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Battle of Kursk Bulge (World War II)
(July 5–August 23, 1943), unsuccessful German assault on the Soviet salient around the city of Kursk, in western Russia, during World War II. The salient was a bulge in the Soviet lines that stretched 150 miles (240 km) from north to south and protruded 100 miles (160 km) westward into the German li...
“Battle of Legnano, The” (opera by Verdi)
...London (I masnadieri) and Paris (Jérusalem, a thorough revision of I Lombardi, 1847). La battaglia di Legnano (1849; The Battle of Legnano), a tale of love and jealousy set against the Lombard League’s victory over Frederick Barbarossa in 1176...
Battle of Los Angeles, The (album by Rage Against the Machine)
...reprised the densely textured musical approach and militant lyrics of the band’s debut album, entered the Billboard albums chart at number one. The Battle of Los Angeles (1999) was also successful commercially. In the summer of 2000 the group staged a concert outside the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, after which a...
Battle of Maldon, The (Old English poem)
Old English heroic poem describing a historical skirmish between East Saxons and Viking (mainly Norwegian) raiders in 991. It is incomplete, its beginning and ending both lost. The poem is remarkable for its vivid, dramatic combat scenes and for its expression of the Germanic ethos of loyalty to a leader. The poem, as it survives, opens with the war parties aligned on either sid...
Battle of Midway, The (film by Ford [1942])
...to live up to the masculine code he had helped define in his many films. Already in the Naval Reserve, he made films for the Navy Department’s photographic unit—two of which, The Battle of Midway (1942) and December 7th (1943), won Academy Awards for best documentary—and, working for the Office of Strategic Services, he was ...
Battle of Nahāwand (Iranian history)
(ad 642), military clash in Iran between Arab and Sāsānian forces that was a major turning point in Iranian history. The battle ended in disastrous defeat for the Sāsānian armies and paved the way for the Arab conquest, which resulted in the Islamization of Iran....
Battle of Otterburn, The (ballad)
Historical ballads date mainly from the period 1550–750, though a few, like “The Battle of Otterburn,” celebrate events of an earlier date, in this case 1388. “The Hunting of the Cheviot,” recorded about the same time and dealing with the same campaign, is better known in a late broadside version called “Chevy Chase.” The details in historical balla...
Battle of Pavia, The (tapestry)
...the Italians’ preference for monumentality and their feeling for depth and sculptural modeling to Flemish tastes and traditions for genre and naturalistic detail in sets such as The Battle of Pavia, The Story of Abraham, The Story of Tobias, and The Hunts of the Emperor Maximilian I...
Battle of Queenstown Heights (War of 1812)
(Oct. 13, 1812), serious U.S. reverse in the War of 1812, sustained during an abortive attempt to invade Canada. On Oct. 13, 1812, Major General Stephen Van Rensselaer, commanding a force of about 3,100 U.S. militia, sent advance units across the Niagara River...
Battle of San Romano, The (painting by Uccello)
Perhaps Uccello’s most famous paintings are three panels representing the Battle of San Romano, now in the Louvre, Paris; the National Gallery, London; and the Uffizi, Florence. These panels represent the victory in 1432 of Florentine forces under Niccolò da Tolentino over the troops of their archrival, Siena. There are Renaissance elements, such as a sculptural treatment of forms an...
Battle of Tetuan (painting by Fortuny)
Fortuny painted occasional large works, e.g., the huge “Battle of Tetuan,” based on an incident in the Moroccan campaign and a fine example of pictorial reportage, charged with action and energy. More characteristic, however, are his small genre paintings filled with fine detail, works that attempted to recapture the grace and charm of an imaginary 18th-century scene....
Battle of the Books (work by Swift)
...of three associated pieces: the Tale itself, a satire against “the numerous and gross corruptions in religion and learning”; the mock-heroic Battle of the Books; and the Discourse Concerning the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit, which ridiculed the manner of worship and preaching of religious enthusiast...
