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Baffin Current
surface oceanic current, a southward-moving water outflow along the west side of Baffin Bay, Canada. The Baffin Island Current, flowing at a rate of about 11 miles (17 km) per day, is a combination of West Greenland Current inflow and the outflow of col...
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Baffin Island (island, Nunavut, Canada)
island lying between Greenland and the Canadian mainland. With an area of 195,928 square miles (507,451 square km), it is the largest island in Canada and the fifth largest in the world. Baffin Island is separated from Greenland on the north and east by Baffin Bay and Davis Strait and from the Labrador-U...
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Baffin Island Current
surface oceanic current, a southward-moving water outflow along the west side of Baffin Bay, Canada. The Baffin Island Current, flowing at a rate of about 11 miles (17 km) per day, is a combination of West Greenland Current inflow and the outflow of col...
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Baffin, William (English navigator)
navigator who searched for the Northwest Passage and gave his name to Baffin Island, now part of the Northwest Territories, Canada, and to the bay separating it from Greenland. His determination of longitude at sea by observing the occultation of a s...
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Baffinland Eskimo (people)
...Bay were referred to as the Labrador Eskimo and the Eskimo of Quebec; these were often described as whole units, although each comprises a number of separate societies. The Baffinland Eskimo were often included in the Central Eskimo, a grouping that otherwise included the Caribou Eskimo of the barrens west of Hudson......
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baffle (acoustics)
Loudspeakers are mounted in a box, horn, or other enclosure in order to separate the waves from the front and the rear of the loudspeaker and thereby prevent them from canceling each other. The most common type of enclosure is the acoustic suspension system, in which the loudspeaker is mounted in an airtight box. To prevent resonances in the box of the type described by equation (36) in the......
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baffle (engine part)
Mufflers of early design contained sets of baffles that reversed the flow of the gases or otherwise caused them to follow devious paths so that interference between the pressure waves reduced the pulsations. The mufflers most commonly used in modern motor vehicles employ resonating chambers connected to the passages through which the gases flow. Gas vibrations are set up in each of these......
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Bafing River (river, Africa)
river in western Africa, rising in the Fouta Djallon massif of Guinea and flowing generally northeast for about 200 miles (320 km). After passing the town of Bafing Makana in Mali, its only important riparian settlement, it curves around to flow appro...
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Bafoussam (Cameroon)
town located in western Cameroon, north-northeast of Douala. A trading centre of the Bamiléké peoples, it lies in a densely populated region where coffee, kola nuts, tobacco, tea, and cinchona (from which quinine is made) are grown and pigs and poultry are raised. The tow...
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BAFTA
town located in western Cameroon, north-northeast of Douala. A trading centre of the Bamiléké peoples, it lies in a densely populated region where coffee, kola nuts, tobacco, tea, and cinchona (from which quinine is made) are grown and pigs and poultry are raised. The tow...
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bag net (fishing)
Bag nets are kept vertically open by a frame and held horizontally stretched by the water current. There are small scoop nets that can be pushed and dragged and big stownets, with and without wings, held on stakes or on anchors with or without a vessel. There is also a special winged type with boards or metal plates (called otter boards) that keep it spread open. Stownets, larger than scoop......
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Baga (people)
people who inhabit the swampy coastal region between Cape Verga and the city of Conakry in Guinea. They speak a language of the Atlantic branch of the Niger-Congo family. The women cultivate rice; the men fish and tend palm and kola trees. Some Baga are employed as wage labourers in the bauxite mines of ...
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Bagabandi, Natsagiyn (president of Mongolia)
Area: 1,564,116 sq km (603,909 sq mi) | Population (2005 est.): 2,550,000 | Capital: Ulaanbaatar | Chief of state: Presidents Natsagiyn Bagabandi and, from June 24, Nambaryn Enhbayar | Head of government: Prime Minister Tsahiagiyn Elbegdorj | ...
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“Bagaceira, A” (novel by Almeida)
...including banditry in the arid backlands and the poverty and ignorance of the sugarcane workers in the more fertile coastal zone, are the focus of Almeida’s novels. A Bagaceira (1928; Trash), his best-known work, deals with a group of sertanejos (independent smallholders) forced by drought to leave their own ranches for a life of near-slavery on tropical sugar......
