Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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bazaar ... beard lichen

bazaar: originally, a public market district of a Persian town. From Persia the term spread to Arabia (the Arabic word suq is synonymous), Turkey, and North Africa. In India it came to be applied to a single shop, ...
Bazaine, Achille: marshal of France who, after distinguished service during the Second Empire, was sentenced to death for his surrender of Metz and 140,000 men to the Germans on Oct. 27, 1870, during the Franco-German War.
Bazalgette, Sir Joseph William: British civil engineer who designed the main drainage system for London.
Bazargan, Mehdi: Iranian educator and politician who in 1979 became the first prime minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Unable to stem the tide of violent extremism under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, he resigned after only nine months in office.
Bazaruto Island: island, Mozambique. It is situated in the Mozambique Channel of the Indian Ocean, about 15 miles (24 km) offshore from the town of Inhassoro and 130 miles (209 km) southeast of Beira. The island is 22 miles (35 km) long ...
Bazille, Jean-Frederic: painter, who, as friend, benefactor, and colleague of the Impressionists, played an important role during the movement's formative years.
Bazin, Henri-Emile: engineer and member of the French Corps des Ponts et Chaussees ("Corps of Bridges and Highways") whose contributions to hydraulics and fluid mechanics include the classic study of water flow in open channels.
Bazin, Herve: French author whose witty and satirical novels often focus on the problems within families and marriages.
Bazin, Rene: French novelist of provincial life, strongly traditionalist in outlook. His works express in simple but elegant style his love of nature, of simple virtues, and of work, especially on the land.
Baziotes, William: American painter who was one of the leading members of the New York Abstract Expressionist group from the late 1940s, when it became the most influential movement in international art.
bazooka: shoulder-type rocket launcher adopted by the U.S. Army in World War II. The weapon consisted of a smooth-bore steel tube, originally about 5 feet (1.5 m) long, open at both ends and equipped with hand grip, shoulder rest, trigger mechanism, ...
Bazzaz, 'Abd al-Rahman al-: Iraqi politician who was prime minister of Iraq from 1965 to 1966.
BCG vaccine: vaccine against tuberculosis, prepared from a weakened strain of tuberculosis bacteria named BCG-bacille Calmette-Guerin, for the French scientists who developed the product. The vaccine is of particular importance for those whose occupations carry a high risk of infection by tuberculosis, ...
BCS theory: in physics, a comprehensive theory developed in 1957 by the American physicists John Bardeen, Leon N. Cooper, and John R. Schrieffer (their surname initials providing the designation BCS) to explain the behaviour of superconducting materials. Superconductors abruptly lose all resistance ...
BD: abbreviation of Bonner Durchmusterung (q.v.), an astronomical catalog.
be: any of the hereditary occupational groups in early Japan (c. 5th-mid-7th century), established to provide specific economic services and a continuous inflow of revenue for the uji, or lineage groups. Each be was thus subsidiary to one of the uji ...
beach: sediments that accumulate along the sea or lake shores, the configuration and contours of which depend on the action of coastal processes, the kinds of sediment involved, and the rate of delivery of this sediment. There are three different kinds ...
Beach Boys, the: American rock group whose dulcet melodies and distinctive vocal mesh defined the 1960s youthful idyll of sun-drenched southern California. The original members were Brian Wilson (b. June 20, 1942, Inglewood, Calif., U.S., ), Dennis Wilson (b. Dec. 4, 1944, Inglewood, ...
beach grass: any of the sand-binding plants in the genus Ammophila (family Poaceae). These coarse, perennial grasses are about one metre (about three feet) tall and grow on sandy coasts of temperate Europe, North America, and northern Africa.
beach pea: (Lathyrus maritimus, sometimes L. japonicus), sprawling perennial plant in the pea family (Fabaceae). It occurs on gravelly and sandy coastal areas throughout the North Temperate Zone. The stem is 30-60 centimetres (1-2 feet) long. The alternate leaves are divided into ...
Beach, Alfred Ely: American publisher and inventor whose Scientific American helped stimulate 19th-century technological innovations and became one of the world's most prestigious science magazines. Beach himself invented a tunneling shield and the pneumatic tube, among other devices.
Beach, Amy Marcy: American pianist and composer known for her Piano Concerto (1900) and her Gaelic Symphony (1894), the first symphony by an American woman composer.
Beach, Sylvia: bookshop operator who became important in the literary life of Paris, particularly in the 1920s, when her shop was a gathering place for expatriate writers and a centre where French authors could pursue their newfound interest in American literature.
Beachy Head: prominent headland on the English Channel coast in the administrative county of East Sussex, historic county of Sussex, England, in the borough of Eastbourne. Its chalk cliffs, more than 500 ft (150 m) high, represent the seaward extension of the ...
Beacon: city, Dutchess county, southeastern New York, U.S. It lies at the foot of Mount Beacon, on the east bank of the Hudson River (there bridged to Newburgh), 58 miles (93 km) north of New York City. It became a city ...
Beaconsfield: town in South Bucks district, administrative and historic county of Buckinghamshire, England, in the Chiltern Hills.