Battle of the Centaurs (work by Michelangelo)
...from the artist’s first years is a variation on the composition of an ancient Roman sarcophagus, and Bertoldo had produced a similar one in bronze. This composition is the Battle of the Centaurs (c. 1492). The action and power of the figures foretell the artist’s later interests much more than does the Madonna of the Stairs...
Battle of the Nudes, The (print by Pollaiuolo)
...view to demonstrate their muscular activity. His painting (formerly in the Uffizi but now lost) and small sculpture (Bargello, Florence) of “Hercules and Antaeus,” like the engraving of “The Battle of the Nudes” (see photograph), depict struggle and violent action. “The Rape of Deianira” (Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, ...
“Battle of Theseus and the Amazons” (painting by Micon)
...Micon and his teacher Polygnotus worked on the Stoa Poikile together, beginning shortly after 460 bc. While Polygnotus executed the central composition for the Stoa Poikile, Micon executed the “Amazonomachy,” or the “Battle of Theseus and the Amazons,” placed to the right of Polygnotus’ work. This work apparently marked an important advance in th...
Battle on the Ice (Russian history)
...1242. But Nevsky led an army against them. Recovering all the territory seized by the Knights, he engaged them in battle on the frozen Lake Peipus, known as the “Battle on the Ice” (Ledovoye Poboishche). His victory (April 5) forced the grand master of the Knights to relinquish all claims to the Russian lands that he had conquered and substantially reduced the Teutonic threat to.....
Battle River (river, Canada)
river in central Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada, that is the largest tributary of the North Saskatchewan River. Rising in the Battle and Pigeon lakes 40 miles (65 km) southwest of Edmonton, Alta., it flows eastward through a farming and oil-producing area for more than 350 miles before joining the North Saskatchewan River ...
Battle, Robert (American choreographer)
Aug. 28, 1972Miami, Fla.On July 1, 2011, the up-and-coming young American choreographer Robert Battle officially took the helm of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater complex of troupes and schools as only the third artistic director since the company’s 1958 founding by Alvin Ailey. In 2010, when Jud...
battle royal
...of fights between an agreed number of pairs of birds, the majority of victories deciding the main. There were two other varieties that aroused the particular ire of moralists, however—the battle royal, in which a number of birds were “set” (i.e., placed in the pit at the same time) and allowed to remain until all but one, the victor, were killed or disabled, and the Welsh.....
Battle Royale (film by Fukasaku)
In 2000 Kitano directed Brother, his first film with an English-speaking cast. That year Kitano also appeared in Batoru rowaiaru (Battle Royale), a futuristic thriller that stirred controversy in Japan with its tale of juvenile delinquents forced by authorities into deadly combat on a remote island. He later starred in......
Battle Symphony (work by Beethoven)
...and Eighth symphonies, the first of which had its premiere in 1813. Another novelty at the same concert was the so-called Battle Symphony, written to celebrate the decisive victory of Arthur Wellesley (later duke of Wellington) over Joseph Bonaparte at Vitoria. Composed originally for a mechanical musical......
battle, trial by (trial process)
In ordeal by combat, or ritual combat, the victor is said to win not by his own strength but because supernatural powers have intervened on the side of the right, as in the duel in the European Middle Ages in which the “judgment of God” was thought to determine the winner. If still alive after the combat, the loser might be hanged or burned for a criminal offense or have a hand cut.....
Battle Weight + Smell (poem by Marinetti)
...liberated from the constraints of linear typography and conventional syntax and spelling. A brief extract from Marinetti’s war poem Battaglia peso + odore (1912; “Battle Weight + Smell”) was appended to one of the Futurists’ manifestos as an example of words-in-freedom:Arterial-roads bulging heat fermenting hair armpits drum bli...