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Bagamoyo (Tanzania)
town, historic seaport of eastern Tanzania. It lies on the Zanzibar Channel, 45 miles (75 km) northwest of Dar es Salaam. The town was formerly a slave-trading depot at the terminus of Arab caravan routes from Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika. The town also served as the first capital of the German East Africa Company...
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Baganda (people)
people inhabiting the area north and northwest of Lake Victoria in south-central Uganda. They speak a Bantu language—called Ganda, or Luganda—of the Benue-Congo group. The Ganda are the most numerous people in Uganda and their territory the most productive and fertile. Once the core of the Uganda Protectorate, ...
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Bagaria (Italy)
town, northwestern Sicily, Italy, 8 miles (13 km) east-southeast of the city of Palermo. A resort of wealthy Palermitans, Bagheria is noted for several historic villas. The best-known are Villa Palagonia (1715), containing more than 60 Byzantine statues of beggars, dwarfs, monsters, and other oddities; the Villa Butera, with wax figures of monks wearing the Carthusian habit (163...
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Bagarre, La (work by Martinů)
His orchestral works Polička (Half-Time, 1925) and La Bagarre (1928) were inspired by contemporary events, respectively a Czech-French football (soccer) game and the crowds that met Charles Lindbergh’s plane as it ended its transatlantic flight. Of his later works, the Concerto grosso for chamber orchestra (1941) uses the alternation between soloists and f...
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bagasse (fibre)
fibre remaining after the extraction of the sugar-bearing juice from sugarcane. The word bagasse, from the French bagage via the Spanish bagazo, originally meant “rubbish,” “refuse,” or “trash.” Applied first to the debris from the pressing of olives, palm nuts, and grapes, the word was subsequently used to mean residues from other pro...
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bagatelle (game)
game, probably of English origin, that is similar to billiards and was probably a modification of it. Bagatelle is played with billiard cues and nine balls on an oblong board or table varying in size from 6 by 1.5 ft (1.8 by 0.5 m) to 10 by 3 ft (3 by 0.9 m), with nine numbered cups at its head, eight arranged in a circle and the ninth in its ...
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Bagatelle Without Tonality (work by Liszt)
...more experimental in style. His later works anticipate the harmonic style of Claude Debussy, and one late work called Bagatelle Without Tonality anticipates Béla Bartók and even Arnold Schoenberg....
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Bagatelles pour un massacre (work by Céline)
...fascism, and, though not originally designed as such, they were read for a long time in that light—especially as Céline himself published anti-Semitic pamphlets, Bagatelles pour un massacre (1937; “Trifles for a Massacre”) and L’École des cadavres (1938; “School for Corpses”). Durin...
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Bagaudae (history of Gaul)
...defensive wars whose success demonstrated the regime’s efficiency. Constantius put down Carausius’ attempted usurpation and fought the Alemanni fiercely near Basel; Maximian first hunted down the Bagaudae (gangs of fugitive peasant brigands) in Gaul, then fought the Moorish tribes in Africa, in 296–298, triumphing at Carthage; and on the Danube, Diocletian, and later Galeri...
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Bagayoko, Amadou (Malian musician)
Amadou and Mariam, Albarn, and many other artists took part in the experimental concerts organized by Africa Express, which began in 2006 and in 2008 were held in London and Liverpool, Eng., and Lagos, Nigeria. The aim was to promote equality between African and Western musicians, who were encouraged to perform together onstage. A series of......
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Bagaza, Jean-Baptiste (president of Burundi)
...of 1972 became the source of considerable tension within the Tutsi minority, thus paving the way for the overthrow of Micombero in 1976 and the advent of the Second Republic under the presidency of Jean-Baptiste Bagaza. Though himself a Tutsi-Bahima from Bururi (like Micombero), Bagaza set out to reinvigorate the UPRONA on an unprecedented scale. At the same time, every effort was made to bring...
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Bagbartu (Anatolian goddess)
...without wings, standing on a lion; in the absence of religious texts his attributes are otherwise unknown. A Urartian temple at ancient Muṣaṣir dedicated to Haldi and to the goddess Bagbartu, or Bagmashtu, was captured and plundered by Sargon II of Assyria in 714 bc; it is shown on a relief from his palace as a gabled building with a colonnade—one of the oldes...