Beaconsfield: town in northern Tasmania, Australia. It lies on the west bank of the Tamar River, 29 miles (46 km) northwest of Launceston. The site of the present town, originally known as Cabbage Tree Hill, was renamed Brandy Creek when gold ...
bead: small, usually round object made of glass, wood, metal, nut, shell, bone, seed, or the like, pierced for stringing. Among primitive peoples, beads were worn as much for magical as for decorative purposes; hence, little variation was allowed in their ...
bead lightning: form of lightning of longer duration than more typical lightning that appears as a string of luminous segments instead of a continuous channel. It occurs infrequently but has been observed many times. Its causes are unknown, but among the theories ...
Beadle, George Wells: American geneticist who helped found biochemical genetics when he showed that genes affect heredity by determining enzyme structure. He shared the 1958 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Edward Tatum and Joshua Lederberg.
beadwork: use of beads in fabric decoration; beads may be individually stitched, applied in threaded lengths, or actually woven into the material, the weft threaded with beads before being woven in. Glass beads were used decoratively in ancient Egypt, Greece, and ...
Beagle: British naval vessel aboard which Charles Darwin served as naturalist on a voyage to South America and around the world (1831-36). The specimens and observations accumulated on this voyage gave Darwin the essential materials for his theory of evolution by ...
beagle: small hound-dog breed popular as both a pet and a hunter. It looks like a small foxhound and has large brown eyes, hanging ears, and a short coat, usually a combination of black, tan, and white. The beagle is a ...
Beagle Channel: strait in the Tierra del Fuego archipelago at the southern tip of South America. The channel, trending east-west, is about 150 mi (240 km) long and 3 to 8 mi wide; it separates the archipelago's main island to the north ...
beak: stiff, projecting oral structure of certain animals. Beaks are present in a few invertebrates (e.g., cephalopods and some insects), some fishes and mammals, and all birds and turtles. Many dinosaurs were beaked. The term bill is preferred for the beak ...
beak style: distinctive use of birdlike forms in human figures carved in wood in the lower Sepik and Ramu regions of Papua New Guinea. The head of the figure is generally placed on a short neck that connects it to a thick ...
beaked whale: any of 21 species of medium-sized toothed whales with extended snouts, including the bottlenose whales. Little is known about this family of cetaceans; one species was first described in 1995, two others are known only from skeletal remains, and the ...
Beaker folk: Late Neolithic-Early Bronze Age people living about 6,000 years ago in the temperate zones of Europe; they received their name from their distinctive bell-shaped beakers, decorated in horizontal zones by finely toothed stamps. (Their culture is often called the Bell-Beaker ...
Beals, Jessie Tarbox: American photographer who was one of the first women in the United States to have a career as a photojournalist.
beam: in engineering, originally a solid piece of timber, as a beam of a house, a plow, a loom, or a balance. In building construction, a beam is a horizontal member spanning an opening and carrying a load that may be ...
Beamon, Bob: American long jumper, who set a world record of 8.90 metres (29.2 feet) at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. The new record surpassed the existing mark by an astounding 55 cm (21.65 inches) and stood for 23 years, ...
bean: seed or pod of certain leguminous plants of the family Fabaceae, originally of Vicia faba, an Old World species called broad bean, or fava bean. The mature seeds of the principal beans used for food, except soybeans (q.v.), are rather ...
Bean, Alan L: astronaut, participant in the Apollo 12 mission (Nov. 14-22, 1969), in which two long walks, totalling nearly eight hours, were made on the Moon's surface. Bean and Comdr. Charles Conrad, Jr., piloted the Lunar Module to a pinpoint landing on ...
Bean, Roy: justice of the peace and saloonkeeper who styled himself the "law west of the Pecos."
bear: any of nine species of large, short-tailed carnivores found in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. The sun bear (Helarctos malayanus) is the smallest, often weighing less than 50 kg (110 pounds), and the largest is a subspecies ...
Bear Flag Revolt: (June-July 1846), short-lived independence rebellion precipitated by American settlers in California's Sacramento Valley against Mexican authorities. In 1846 approximately 500 Americans were living in California, compared with between 8,000 and 12,000 Mexicans. Nonetheless, early in June a group of about ...
bear grass: one of two species of North American plants comprising the genus Xerophyllum of the lily family (Liliaceae). The western species, X. tenax, also is known as elk grass, squaw grass, and fire lily. It is a smooth, light-green mountain perennial ...
bear market: in securities and commodities trading, a declining market. A bear is an investor who expects prices to decline and, on this assumption, sells a borrowed security or commodity in the hope of buying it back later at a lower price, ...
bearbaiting: the setting of dogs on a bear or a bull chained to a stake by the neck or leg. Popular from the 12th to the 19th century, when they were banned as inhumane, these spectacles were usually staged at theatre-like ...
bearberry: (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi), flowering, prostrate, evergreen shrubs, of the heath family (Ericaceae), occurring widely throughout North America in rocky and sandy woods and open areas. It has woody stems that are often 1.5-1.8 metres (5-6 feet) long. Roots develop from the ...
beard lichen: any member of the genus Usnea, a yellow or greenish fruticose (bushy, branched) lichen with long stems and disk-shaped holdfasts, which resembles a tangled mass of threads. It occurs in both the Arctic and the tropics, where it is eaten ...