Battle-Ax (people)
...furniture of the kurgans, as in the famous royal grave at Maykop (Russia), included metalwork of great refinement, often ornamented with animal motifs. A common weapon was the shaft-hole copper battle-ax, of a type also found in central and northern Europe. There is evidence that the distribution of this weapon resulted from a migration of horse-riding folk, the so-called Battle-Ax people,......
Battle-Cry of Freedom, The (song by Root)
Every war manifests its spirit in songs. One of the most popular songs of the North was “The Battle-Cry of Freedom,” composed by George Frederick Root, a professional songwriter. The song was written a few hours after Pres. Abraham Lincoln called for troops to put down the insurrection in Virginia. “The Bonnie Blue Flag” was one of the most popular Confederate songs,...
battledore and shuttlecock (game)
children’s game played by two persons using small rackets called battledores, which are made of parchment, plastic, or rows of gut or nylon stretched across wooden frames, and shuttlecocks, made of a base of some light material, such as cork, with trimmed feathers fixed around the top. Players try ...
battlefield medicine
field of medicine concerned with the prompt treatment of wounded military personnel within the vicinity of a war zone. Studies of historical casualty rates have shown that about half of military personnel killed in action died from the loss of blood and that up to 80 percent died within the first hour of injury on the battlefield. This time period has been dub...
battlefield support weapon
Battlefield support weapons include such ballistic missiles as the U.S. Lance and the French Pluton, which have ranges of about 75 miles (120 km). These systems, which can deliver nuclear warheads, incorporate vehicles to launch the missiles and to house command and fire-control computers and other equipment....
Battleground (film by Wellman [1949])
Screenplay: Joseph L. Mankiewicz for A Letter to Three WivesMotion Picture Story: Douglas Morrow for The Stratton StoryStory and Screenplay: Robert Pirosh for BattlegroundCinematography, Black-and-White: Paul C. Vogel for BattlegroundCinematography, Color: Winton Hoch for She Wore a Yellow RibbonArt Direction, Black-and-White: Harry Horner and John Meehan for......
battlement (architecture)
the parapet of a wall consisting of alternating low portions known as crenels, or crenelles (hence crenellated walls with battlements), and high portions called merlons. Battlements were devised in order that warriors might be protected by the merlons and yet be able to discharge arrows or other missiles through the crenels. The battlement was an early development in military architecture; it was...
Battlers, The (novel by Tennant)
...On, Stranger (1943), and Tell Morning This (1967)—Tennant lived in poor areas of the city and took jobs ranging from social worker to barmaid. In preparation for The Battlers (1941), about migrant workers, Tennant traveled for months with the unemployed along the roads of Australia, and several years later she lived in a fishing village for a while and worked....
Battles of Coxinga, The (work by Chikamatsu)
Chikamatsu’s most popular work was Kokusenya kassen (1715; The Battles of Coxinga), a historical melodrama based loosely on events in the life of the Chinese-Japanese adventurer who attempted to restore the Ming dynasty in China. Another celebrated work is Shinjū ten no Amijima (1720; ......
battleship
capital ship of the world’s navies from about 1860, when it began to supplant the wooden-hulled, sail-driven ship of the line, to World War II, when its preeminent position was taken over by the ...
Battleship Potemkin (film by Eisenstein [1925])
Soviet silent film, released in 1925, that was director Sergey M. Eisenstein’s tribute to the early Russian revolutionaries and is widely regarded as a masterpiece of international cinema....
Battlestar Galactica (television series)
Soviet silent film, released in 1925, that was director Sergey M. Eisenstein’s tribute to the early Russian revolutionaries and is widely regarded as a masterpiece of international cinema.......
Battletech (computer game)
In 1990, Virtual World Entertainment opened the first BattleTech emporium in Chicago. Modeled loosely on the U.S. military’s SIMNET system of networked training simulators, BattleTech centres put players in individual “pods,” essentially cockpits that served as immersive, interactive consoles for...