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Bagdad (Iraq)
City (pop., 2003 est.: metro. area, 5,750,000), capital of Iraq....
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Bagé (Brazil)
city, south-central Rio Grande do Sul estado (state), Brazil, lying at 732 feet (223 metres) above sea level amid gently rolling hills covered with tall prairie grass. It was founded in 1811 and given city status in 1859. Located southwest of Porto Alegre...
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Bage, Robert (British author)
...springs out of direct experience of proletarian life and is not available to writers whose background is bourgeois or aristocratic. Consequently, William Godwin’s Caleb Williams (1794) and Robert Bage’s Hermsprong (1796), although, like Hard Times, sympathetic to the lot of the oppressed worker, are more concerned with the imposition of reform from above than ...
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Bagehot, Walter (British economist and journalist)
economist, political analyst, and editor of The Economist who was one of the most influential journalists of the mid-Victorian period....
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bagel (food)
doughnut-shaped yeast-leavened roll that is characterized by a crisp, shiny crust and a dense interior. Long regarded as a Jewish specialty item, the bagel is commonly eaten as a breakfast food or snack, often with toppings such as cream cheese and lox (smoked salmon)....
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Bagerhat (Bangladesh)
town, southwestern Bangladesh. It lies just south of the Bhairab River. Bagerhat was the capital of Hazrat Khan Jahan Ali—the 15th-century pioneer of the Sundarbans region of the southern Padma River (Ganges [Ganga] River) delta—and contains the ruins of his mausoleum and a large mosque (Sat Gumbaz, built ...
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Baggara (people)
(Arabic: “Cattlemen”), nomadic people of Arab and African ancestry who live in a part of Africa that will support cattle but not camels—south of latitude 13° and north of latitude 10° from Lake Chad eastward to the Nile River...
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baggataway (sport)
(French: “the crosier”), competitive sport, modern version of the North American Indian game of baggataway, in which two teams of players use long-handled, racketlike implements (crosses) to catch, carry, or throw a ball down the field or into the opponents’ goal. The goal is defined by uprights and a crossbar framing a loose net....
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Baggesen, Jens (Danish author)
leading Danish literary figure in the transitional period between Neoclassicism and Romanticism....
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Baggesen, Jens Immanuel (Danish author)
leading Danish literary figure in the transitional period between Neoclassicism and Romanticism....
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Bāgh (India)
Some of the most remarkable ancient artwork of Madhya Pradesh is found in caves. The Bagh caves, near the western town of Mhow, are adorned with paintings on Buddhist topics that date roughly to the 5th century ce. Stemming from about the same period (4th to 7th century) are the Udayagiri caves (Brahmanical and Jaina monasteries), near Vidisha, which exhibit artwork and rock-cut arch...
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bagha (Iranian deities)
...belief was not pan-Iranian. The ahuras (“lords”; Vedic asura) were certain lofty sovereign deities, in contradistinction to the other deities called bagha (Vedic bhaga, “the one who distributes”) and yazata (“the one to be worshiped”). At the head of the pantheon stood Ahura Mazdā, who was particularly connected...
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Baghdād (Iraq)
City (pop., 2003 est.: metro. area, 5,750,000), capital of Iraq....
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Baghdad (Iraq)
City (pop., 2003 est.: metro. area, 5,750,000), capital of Iraq....
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Baghdad Pact Organization
mutual security organization dating from 1955 to 1979 and composed of Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom. Until March 1959 the organization was known as the Middle East Treaty Organization, included Iraq, and had its headquarters in Baghd...
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Baghdad Railway (railway, Asia)
major rail line connecting Istanbul with the Persian Gulf region. Work on the first phase of the railway, which involved an extension of an existing line between Haidar Pasha and Ismid to Ankara, was begun in 1888 by the Ottoman Empire with German fin...
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Baghdad school (Islamic art)
stylistic movement of Islāmic manuscript illustration, founded in the late 12th century (though the earliest surviving works cannot be dated before the 13th century). The school flourished in the period when the ʿAbbāsid caliphs had reasserted their authority in Baghdad. Characterized by the depiction of expressive, individualized faces rather than facial types, a suggestion ...
