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The History Channel - Encyclopedia Category: History and Culture > History Date & country: 02/12/2007, UK Words: 25833

Ballet Shoes
Novel for children by British author Noel Streatfield (1895-1986), published in 1936, which describes the dancing careers of three adopted children, Paul ...

Balliett, Whitney
(1926-2007) US jazz critic. He worked for the New Yorker 1954-98, penning his own column from 1957. His atmospheric, persuasive, and in-depth writings have been widely anthologized in collections such as...

Ballin, Claude
Two celebrated French goldsmiths. The elder (1615-1678) worked for Louis XIV, making numerous vessels, candelabra, and much of the silver furniture with which the king decor ...

ballot
The process of voting in an election. In political elections in democracies ballots are usually secret: voters indicate their choice of candidate on a voting slip which is then placed in a sealed...

ballot act
In Britain, legislation introduced by Gladstone's Liberal administration in 1872, providing for secret ballots in elections. The measure was opposed by landowners who would no longer be able to...

Ballou, Adin
(1803-1890) US Universalist clergyman and reformer. Ballou founded one of the first American Utopian enterprises, the Hypedale Community, in 1841. Although his efforts at establishing a Utopian community...

Ballou, Hosea
(1771-1853) Universalist clergyman and theologian. Ballou helped to found the Universalist Church, edited Universalist publications, and developed a liberal theology that denied original sin and the full deity...

Balmaceda, José Manuel
(1840-1891) Chilean president 1886-91. He inaugurated a vast reform programme including education, railways, communications, and public utilities, and invested revenue from Chile's nitrate fields in public...

Balmes, Jaime Luciano
(1810-1848) Spanish religious and philosophical writer. He founded a political paper, El Pensamiento de la Nacion, in Madrid 1844. His principal works are El Protestantismo comparado con el catolicismo...

Balmont, Konstantin Dmitrievich
(1867-1942) Russian poet and translator. He was the most talented of the older Symbolists (see Symbolism). His verse has a songlike quality...

Balmoral Castle
Residence of the British royal family in Scotland on the River Dee, 10 km/6 mi northeast of Braemar, Aberdeenshire. It was purchased for Queen Victoria by her husband, Prince Albert, in 1852. King...

Balnaves, Henry, of Halhill
(c. 1512-1579) One of the chief promoters of the Reformation in Scotland. In 1538 James V made him a lord of session. On the accession of Mary in 1543, Balnaves was imprisoned for six months for his aggressive...

Baltic Exchange
Market in London mainly for the chartering of freight. Most of the world's chartering of freight is carried out here, where cargo space on ships and aeroplanes is bought and sold. It originated in...

Baltic, Battle of the
Naval battle fought off Copenhagen on 2 April 1801, in which a British fleet under Sir Hyde Parker, with Nelson as second-in-command, annihilated the Danish navy. ...

Baluze, Etienne
(1630-1718) French historian. His chief works are Capitularia Regum Francorum 1677, Miscellanea 1678-1715, Nova Collectio Conciliorum 1683, Vitae Paparum Avenionensium 1693, and Historia Tutelensis Libri III...

Balzac, Honoré de
(1799-1850) French writer. He was one of the major novelists of the 19th century. His first success was Les Chouans/The Chouans, inspired by Walter Scott. This was the beginning of the long series of novels La...

Balzac, Jean Louis Guez de
(1597-1654) French essayist. His writings mark the beginning of a polish and elaboration previously unknown in French composition. His `Lettres` were published in 1624, `Le Prince` (1631),...

Bamberger, Ludwig
(1823-1899) German politician and economist. He took part in the revolutions of 1848 and afterwards lived in exile in France for several years. He was a member of the National Liberal Party in the German...

Bamileke
A Bantu-speaking group of agriculturalists living in Cameroon. The largest ethnic group in the country, the Bamileke originally formed small independent chiefdoms. Their traditional religion was...

ban
Prohibition. The word originally meant `a public proclamation in the territory under the jurisdiction of a feudal lord`. That sense is retained in the word `b ...