Battling Siki (African boxer)
The first African to win a world championship was Louis Phal (better known as “Battling Siki”) of Senegal, who knocked out Georges Carpentier in Paris in 1922 to capture the world light-heavyweight crown. Six months later Siki lost his title on a controversial decision to Mike McTigue, an Irishman, in Dublin on St. Patrick’s Day. It would be four decades before another......
Battoni, Pompeo Girolamo (Italian painter)
Italian painter, who in his own time was ranked with Anton Raphael Mengs as a painter of historical subjects. Probably his portraits are now better known, as he invented the type of “grand tourist” portrait, very popular among the English, which shows the sitter at his ease among the ruins of antiquity. Batoni ...
battu (ballet)
...position demi-plié (feet crossed, knees bent). There are many variations of an assemblé, which can involve turning or traveling across the floor and executing small, battu (“beaten”) steps....
Battus I (king of Cyrene)
ancient Greek colony in Libya, founded c. 631 bc by a group of emigrants from the island of Thera in the Aegean. Their leader, Battus, became the first king, founding the dynasty of the Battiads, whose members, named alternately Battus and Arcesilaus, ruled Cyrene for eight generations (until c. 440 bc). Under their rule, the city prospered economically an...
Battus philenor (butterfly)
...different mimetic females of this single species of swallowtail. In North America the tiger swallowtail (P. glaucus) has mostly black females wherever it coexists with the distasteful pipevine swallowtail (Battus philenor), which is also black. However, where B. philenor does not occur, P. glaucus females tend to be all nonmimetic yellow forms like the males......
Batu (Uzbek poet)
...in Uzbek and Tajik. These writers all began as poets and subsequently branched out to produce many of the first modern indigenous plays, stories, and novels of Central Asia. The younger poets Batu, Cholpán (Abdulhamid Sulayman Yunús), and Elbek (Mashriq Yunus Oghli) offered metres and rhyme schemes quite different from the verse composed in the traditions long employed by......
Batu (Mongol ruler)
grandson of Genghis Khan and founder of the Khanate of Kipchak, or the Golden Horde....
Batu Caves (caves, Malaysia)
...Games; among its several sports venues is the 100,000-seat National Stadium. A short distance to the east is the National Zoo and Aquarium. At the northern edge of the federal territory is Batu (“Rock”) Caves, a complex of limestone grottoes including a 400-foot- (122-metre-) high outcropping reached by hundreds of steps that contains a Hindu temple and is the scene of......
Batu Islands (islands, Indonesia)
group of three major islands and 48 islets off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. Administratively, they are part of North Sumatra (Sumatera Utara) propinsi (province). The three largest islands are Pini, Tanahmasa, and Tanahbala; the total area is 6,370 square mile...
Batu, Kepulauan (islands, Indonesia)
group of three major islands and 48 islets off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. Administratively, they are part of North Sumatra (Sumatera Utara) propinsi (province). The three largest islands are Pini, Tanahmasa, and Tanahbala; the total area is 6,370 square mile...
Batu, Mount (mountain, Ethiopia)
...much smaller in extent than the Western Highlands, but they offer equally impressive contrast in topography. The highest peaks are Tullu Deemtu (Tulu Dīmtu), at 14,360 feet (4,377 metres), and Mount Batu, at 14,127 feet (4,305 metres). The Eastern Lowlands resemble the long train of a bridal gown suddenly dipping from the narrow band of the Eastern Highlands and gently rolling for hundre...
Batu Pahat (Malaysia)
port, Peninsular (West) Malaysia (Malaya), on the Strait of Malacca at the mouth of the Batu Pahat River. It is a fishing town and a distribution centre; and, until the completion of a bridge in 1968, it was a ferry point for road traffic across the river. Sago palms, rubber, coconuts, and fruit are grown ...