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Baghdādī, al- (Islamic mathematician)
...that, if p is a prime, then p divides (p − 1) × (p − 2)⋯× 2 × 1 + 1, and al-Baghdādī gave a variant of the idea of amicable numbers by defining two numbers to “balance” if the sums of their divisors are equal....
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Bagheera kiplingi (spider)
species of jumping spider (family Salticidae) noted for its largely plant-based diet. The herbivorous nature of Bagheera kiplingi distinguishes it from all other spiders, which are almost exclusively carnivorous; a minority of species are known to supplement their diets by feeding on plant nectar. B. kiplingi ...
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Baghelkhand (historical region, India)
historical region, eastern Madhya Pradesh state, central India. Known as Dahala before the Muslims, Baghelkhand was held by the warlike Kalacuri dynasty (6th–12th century), whose stronghold was at Kalinjar. With the advent of the Baghela Rajputs (...
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Baghelkhand Agency (British government organization)
...With the advent of the Baghela Rajputs (warrior caste) in the 14th century, after whom the tract is named, it was absorbed into Rewa state. Baghelkhand Agency, a subdivision of the British Central India Agency, was created in 1871 and included Rewa and several other states, with headquarters at Satna. It merged with Bundelkhand Agency in......
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Bagherhat (Bangladesh)
town, southwestern Bangladesh. It lies just south of the Bhairab River. Bagerhat was the capital of Hazrat Khan Jahan Ali—the 15th-century pioneer of the Sundarbans region of the southern Padma River (Ganges [Ganga] River) delta—and contains the ruins of his mausoleum and a large mosque (Sat Gumbaz, built ...
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Bagheria (Italy)
town, northwestern Sicily, Italy, 8 miles (13 km) east-southeast of the city of Palermo. A resort of wealthy Palermitans, Bagheria is noted for several historic villas. The best-known are Villa Palagonia (1715), containing more than 60 Byzantine statues of beggars, dwarfs, monsters, and other oddities; the Villa Butera, with wax figures of monks wearing the Carthusian habit (163...
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Baghlān (Afghanistan)
city, northeastern Afghanistan, near the Qondūz River, at an elevation of 1,650 feet (500 m). Baghlān is the centre of beet-sugar production and has a sugar refinery. Cotton textiles are also manufactured. The city’s industrial development has led to rapid popu...
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Baghmati River (river, Asia)
river in south-central Nepal and northern Bihar state, northeastern India. It rises in several headstreams in the lowland area of Nepal and flows southward through the Siwalik (Shiwalik) Range, the southernmost range of the Himalayas. It continues across the plains of Tarai into Bihar and then flows sout...
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baghouse filter (technology)
One of the most efficient devices for removing suspended particulates is an assembly of fabric filter bags, commonly called a baghouse. A typical baghouse comprises an array of long, narrow bags—each about 25 cm (10 inches) in diameter—that are suspended upside down in a large enclosure. Dust-laden air is blown upward through the bottom of the enclosure by fans. Particulates are......
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Bagirmi (people)
people living on the southern fringe of the Sahara, close to the region of Bornu in Chad and Nigeria. They numbered about 70,000 at the turn of the 21st century. Most speak Bagirmi, a Central Sudanic language of the Nilo-Saharan language family. They are not to be conf...
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Bagirmi, Kingdom of (historical kingdom, Africa)
historic African state founded in the 16th century in the region just southeast of Lake Chad. Europeans first learned about the existence of Bagirmi and the other powerful states of central Africa (Wadai Bornu-Kanem) when Dixon Denham...
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Bagiunis (Somalian clan family)
...throughout southern Somalia, and the Tunni, occupying the stretch of coast between Marca and Kismaayo. Toward the Kenyan border the narrow coastal strip and offshore islands are inhabited by the Bagiunis, a Swahili fishing people....
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Bagley Ice Field (ice field, Alaska, United States)
...Marcus Baker rises to 13,176 feet. The mountains are extremely rugged and heavily glaciated, resulting in the Sargent and Harding ice fields in the Kenai Mountains (on the Kenai Peninsula) and the Bagley Ice Field in the eastern Chugach Mountains. Numerous long and spectacular glaciers descend from the crests of these mountains. The St. Elias Mountains and the Kenai-Chugach mountain system......
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Bagley, Sarah G. (American labour organizer)
American labour organizer who was active in trying to institute reform in the mills of Lowell, Massachusetts....
