valley cut in rocks of the Carboniferous period (360 to 286 million years ago) but covered with glacial drift and alluvium. The river rises in the Maughanaclea Hills in western Cork and ...
Bandula, Maha: Myanmar general who fought against the British in the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824-26).
Bandundu: city, southwestern Congo (Kinshasa), at the junction of the Kwango and Kwilu rivers. It is a river port serving navigation on the Congo River system from Kinshasa (the national capital, 186 miles [300 km] southwest). There are air links to ...
Bandung: kotamadya (municipality), kabupaten (regency), and capital of Jawa Barat provinsi (province), Indonesia, in the interior of Java on the northern edge of a plateau nearly 2,400 feet (730 m) above sea level. The city, founded in 1810 by the Dutch, ...
Bandung Conference: a meeting of Asian and African states-organized by Indonesia, Myanmar (Burma), Ceylon (Sri Lanka), India, and Pakistan-which took place April 18-24, 1955, in Bandung, Indonesia. In all, 29 countries representing more than half the world's population sent delegates.
bandura: a stringed instrument of the psaltery family considered the national musical instrument of Ukraine. It is used chiefly to accompany folk music. The bandura has an oval wooden body with a flat underside, a short, fretless neck attached to the ...
bandurria: stringed musical instrument of the lute family. The modern bandurria has a small, pear-shaped wooden body, a short neck, and a flat back, with six paired courses of gut and metal-spun silk strings that are tuned g♯-c♯'-f♯'-b'-e"-a" ...
bandwidth: in electronics, the range of frequencies occupied by a modulated radio-frequency signal, usually given in hertz (cycles per second) or as a percentage of the radio frequency. For example, an AM (amplitude modulation) broadcasting station operating at 1,000,000 hertz has ...