Batu Tjina (island, Indonesia)
largest island of the Moluccas, in Indonesia; administratively it is part of the propinsi (or provinsi; province) of North Maluku (Maluku Utara). The island, located between the Molucca Sea (west) and the Pacific Ocean (east), consists of four peni...
batuko (Cape Verdean music form)
...include the characters of Ti Lobo and Chibinho, both of whom have their counterparts in western African folklore. Musical traditions from Africa are reborn in Cape Verde as batuko (derived from the Portuguese verb meaning “to beat”), a genre that features polyrhythm and call and response performed by a group of women. European traditions are.....
Batum, Treaty of (Armenia [1918])
...Armenia declared independence on May 28. Although short-lived, this Armenian republic was the first independent Armenian state since the Middle Ages. On June 4 Armenia was forced to sign the Treaty of Batum with the Ottoman state, acknowledging the pre-1878 Russo-Turkish frontier along the Arpa and Aras rivers as its boundary, but after the Allied victory in World War I the Armenians......
Batumi (Georgia)
city and capital of Ajaria (Adzhariya), Georgia, on a gulf of the Black Sea about 9.5 miles (15 km) north of the Turkish frontier. The city’s name comes from the location of its first settlement, on the left bank of the Bat River. With a history dating from the 1st millennium bc, Batumi was ceded by Turkey to Russia in 1878. It is an impor...
batuque (dance)
In Brazil, away from the ballrooms, an older, very African type of samba is also danced. Sometimes called batuque, it is a kind of group dance, done either in circles with a soloist or in double lines....
Batusi (people)
ethnic group of probable Nilotic origin, whose members live within Rwanda and Burundi. The Tutsi formed the traditional aristocratic minority in both countries, constituting about 9 percent and 14 percent of the population, respectively. The Tutsis’ numbers in Rwanda were greatly ...
Batwa (people)
one of the best-known of the many Pygmy groups scattered across equatorial Africa. Like all other African Pygmies, the Twa, averaging about 5 feet (1.5 m) in height, are a people of mixed ancestry, probably descendants of the original inhabitants of the equatorial rainforest. They live in the high mountains and plains around Lake Kivu...
Baty, Gaston (French playwright and producer)
French playwright and producer who exerted a notable influence on world theatre during the 1920s and ’30s....
Baty, Jean-Baptiste-Marie-Gaston (French playwright and producer)
French playwright and producer who exerted a notable influence on world theatre during the 1920s and ’30s....
batyr (Mongol title)
...the Aral Sea and the Ural River. In each horde the authority of the khan tended to be curtailed by the power exercised by tribal chieftains, known as sultans, and perhaps even more by the beys and batyrs (the heads of the clans that were the components of each tribe). Nominally, the khans commanded a formidable force of mounted warriors, but, in reality, they depended on the loyalty of the......
Batyr Depression (physical feature, Kazakhstan)
oblysy (region), southwestern Kazakhstan, east of the Caspian Sea. The region consists of vast flatlands, with some depressions (the Batyr Depression is 425 feet [130 m] below sea level). It is rich in petroleum and natural gas, especially in the oil and gas region of the Mangghystaū Peninsula. The peninsula also contains deposits of phosphorites and......
Batyushkov, Konstantin Nikolayevich (Russian poet)
Russian elegiac poet whose sensual and melodious verses were said to have influenced the great Russian poet Aleksandr Pushkin....
Batyyeva Hill (hill, Kiev, Ukraine)
...and 591 miles (951 km) from its mouth in the Black Sea. The original location was on the high and steep right (western) bank, which rises above the river in an imposing line of bluffs culminating in Batyyeva Hill, 330 feet (100 metres) above mean river level. This precipitous and wooded bank, topped by the golden domes and spires of churches and bell towers and by high-rise apartment buildings,...
Batz, Jean, baron de (French conspirator)
royalist conspirator during the French Revolution....