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Bagley, William Chandler (American author and educator)
American educator, author, and editor who, as a leading “Essentialist,” opposed many of the practices of progressive education....
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Bagley’s Corners (Michigan, United States)
city, Oakland county, southeastern Michigan, U.S. It lies just southeast of Pontiac and northwest of Detroit. The site was settled in 1819 by Amasa Bagley and was known as Bagley’s Corners and Bloomfield Center until the present name was adopted in the 1890s. A f...
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Baglioni, Bartolomeo d’Agnolo (Italian architect)
wood-carver, sculptor, and architect who exerted an important influence on the Renaissance architecture of Florence. Between 1491 and 1502 he did much of the decorative carving in the church of Santa Maria Novella and in the ...
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Baglioni, Bracchio (Umbrian noble)
...Spello (1425) and several other territories (e.g., the communities of Bettona and Bevagna). Although he was never formally created lord, Malatesta became the virtual ruler of Perugia. His son Bracchio (1419–74?) succeeded him....
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Baglioni family (Italian family)
related Umbrian nobles, many of whom were fierce and skillful condottiere, who dominated Perugia between 1488 and 1534. They were constantly challenged by other nobles and by the papacy....
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Baglioni, Giampaolo (Umbrian noble)
...the Ten Judges (Dieci dell’Arbitrio), a council of 10 family members, as a device through which they hoped to govern Perugia. The period was marked by excessive violence, especially within the Baglioni family. One episode was the so-called great betrayal of 1500, during which Carlo and Grifonetto Baglioni attempted a mass assassination of the other members of the family. Giampaolo (or......
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Baglioni, Giovan Paolo (Umbrian noble)
...the Ten Judges (Dieci dell’Arbitrio), a council of 10 family members, as a device through which they hoped to govern Perugia. The period was marked by excessive violence, especially within the Baglioni family. One episode was the so-called great betrayal of 1500, during which Carlo and Grifonetto Baglioni attempted a mass assassination of the other members of the family. Giampaolo (or......
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Baglioni, Malatesta (Umbrian noble)
The ascendancy of the family began with Malatesta (1389–1437), who joined with Bracchio Fortebracchi, tyrant of Perugia, in opposing Pope Martin V. Wounded and imprisoned in 1424, Malatesta won his release by promising to persuade Perugia’s populace to submit to Martin. He was rewarded with the seigneury of Spello (1425) and several other territories (e.g., the communities of....
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Bagmashtu (Anatolian goddess)
...without wings, standing on a lion; in the absence of religious texts his attributes are otherwise unknown. A Urartian temple at ancient Muṣaṣir dedicated to Haldi and to the goddess Bagbartu, or Bagmashtu, was captured and plundered by Sargon II of Assyria in 714 bc; it is shown on a relief from his palace as a gabled building with a colonnade—one of the oldes...
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Bagnell Dam (dam, Missouri, United States)
...Jefferson City, one of the largest man-made lakes in the United States. It is impounded by Bagnell Dam, built (1929–31) across the Osage River to provide hydroelectric power for the St. Louis area. Covering an area of 93 square......
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Bagni San Giuliano (Italy)
town, Toscana (Tuscany) regione, central Italy. The town lies at the foot of Mount Pisano and has been famous since Roman times for its mineral springs (Aquae Calidae Pisanorum). The town was destroyed (1404–06) during battles between the Pisans and the Florentines. It was visited in 1820 by the English poet ...
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Bagnold, Enid (British author)
English novelist and playwright who was known for her broad range of subject and style....
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Bagnold, Ralph A. (British geologist)
English geologist who was a leading authority on the mechanics of sediment transport and on eolian (wind-effect) processes....
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Bagnold, Ralph Alger (British geologist)
English geologist who was a leading authority on the mechanics of sediment transport and on eolian (wind-effect) processes....
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Bago (Philippines)
city, western portion of the island of Negros, Philippines. Bago lies along Guimaras Strait at the mouth of the Bago River and is situated between Bacolod and its outport to the southwest, Pulupandan. Bago is located in an agricultural area that produces rice and sugarcane. Sugar milling is the principal industry. There are road connections to Bacolod and the other cities of wes...
