Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

0-9

Bataan Death March ... Bathurst

Bataan Death March: forced march of 70,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war captured by the Japanese in the Philippines in the early stages of World War II. Starting out from Mariveles, on the southern end of the Bataan Peninsula, on April 9, ...
Bataan Peninsula: peninsula in central Luzon, Philippines, sheltering Manila Bay (east) from the South China Sea. It is about 30 miles (50 km) long and 15 miles (25 km) wide and occupies an area of about 530 square miles (1,370 square km). ...
Batabano, Gulf of: inlet of the Caribbean Sea, indenting southwestern Cuba. The gulf stretches from the shore of eastern Pinar del Rio province approximately 80 miles (130 km) to the southwestern coast of Matanzas province and the Zapata Peninsula. At its northern edge ...
Bataille, Georges: French librarian and writer whose essays, novels, and poetry expressed his fascination with eroticism, mysticism, and the irrational. He viewed excess as a way to gain personal "sovereignty."
Bataille, Henry: French dramatist whose luxuriant plays of passionate love and stifling social conventions were extremely popular at the beginning of the 20th century.
Batak: several closely related ethnic groups of central Sumatra, Indonesia. They possess a written language of their own, consisting of several diverse dialects, belonging to the Austronesian family. The Batak are descendants of a powerful Proto-Malayan people who until 1825 lived ...
Batak Protestant Christian Church: church in northern Sumatra, Indon., organized as an independent church in 1930 and constituting the largest Lutheran church in Asia. It developed from the work of missionaries of the Rhenish Mission Society, established in Barmen, Ger., in 1828. Under the ...
Batala: city, Punjab state, northwestern India. Located northeast of Amritsar, Batala is an agricultural marketplace and industrial centre. Cotton ginning, weaving, sugar refining, and manufacturing are the principal industries. Batala has two colleges and is linked by road and rail with ...
Batalha: town, west-central Portugal, just south of Leiria city. The town is dominated by the great Dominican abbey of Santa Maria da Vitoria, also known simply as Batalha ("Battle"). In the Battle of Aljubarrota, fought on a plain 9 miles (14 ...
Batan Islands: chain of 14 islands in the Philippines, about 190 miles (310 km) north of Luzon in the Luzon Strait. Their total area is 81 square miles (209 square km). The Bashi (north) and Balintang (south) channels separate the group from ...
Batangas: city, southern Luzon, Philippines. It lies in a small plain on the west bank of the Calumpang River about 1 mile (1.6 km) from the coast of Batangas Bay, which issues through straits ultimately into the South China Sea. The ...
Batavi: ancient Germanic tribe from whom Batavia, a poetic name for The Netherlands, is derived. The Batavi inhabited what is now the Betuwe district of The Netherlands, around Lugdunum Batavorum (Leiden), at the mouth of the Rhine River. Subjugated by Rome ...
Batavia: city, seat (1802) of Genesee county, northwestern New York, U.S. It lies along Tonawanda Creek, midway between Buffalo (west) and Rochester (northeast). Batavia is a distribution point and trade centre for a dairy and truck-farm region and has some industry, ...
Batavian Republic: republic of the Netherlands, established after it was conquered by the French during the campaign of 1794-95. Set up in April 1798, it possessed a government patterned after that of the Directory in France and was bound to France by ...
Bataysk: city, Rostov oblast (province), southwestern Russia, just south of Rostov-na-Donu. It is a transport centre in the northern Caucasus and a main rail junction, with railway shops and freight yards: over 20 percent of the labour force is in transportation. ...
Batdambang: town, western Cambodia. It is the second largest urban area in Cambodia and lies along the Sangke River northwest of Phnom Penh, the national capital. From 1794 to 1904 and again from 1941 to 1946 the town was under Siamese ...
Bate, W. Jackson: American author and literary biographer known for his studies of the English writers John Keats and Samuel Johnson.
bateleur: (species Terathopius ecaudatus), small eagle of Africa and Arabia, belonging to the subfamily Circaetinae (serpent eagles) of the family Accipitridae. The name bateleur (French: "tumbler") comes from the birds' distinctive aerial acrobatics. About 60 cm (2 feet) long, the bateleur ...
Bateman, H L: actor and theatrical manager who made a great success touring the United States and England with two of his daughters, both child actresses.
Bateman, H M: cartoonist known for narrative cartoons and cartoons of situations involving social gaffes.
Bateman, Hester: silversmith noted particularly for her domestic silver of elegant simplicity.
Batemans Bay: coastal town and inlet of the Tasman Sea, southeastern New South Wales, Australia. The inlet, an estuary of the Clyde River, measures 4 by 5 miles (6 by 8 km). Sighted in 1770 by Captain James Cook, it was named ...
Bates College: private, coeducational institution of higher learning in Lewiston, Maine, U.S. It is a liberal arts college that offers bachelor's degree programs in literature, languages, social sciences, life and physical sciences, philosophy, and other areas. Research facilities include the Bates-Morse Mountain ...
Bates, Daisy Gatson: American journalist and civil rights activist who withstood economic, legal, and physical intimidation to champion racial equality, most notably in the integration of public schools in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Bates, Edward: lawyer and Whig politician who joined the Republican Party before the U.S. Civil War and served as Abraham Lincoln's attorney general.
Bates, H W: naturalist and explorer whose demonstration of the operation of natural selection in animal mimicry (the imitation by a species of other life forms or inanimate objects published in 1861, gave firm support to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