Bau (island, Fiji)
These opportunities for new wealth and power, symbolized by the acquisition of muskets, intensified political rivalries and hastened the rise of the kingdom of Bau, a tiny island off the east coast of Viti Levu, ruled first by Naulivou and then by his nephew Cakobau. By the 1850s Bau dominated western Fiji. Cakobau’s main rival was the Tongan chief Maʿafu, who led an army of Christia...
Bau (Mesopotamian deity)
in Mesopotamian religion, city goddess of Urukug in the Lagash region of Sumer and, under the name Nininsina, the Queen of Isin, city goddess of Isin, south of Nippur. In Nippur she was called Ninnibru, Queen of Nippur....
Bauan Fijian (language)
Of the several dialects of Fijian, which are divided into Eastern and Western groups, standard Fijian, based on an Eastern dialect (Bauan) and called Bauan Fijian, is known to all indigenous Fijians. Literacy in modern Fiji is high, and Fijian is widely used as a written language and for broadcasting....
Bauby, Jean-Dominique (French journalist)
French journalist whose struggle with "locked-in syndrome," a state of almost total paralysis, was recounted in his critically acclaimed memoir, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (1997), which he dictated by blinking his left eyelid (b. 1952--d. March 9, 1997)....
Bauchau, Henry (Belgian author)
Belgian novelist, poet, and playwright who was also a practicing psychoanalyst. Like his contemporary Dominique Rolin but unusually for a Belgian writer, Bauchau took his inspiration from psychoanalysis....
Bauchi (state, Nigeria)
state, northeastern Nigeria. Before 1976 it was a province in former North-Eastern state. Bauchi is bounded by the states of Jigawa and Kano on the northwest; Kaduna on the west; Plateau, Taraba, and Gombe on the south; and Yobe on the east. The highlands in the southwestern part of the state are an extension of the Jos Platea...
Bauchi (Nigeria)
town, capital of Bauchi state and traditional emirate, northeastern Nigeria. Bauchi town lies on the railroad from Maiduguri to Kafanchan (where it joins the line to Port Harcourt) and has road connections to Jos, Kano, and Maiduguri and to such state population centres as Gombe and ...
Bauchi Plateau (plateau, Nigeria)
tableland in Plateau State, central Nigeria, distinguished by its high bounding scarp and by bare grassland and embracing Africa’s chief tin-mining region. Its central area covers about 3,000 sq mi (8,000 sq km) and has an average elevation of 4,200 ft (1,280 m); the surrounding high plains often exceed 3,200 ft. The adjoining highland ...
Baucus, Max (American politician)
...more circumspect, with Obama seemingly ceding the initiative to the so-called “Group of Six,” a group of three Republican and three Democratic senators led by conservative Democrat Sen. Max Baucus. The bill that was ultimately passed in the Senate called for considerably less change than the House bill (most notably excluding the “public option” through which a......
baud (communications)
Each modified element of the modulated carrier wave (for instance, a shift from one frequency to another or a shift between two phases) is known as a baud. In early voiceband modems beginning in the early 1960s, one baud represented one bit, so that a modem operating, for instance, at 300 bauds per second (or, more simply, 300 baud) transmitted data at 300 bits per second. In modern modems a......
Bauddhadhikkara (work by Udayanacharya)
...bodies also derived. But he was equally concerned with the mind and its right apprehension of objects in nature. His vigorous thinking was set forth in the Kusumanjali and the Bauddhadhikkara, the latter an attack on the atheistic thesis of Buddhism. Living in a period of lively controversy with the Buddhists, Udayanacharya defended his belief in a personal God by......
Baudelaire (work by Duchamp-Villon)
Raymond Duchamp-Villon began as a follower of Rodin, but his portrait head “Baudelaire” (1911) contrasts with that by his predecessor in its more radical departure from the flesh; the somewhat squared-off head is molded by clear, hard volumes. His famous “Horse” (1914), a coiled, vaguely mechanical form bearing little resemblance to the animal itself, suggests......