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Bago (historical city, Myanmar)
port city, southern Myanmar (Burma), on the Pegu River, 47 miles (76 km) northeast of Yangon (Rangoon). Pegu was the capital of the Mon kingdom and is surrounded by the ruins of its old wall and moat, which formed a square, with 1.5-mile (2.4-kilometre) sides. On the Yangon–Mandalay railway, it is the start of a branc...
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Bago Mountains (mountains, Myanmar)
mountain range of south-central Myanmar (Burma), extending 270 miles (435 km) north-south between the Irrawaddy and Sittang rivers and ending in a ridge at Yangon (Rangoon). The range averages about 2,000 feet (600 metres) in elevation, reaching its highest point in the north at ...
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Bago Yoma (mountains, Myanmar)
mountain range of south-central Myanmar (Burma), extending 270 miles (435 km) north-south between the Irrawaddy and Sittang rivers and ending in a ridge at Yangon (Rangoon). The range averages about 2,000 feet (600 metres) in elevation, reaching its highest point in the north at ...
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Bagoas (Achaemenian minister)
confidential minister of the Achaemenid king Artaxerxes III of Persia. His name was the Greek form of an Old Persian name often used for eunuchs....
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Bagot Commission (Canadian history)
...for full citizenship in most of Canada, the act disenfranchised most native peoples. Through the 1850s a series of additional laws codified Indian policy in Canada. Initiated by the assimilationist Bagot Commission (1842–44), these laws defined what constituted native identity, mandated that individuals carry only one legal status (e.g., aboriginal or citizen), prohibited the sale of......
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Bagoyi (people)
North-south polarities eventually gave way to subregional factions within the northern establishment. By 1980 the principal factions were the Bashiru and Bagoyi elements, respectively identified with the Bushiru and Bugoyi subregions. Habyarimana sided with the Bashiru faction and was the target of an abortive, Bagoyi-inspired coup in April 1980. Thereafter Habyarimana remained in power by......
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bagpipe (musical instrument)
wind instrument consisting of two or more single- or double-reed pipes, the reeds being set in motion by wind fed by arm pressure on an animal-skin (or rubberized-cloth) bag. The pipes are held in wooden sockets (stocks) tied into the bag, which is inflated either by the mouth (through a blowpipe with a leather ...
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Bagradas River (river, Tunisia)
main river of Tunisia and the country’s only perennially flowing stream. Wadi Majardah rises in northeastern Algeria in the Majardah (Mejerda) Mountains and flows northeastward for 290 miles (460 km) to the Gulf of Tunis, draining an area of about 8,880 square miles (23,000 square km) before it enters the Mediterranean Sea. Dams along the river and its ...
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Bagrām (Afghanistan)
Ivory plaques discovered at Bagrām (Begrām) in Afghanistan are closely related to the school of Mathurā. These are of great importance; for, though ivory must have been a favourite medium of sculpture, little has been preserved of the early work. Most of it is in very low engraved relief, with fluent, sweeping outlines. The figures are depicted in easy and elegant postures,......
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Bagrat III (king of Georgia)
...(“guardian of the palace”). In due course, Ashot profited from the weakness of the Byzantine emperors and the Arab caliphs and set himself up as hereditary prince in Iberia. King Bagrat III (reigned 975–1014) later united all the principalities of eastern and western Georgia into one state. Tbilisi, however, was not recovered from the Muslims until 1122, when it fell to......
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Bagratid dynasty (Armenian dynasty)
princely and royal dynasty founded in Armenia and Georgia during the 9th century by the Bagratuni family. The Bagratid kings kept Armenia independent of both the Byzantine Empire and the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate. ...
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Bagration, Pyotr Ivanovich, Knyaz (Russian general)
Russian general who distinguished himself during the Napoleonic Wars....
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Bagri (region, India)
Murshidabad’s surrounding region consists of the Rarh, a high, undulating continuation of the Chota Nagpur plateau to the west, and the Bagri, a fertile, low-lying alluvial tract, part of the Ganges (Ganga)-Brahmaputra delta, to the east. Rice, jute, legumes, oilseeds, wheat, barley, and mangoes are the chief crops in the east; extensive mulberry cultivation is carried out in the west. Pop....