Bancroft, Edward
(1744-1821) US secret agent and inventor. He moved to England and was a double agent - working simultaneously for both Benjamin Franklin and the British government - during the American Revolution. He...

Bancroft, George
(1800-1891) US diplomat and historian. A Democrat, he was secretary of the navy in 1845 when he established the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, and as acting secretary of war (May 1846) was...

Bancroft, Richard
(1544-1619) English churchman, archbishop of Canterbury from 1604, and chancellor of Oxford University from 1608. Bancroft was born at Farnworth, Lancashire, and educated at Cambridge University. In 1576 he...

Bancroft, Squire
(1841-1926) English actor and theatre manager. In 1865 he became leading man at the Prince of Wales's Theatre, London, under the management of Marie Wilton (1839-1921), whom he married in 1867. Under the...

Banda, Hastings Kamuzu
(1905-1997) Malawi politician, physician, and president (1966-94). He led his country's independence movement and was prime minister of Nyasaland (the former name of Malawi) from 1964. He became Malawi's...

Bandaranaike, Sirimavo
(1916-2000) Sri Lankan politician, prime minister 1994-2000. She succeeded her husband Solomon Bandaranaike to become the world's first female prime minister, 1960-65 and 1970-77, but was expelled from...

Bandera, Stepan
(1909-1959) Ukrainian nationalist politician, leader of the extreme Ukrainian National League that opposed Polish rule in Galicia (western Ukraine) before World War II. After the Galician capital, Lviv, was...

Bandiera, Attilio
(1810-1844) and Emilio (1819-1844) Two brothers of a Venetian family who led an unsuccessful rising against the Bourbon rule over the kingdom of Naples in favour of Italian independence 1843-44. When the rising failed, the brothers...

Bandung Conference
First conference, in 1955, of the Afro-Asian nations, proclaiming anticolonialism and neutrality between East and West. It was organized by Indonesia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, India,...

Baner, Johan
(1596-1641) Swedish soldier. He was one of the foremost generals of the Thirty Years' War. At the Battle of Breitenfeld 1631, he commanded the right wing of the army under King Gustavus Adolphus, and on the...

Bang, Herman Joachim
(1857-1912) Danish writer. He was the chief exponent of Danish Impressionism. His style relies on visual suggestion and he presents his characters through their actions rather than by direct characterization....

Bang, Nina Henriette Wendeline
(1866-1927) Danish Social Democrat politician. In 1918 she was elected to the upper house of the Danish parliament. In 1924 she became education minister, and was the first woman to hold...

Bangladesh
Country in southern Asia, bounded north, west, and east by India, southeast by Myanmar, and south by the Bay of Bengal. Government Bangladesh has a parliamentary democracy, under its 1972...

Bangs, John Kendrick
(1862-1922) US writer and editor. He published many extravagantly farcical works, including Tiddledywinks Tales (1890), Mr Bonaparte of Corsica (1895), and A Houseboat on the Styx (1895). He also edited the...

Bani-Sadr, Abu'l-Hassan
(1933) Iranian politician, first president of Iran, 1980-81, after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. He was an important figure in the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79, serving as a bridge between the...

Banim, John
(1798-1842) and Michael (1796-1874) Irish writers. The brothers' joint work Tales by the O'Hara Family was the first to chronicle Irish peasant life, agrarian unrest, and the violence to which it led. Written somewhat in the manner of...

bank
Financial institution that uses funds deposited with it to lend money to companies or individuals, and also provides financial services to its customers. The first banks opened in Italy and...

Bank for International Settlements
(BIS) organization whose function is to promote cooperation between central banks and to facilitate international financial settlements; it is also a centre for economic and monetary research and...

bank holiday
In the UK, a public holiday, when banks are closed by law. Bank holidays were instituted by the Bank Holiday Acts 1871 and 1875. In addition to Good Friday and Christmas Day, bank holidays in...