Baudelaire, Charles (French author)
French poet, translator, and literary and art critic whose reputation rests primarily on Les Fleurs du mal (1857; The Flowers of Evil), which was perhaps the most important and influential poetry collection published in Europe in the 19th century. Similarly, his Petits poèmes en prose (1868; “Little Prose Poem...
Baudelaire, Charles-Pierre (French author)
French poet, translator, and literary and art critic whose reputation rests primarily on Les Fleurs du mal (1857; The Flowers of Evil), which was perhaps the most important and influential poetry collection published in Europe in the 19th century. Similarly, his Petits poèmes en prose (1868; “Little Prose Poem...
Baudin, Carl (German actor)
...to make up their faces with whitewash rubbed off the walls, dust scraped from red bricks, and black from burned paper or cork or a burned match. Credit for the invention of greasepaint belongs to Carl Baudin of the Leipziger Stadt Theatre. Wishing to conceal the join between the front edge of his wig and forehead, he mixed a flesh-coloured paste of zinc white, yellow ochre, vermilion, and......
Baudin, Jean-Baptiste (French legislator)
...highly popular among the Paris students. In 1859 he was called to the bar, but he was unsuccessful as a lawyer until 1868, when a political case known as the Affaire Baudin made him suddenly famous. Jean-Baptiste Baudin, a deputy (legislator) killed resisting Napoleon III’s coup d’état of 1851, had become a republican martyr, and eight journalists were being prosecuted for ...
Baudin, Nicolas (French explorer)
France sponsored an expedition, similar in intent to Flinders’s, at the same time. Under Nicolas Baudin, it gave French names to many features (including “Terre Napoléon” for the southern coast) and gathered much information but did little new exploration. It was on the northern coast, from Arnhem Land to Cape York Peninsula, that more exploration was needed. Two Admira...
Baudissin, Wolf Heinrich Friedrich Karl, Count von (German translator)
German diplomat and man of letters who with Dorothea Tieck was responsible for many translations of William Shakespeare and thus contributed to the development of German Romanticism....
Baudissin, Wolf Heinrich, Graf von (German translator)
German diplomat and man of letters who with Dorothea Tieck was responsible for many translations of William Shakespeare and thus contributed to the development of German Romanticism....
Baudó Mountains (mountains, Colombia)
North of the Gulf of Guayaquil in Ecuador and Colombia, a series of accreted oceanic terranes (discrete allochthonous fragments) have developed that constitute the Baudo, or Coastal, Mountains and the Cordillera Occidental. They were accreted during Cretaceous and early Cenozoic times. Structurally composed of oceanic volcanic arcs that were amalgamated after each collision by high-angle,......
Baudot Code (communications)
telegraph code developed by J.-M.-E. Baudot in France, which by the mid-20th century supplanted the Morse Code for most printing telegraphy. It consisted originally of groups of five “on” and “off” signals of equal duration, representing a substantial economy over the Morse syst...
Baudot, Jean-Maurice-Émile (French engineer)
engineer who, in 1874, received a patent on a telegraph code that by the mid-20th century had supplanted Morse Code as the most commonly used telegraphic alphabet....
Baudouin Albert Charles Leopold Axel Marie Gustave of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (king of Belgium)
king of the Belgians from 1951 to 1993, who helped restore confidence in the monarchy after the stormy reign of King Leopold III....
Baudouin Bras-de-Fer (count of Flanders)
the first ruler of Flanders. A daring warrior under Charles II the Bald of France, he fell in love with the king’s daughter Judith, the youthful widow of two English kings, married her (862), and fled with his bride to Lorraine. Charles, though at first angry, was at last conciliated, and made his son-in-law margrave (Marchio Flandriae) of Flanders (864...
Baudouin de Boulogne (king of Jerusalem)
king of the Crusader state of Jerusalem (1100–18) who expanded the kingdom and secured its territory, formulating an administrative apparatus that was to serve for 200 years as the basis for Frankish rule in Syria and Palestine....