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Bagrianov, Ivan (Bulgarian official)
He was replaced by the right-wing Agrarian Ivan Bagrianov, who began secret negotiations for surrender with the Allies but at a snail’s pace. At the end of August, the sudden surrender of Romania, which brought Soviet troops to the Danube months before they had been expected, created panic in Sofia. When Bagrianov’s attempt to proclaim Bulgarian neutrality was rejected as insufficien...
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bagrid catfish (fish)
...50 kg (110 pounds). Few enter brackish water. North America; widely introduced. 7 genera, approximately 50 species. Family Bagridae (bagrid catfishes)Similar to Ictaluridae but with elongated adipose fin. Food, aquarium fishes. Size to 0.9 metres (about 3 feet). Asia and Africa. About 18 genera, 1...
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Bagridae (fish)
...50 kg (110 pounds). Few enter brackish water. North America; widely introduced. 7 genera, approximately 50 species. Family Bagridae (bagrid catfishes)Similar to Ictaluridae but with elongated adipose fin. Food, aquarium fishes. Size to 0.9 metres (about 3 feet). Asia and Africa. About 18 genera, 1...
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Bagritsky, Eduard Georgiyevich (Soviet poet)
Soviet poet known for his revolutionary verses and for carrying on the romantic tradition in the Soviet period....
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Bags (American musician)
African-American jazz musician, the first and most influential vibraphone improviser of the postwar, modern jazz era....
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bagua (Chinese divination)
...life. The “Buddha’s hand” citron, a fruit with fingerlike appendages, is a symbol of wealth, and each month and season is represented by a flower or plant. The bagua, consisting of eight sets of three lines, broken and unbroken in different combinations, represent natural forces. They are often seen in conjunction with the yin-yang symb...
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Baguajiao (Chinese organization)
...(“Righteous and Harmonious Fists”). The group practiced certain boxing and calisthenic rituals in the belief that this made them invulnerable. It was thought to be an offshoot of the Eight Trigrams Society (Baguajiao), which had fomented rebellions against the Qing dynasty in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Their original aim was the destruction of the dynasty and also of....
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Baguielli (people)
The oldest inhabitants of the country are the Pygmies, locally known as the Baguielli and Babinga, who live in small hunting bands in the southern forests. They have been hunters and gatherers for thousands of years, although their numbers have consistently diminished with the decline of the forests in which they dwell....
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Baguio (Philippines)
city, west-central Luzon, Philippines. After the United States occupied the Philippines in 1898, Governor William Howard Taft and other officials proposed the pleasant site nestled in pine-clad hills at about 4,900 feet (1,500 m) to ...
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Baguirmi (people)
people living on the southern fringe of the Sahara, close to the region of Bornu in Chad and Nigeria. They numbered about 70,000 at the turn of the 21st century. Most speak Bagirmi, a Central Sudanic language of the Nilo-Saharan language family. They are not to be conf...
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Baguirmi, Kingdom of (historical kingdom, Africa)
historic African state founded in the 16th century in the region just southeast of Lake Chad. Europeans first learned about the existence of Bagirmi and the other powerful states of central Africa (Wadai Bornu-Kanem) when Dixon Denham...
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Bagura (Bangladesh)
city, northwestern Bangladesh. It lies on the west bank of the Karatoya River, which is a tributary of the Jamuna River (the name of the Brahmaputra in Bangladesh). Easy accessibility by road and railway makes Bogra a commercial centre for the southern Barind region, between the upper Padma (Ganges [Gang...
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Bagutta Prize (Italian literary prize)
Italian literary prize that is awarded annually to the author of the best book of the year. Established in 1927, it is named after the Milan trattoria in which the award ceremony is held. The prize recognizes authors in several genres, including novels and works of poetry and journalism....
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baguwen (Chinese literary genre)
...By the end of the Ming dynasty, the writing of examination responses had become highly stylized and formalized in a pattern called “the eight-legged essay” (baguwen), which in subsequent centuries became notoriously repressive of creative thought and writing....
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bagworm moth (insect)
any of a family of insects (order Lepidoptera) that are found worldwide and named for the baglike cases the larvae construct around themselves. The bag ranges in size from 6 to 152 mm (0.25 to 6 inches) and is constructed from silk and bits of leaves, twigs, and other debris. It is also used as a pupal case....
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