Bank of England
UK central bank founded by act of Parliament in 1694. It was entrusted with issuing bank notes in 1844 and nationalized in 1946. It is banker to the clearing banks and the UK government. As the...

bank rate
Interest rate fixed by the Bank of England as a guide to mortgage, hire purchase rates, and so on, which was replaced in 1972 by the minimum lending rate (lowest rate at which the Bank acts as...

Bankhead, John Hollis
(1872-1946) US lawyer and politician. As Alabama state representative, 1903-05, he wrote a law which deprived African-Americans of suffrage. In 1930 he ran successfully for the US Senate as a...

Bankhead, Tallulah
(1903-1968) US actor. She was renowned for her wit and flamboyant lifestyle. Her stage appearances include Dark Victory (1934), Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes (1939), and Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our...

bankruptcy
Process by which the property of an individual or organization unable to pay debts is taken away under a court order and divided fairly among the person's creditors, after preferential payments such...

Banks, Anthony (Tony) Louis
(1943-2006) UK Labour Party activist and politician. Following a trades union and local government background, he was elected as a member of Parliament in 1983, serving as a backbencher and briefly as minister...

Banks, Iain Menzies
(1954) Scottish writer. His themes include modern culture, politics, and technology, usually set in his native Scotland. His controversial first novel The Wasp Factory (1984) involves an adolescent...

Banks, Joseph
(1743-1820) English naturalist and explorer. In the position of naturalist, he accompanied Captain James Cook on an expedition from 1768 to 1771 to the southern hemisphere in the Endeavour, and brought back...

Banks, Lynne Reid
(1929) English writer. She was widely acclaimed for her novel The L-Shaped Room (1961), the first of a trilogy completed with The Backward Shadow (1970) and Two Is Lonely (1974). Her novels deal with...

Bannatyne Club
Literary club founded in Edinburgh in 1823 by the novelist Walter Scott and other Scottish antiquaries for the printing of rare works relating to Scottish history, literature, and antiquities. Scott...

Bannister, Edward (Mitchell)
(1828-1901) US painter. Bannister studied under William Rimmer in 1855. His recently rediscovered landscapes, such as Fishing (1881), were painted in the naturalistic Barbizon style, a French approach popular...

Bannock
Member of a nomadic American Indian people who moved from the Great Basin (southern Idaho) to the Great Plains (Colorado, Utah, Montana, and Oregon) after acquiring horses in the 1700s. They are...

Bannockburn, Battle of
Battle fought on 23-24 June 1314 at Bannockburn, Scotland, between Robert (I) the Bruce, King of Scotland, and Edward II of England. The defeat of the English led to...

banshee
In Gaelic folklore, an otherworld female spirit whose crying portends the death of a person of old Irish stock. She is rarely seen, and descriptions of her c ...

Bantry House
Country house at Bantry, County Cork, Republic of Ireland. The original square house, which dates from 1710 and was built by the Hutchinson family, has had many alterations. A wing was built about...

Bantu
Term applied to over 60 million African people who speak Bantu languages. Comprising many hundreds of groups in eastern, central, and southern Africa, they have little in common apart from their...

Bantustan
Name until 1978 for a Black National State in the Republic of South Africa. ...

Banville, John
(1945) Irish writer and literary editor. Born in Wexford town, he worked for the Irish Press and became literary editor of the Irish Times in 1988. His first publication was the 1970 collection of short...

Banville, Théodore Faullain de
(1823-1891) French writer. He produced volumes of verse, including Les Cariatides/The Caryatids (1842); comedies, including Gringoire (1866); and tales. His delightful handling of ballades, rondeaux, and other...

Bánzer Suárez, Hugo
(1926-2002) Bolivian military leader and president 1971-78 and democratically-elected conservative president 1997-2001. He overthrew the leftist government of Gen Juan José Torres in 1971, and repressed...