Bates, H.E.: novelist and short-story writer of high reputation and wide popularity.
Bates, Katharine Lee: author and educator who wrote the text of the national hymn "America the Beautiful."
Bates, Marston: American zoologist whose studies of mosquitoes in the 1930s and '40s contributed greatly to the epidemiology of yellow fever in northern South America.
Bates, Sir Percy Elly, 4th Baronet: British shipowner who was responsible for outlining the policy that led to the construction of the largest passenger ships in the world, the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth.
Batesian mimicry: a form of biological resemblance in which a noxious, or dangerous, organism (the model), equipped with a warning system such as conspicuous coloration, is mimicked by a harmless organism (the mimic). The mimic gains protection because predators mistake it for ...
Bateson, William: biologist who founded and named the science of genetics and whose experiments provided evidence basic to the modern understanding of heredity. A dedicated Darwinist, he cited embryo studies to support his contention in 1885 that chordates evolved from primitive echinoderms, ...
Batesville: city, seat (1821) of Independence county, north-central Arkansas, U.S., about 90 miles (145 km) northeast of Little Rock. It lies in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains on the White River. The land on which the city is built once ...
batfish: any of about 60 species of fishes of the family Ogcocephalidae (order Lophiiformes), found in warm and temperate seas. Batfishes have broad, flat heads and slim bodies and are covered with hard lumps and spines. Some species have an elongated, ...
Bath: town, seat (1820) of Morgan county, in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia, U.S., near the Potomac River. Probably the oldest spa in the nation, it was chartered in 1776 and officially named Bath for the famous English watering place; ...
Bath: city, unitary authority of Bath and North East Somerset, historic county of Somerset, England. Bath lies along the River Avon in a natural amphitheatre of steep hills. Built of local limestone, it is one of the most elegant and architecturally ...
Bath: town, Beaufort county, eastern North Carolina, U.S., on the Pamlico estuary. The first proprietary grant in the area (1684) embraced the town site, about 40 miles (65 km) southeast of Greenville, then occupied by a Native American village called Pamlicoe. ...
Bath: city, port of entry (since 1789), seat (1854) of Sagadahoc county, southwestern Maine, U.S. The city lies along the Kennebec River near its mouth on the Atlantic coast, 36 miles (58 km) northeast of Portland. Settled about 1670 and named ...
bath: process of soaking the body in water or some other aqueous matter such as mud, steam, or milk. The bath may have cleanliness or curative purposes, and it can have religious, mystical, or some other meaning (see ritual bath).
Bath and North East Somerset: unitary authority, geographic and historic county of Somerset, southwestern England. It lies southeast of the city of Bristol and encompasses the city of Bath, several small urban areas between Bath and Bristol, and the countryside stretching to the southwest.
bath chair: chair on wheels intended for use by ladies and invalids. It was devised by James Heath, of Bath, Eng., about 1750. For the next three-quarters of a century it rivaled the sedan chair and ultimately superseded it as a form ...
Bath, Henry Frederick Thynne, 6th Marquess Of: British nobleman who in 1949 turned Longleat House, his financially distressed family's 16th-century home, into a tourist attraction, setting a precedent that was followed by a number of his peers. In the 1960s he introduced African wildlife in a safari ...
Bath, The Most Honourable Order of the: order of British knighthood established by King George I in 1725, conferred as a reward either for military service or for exemplary civilian merit. Like most chivalric orders, it has antecedents that reach far before the actual date of its ...
Bath, Thomas Thynne, 1st Marquess of, Viscount Weymouth, Baron Thynne Of Warmister: politician who, as 3rd Viscount Weymouth, held important office in the British government during two critical periods in the reign of George III. Although he was an outstanding orator, his dissolute habits (gambling and heavy drinking), indolence, and secretiveness concerning ...
Bath, William Pulteney, 1st Earl of, Viscount Pulteney Of Wrington, Baron Of Hedon: English Whig politician who became prominent in the opposition to Sir Robert Walpole (first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the Exchequer, 1721-42), after being staunchly loyal to him for 12 years, up to 1717. Pulteney was himself three ...
batholith: large body of igneous rock formed beneath the Earth's surface by the intrusion and solidification of magma. It is commonly composed of coarse-grained rocks (e.g., granite or quartz diorite) with a surface exposure of 100 square km (40 square miles) ...
Bathonian Stage: the seventh of eleven divisions (in ascending order) of the Jurassic System, representing all those rocks deposited worldwide during the Bathonian Age (176 to 169 million years ago). No global stratotype section and point (GSSP) for the base of the ...
Bathory, Sigismund: prince of Transylvania whose unpopular anti-Turkish policy led to civil war.
bathos: (from Greek bathys, "deep"), unsuccessful, and therefore ludicrous, attempt to portray pathos in art, i.e., to evoke pity, sympathy, or sorrow. The term was first used in this sense by Alexander Pope in his treatise Peri Bathous; or, The Art ...
Bathsheba: in the Old Testament (2 Samuel 11, 12; 1 Kings 1, 2), wife of Uriah the Hittite; she later became one of the wives of King David and the mother of King Solomon.
Bathurst: city, seat (1826) of Gloucester county, northeastern New Brunswick, Canada. It lies at the mouth of the Nepisiguit River, on Bathurst Harbour, a southern arm of Nepisiguit Bay. The original French settlement, founded in 1619, was called Nepisiguit and then ...