Baudouin de Courtenay (Byzantine emperor)
the last Latin emperor of Constantinople, who lost his throne in 1261 when Michael VIII Palaeologus restored Greek rule to the capital....
Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan Niecisław (Polish linguist)
linguist who regarded language sounds as structural entities, rather than mere physical phenomena, and thus anticipated the modern linguistic concern with language structure. His long teaching career in eastern European universities began in 1871 and included professorships at the universities of St. Petersburg (1900–14) and Warsaw....
Baudouin de Lille (count of Flanders)
In 1049 William negotiated with Baldwin V of Flanders for the hand of his daughter, Matilda. Baldwin, an imperial vassal with a distinguished lineage, was in rebellion against the emperor, Henry III, and was in desperate need of allies. At the Council of Reims in October 1049, the emperor’s cousin, Pope Leo IX, condemned the proposed marriage as incestuous (William and Matilda were evidentl...
Baudouin du Bourcq (king of Jerusalem)
count of Edessa (1100–18), king of Jerusalem (1118–31), and Crusade leader whose support of the religious-military orders founded during his reign enabled him to expand his kingdom and to withstand Muslim attacks....
Baudouin, François (French historian and theologian)
Although the new study of law was closely related to historiography, the early commentaries on civil law did not constitute histories. The two disciplines were married in theory in Institution of Universal History and its Connection with Jurisprudence by François Baudouin (1520–73) and the Method for the Easy Understanding of......
Baudouin I (king of Belgium)
king of the Belgians from 1951 to 1993, who helped restore confidence in the monarchy after the stormy reign of King Leopold III....
Baudouin le Barbu (count of Flanders)
count of Flanders (988–1035) who greatly expanded the Flemish dominions. He fought successfully both against the Capetian king of France, Robert II, and the Holy Roman emperor Henry II. Henry found himself obliged to grant to Baldwin IV in fief Valenciennes, the burgraveship of Ghent, the land of Waes, and Zeeland. The count of Flanders thus became a fe...
Baudouin le Chauve (count of Flanders)
second ruler of Flanders, who, from his stronghold at Bruges, maintained, as his father Baldwin I before him, a vigorous defense of his lands against the incursions of the Norsemen. On his mother’s side a descendant of Charlemagne, he strengthened the dynastic importance of his family by marrying Aelfthryth, daughter of Alfred the Great, of Wessex, Eng....
Baudouin le Lépreux (king of Jerusalem)
king of Jerusalem (1174–85), called the “leper king” for the disease that afflicted him for most of his short life. His reign saw the growth of factionalism among the Latin nobility that weakened the kingdom during the years when its greatest adversary, the Muslim leader Saladin, extended his influence from Egypt to Syria....
Baudouin Porphyrogénète (Byzantine emperor)
the last Latin emperor of Constantinople, who lost his throne in 1261 when Michael VIII Palaeologus restored Greek rule to the capital....
Baudrillard, Jean (French author and philosopher)
French sociologist and cultural theorist whose theoretical ideas of “hyperreality” and “simulacrum” influenced literary theory and philosophy, especially in the United States, and spread into popular culture....
Bauer, Andreas (German engineer)
In 1811 Koenig and an associate, Andreas Bauer, in another approach to the rotary principle, designed a cylinder as a platen bearing the sheet of paper and pressing it against the typeform placed on a flatbed that moved to and fro. The rotation of the cylinder was linked to the forward movement of the bed but was disengaged when the bed moved back to go under the inking rollers....
Bauer, Bruno (German historian and theologian)
...split, like the French Parliament, into a right (Göschel, and several others), a centre (Rosenkranz), and a left (Strauss himself). There were responses from the right and centre and from Bruno Bauer, a philosopher, historian, and biblical critic. From the anti-Hegelian side there was, above all, Die evangelische Geschichte (1838; “The History of the......