Bapaume, Battle of
Battle between German and British forces during World War I in Nord département, France; the second phase of the successful British offensive of 21 August-2 September 1918. The British pushed the...

baptism
Immersion in or sprinkling with water as a religious rite of initiation. It was practised long before the beginning of Christianity. In Christian infant baptism,...

Baptist
Member of any of several Protestant and evangelical Christian sects that practise baptism by immersion only upon profession of faith. Baptists seek their authority in the Bible. They originated...

baptistery
In church architecture, a building or part of a church in which Christians perform the ceremony of baptism; also the pool used in Baptist churches for the total immersion of adults. Modern...

Bar Hebraeus
(1226-1286) Armenian-born cleric and historian, the last major writer in the Syriac language. His most famous works are the Ecclesiastical Chronicle, and a history of the world written in...

bar mitzvah
In Judaism, initiation of a boy, which takes place at the age of 13, into the adult Jewish community; less common is the bat mitzvah for girls, an identical ceremony conducted mainly in Reform and...

Bar, the
In law, the profession of barristers collectively. To be called to the Bar is to become a barrister. Prospective barristers in the UK must not only complete a course of study in law but also be...

Barabbas
In the New Testament, a condemned robber released by Pilate at Pesach (Passover) instead of Jesus to appease a mob. ...

Baraga, (Irenaeus) Frederic
(1797-1868) Austrian Catholic missionary. Baraga emigrated to the USA in 1830 and worked among Chippewa and Ottawa Indians in upper Michigan, where he became vicar apostolic (1853) and ultimately bishop (1865)....

Barak, Ehud
(1942) Israeli Labour politician, prime minister 1999-2001, former chief of staff of the Israeli army, and the most decorated soldier in the nation's history. As prime minister, Barak formed a government...

Baraka, (Imamu) Amiri
(1934) US poet, dramatist, and militant activist. One of the leading black voices of his generation, he promoted black poetry and theatre, as well as producing volumes of poetry, novels, plays, and...

Barash, Asher
(1889-1952) Israeli novelist and writer of short stories. Born in Poland, Barash went to Palestine as a young man and settled in Tel Aviv-Yafo. His books, which are written in Hebrew and are mainly about the...

Barayi, Elijah
(1930-1994) South African trade unionist and the first president of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). As a teenager he was one of the organizers of the Youth League of the African National...

Barba, Eugenio
(1936) Italian-born theatre director and theorist. A former assistant to Jerzy Grotowski, he founded Odin Teatret in 1964 in Oslo, Norway, later moving with the company to Holstebro in Denmark, where he...

Barbados
Island country in the Caribbean, one of the Lesser Antilles. It is about 483 km/300 mi north of Venezuela. Government The bicameral legislature dates from 1627, when the British settled. The...

Barbara, St
(lived 3rd century AD) Martyr of the early Roman Catholic Church. Accounts of her life differ widely, but she is thought to have lived in Tuscany during the reign of the Roman emperor Maximinus Thrax (ruled AD 235-38)....

Barbari, Jacopo de'
(1440s-c. 1516) Italian painter and engraver. In 1500 he went to Nuremberg in the service of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. After 1504 he worked for Archduke Frederick III of Saxony and Joachim I of...

barbarian
Term applied by the ancient Greeks to people who did not speak their language (`bar, bar` represents the unintelligible sound of a foreign language). The term gradually ceased to apply to...

barbarian conspiracy
Joint attack in AD 367 on Roman Britain from the north by Picts, Scots and Attacotti, and from Continental Europe by Franks and Saxons. Nectaridus, probably comes (count) of the Roman coastal...

Barbaro, Daniele
(1513-1570) Italian diplomat, polymath, and art patron. He took a keen interest in all aspects of the culture of his day, and is best remembered for publishing the standard edition of De architectura by the...

Barbaro, Ermolao
(1454-1493) Venetian humanist teacher and classical scholar. Born into the influential Barbaro family, his teachers included (as well as Pomponio Leto and Theodore Gazes) his own uncle, also called Ermolao...

Barbaro, Francesco
(1390-1454) Venetian politician and humanist author. In his political career, he became the governor of several Venetian territories and led the defence of Brescia against the Milanese army of Niccolò...

Barbarossa
See Khair ed-Din. ...

Barbarossa
Nickname `red beard` given to the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I, and also to two brothers, Horuk and ...

Barbarossa, Operation
In World War II, German code name for the plan to invade the USSR, launched on 22 June 1941. The plan was initially successful but by the end of 1941, the German advance had stalled. Large sections...

Barbary Coast
North African coast of the Mediterranean Sea (named after the Berbers) from which pirates operated against US and European shipping (taking hostages for ransom) from the 16th up...

Barbary Coast Wars
Wars between the Barbary states of North Africa (Tripoli, Morocco, Algiers, and Tunis) and the USA after a dispute over protection money 1801-15. President Thomas Jefferson refused to pay more...

Barbauld, Anna Laetitia
(1743-1825) English poet and editor, a sister of John Aikin. She published Hymns in Prose for Children (1781), followed by Evenings at Home (1796), and edited Selections from the English Essayists, The Letters...

barbed wire
Cheap fencing material made of strands of galvanized wire twisted together with sharp barbs at close intervals. In 1874 an American, Joseph Glidden, devised a machine to mass-produce barbed wire....

Barber v. Guardian Royal Exchange
European Court ruling of 1990 that made discrimination on grounds of sex illegal in the provision of company pension schemes. This landmark decision could leave the UK pension industry facing extra...

Barber, Anthony Perrinott Lysberg
(1920-2005) British Conservative politician. He was chair of the Conservative Party 1967-70 and in 1970 was appointed chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in Edward Heath's new cabinet. Shortly afterwards he...

Barber, Edwin Atlee
(1851-1916) US archaeologist. While a West Philadelphia postmaster and PhD student, he became the country's leading authority on ceramics. He was ceramics curator and director of the Pennsylvania Museum and...

Barberini
Italian family, originally from Florence, who were raised to a high rank among the Roman nobility, when one of its members, Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, became pope 1623, assuming the...

Barbey d'Aurevilly, Jules-Amedée
(1808-1889) French novelist and critic. He was opposed to the realistic trends of the 19th century. Among his novels are Une vieille Maîtresse/The Old Mistress (1851), L'Ensorcelée/The Bewitched Woman (1854),...

Barbey, Daniel E(dward)
(1889-1969) US rear admiral. Commissioned into the US Navy 1912, Barbey had a varied career, divided between sea service and administrative posts, and designed the DUKW amphibious truck 1941. ...

Barbican, the
Arts and residential complex in the City of London. The Barbican Arts Centre (1982) contains theatres, cinemas, and exhibition and concert halls. The architects were Powell, Chamberlin, and Bon. ...

Barbie, Klaus
(1913-1991) German Nazi, a member of the SS paramilitary organization from 1936. During World War II he was involved in the deportation of Jews from the occupied Netherlands from 1940 to 1942 and in tracking...

Barbier, Henri-Auguste
(1805-1882) French poet. He was a voluminous writer, mainly of political satire. The work for which he is best known is Iambes (1831), a series of satirical poems in which he portrays the life of his time in a...

Barbizon School
French school of landscape painters of the mid-19th century, based at Barbizon in the forest of Fontainebleau. They aimed to paint fresh, realistic scenes, sketching and painting...

Barbour, John
(c. 1320-1395) Scottish poet. His epic 13,000-line poem The Brus (written 1374-75, printed 1571) chronicles the war of Scottish independence and includes a vivid account of Robert Bruce's victory over the...

Barbour, Philip Pendleton
(1783-1841) US jurist and political leader. He served as Speaker of the House in the US House of Representatives 1821-23. A strong supporter of states' rights, he was appointed federal district judge by...