In 330 BCE, during his military campaigns in Bactria and Central Asia, Alexander of Macedon founded a city fifty miles north of the modern city of Kabul in Afghanistan, at the confluence of the Ghorband and Panjsher Rivers, and named it Al...

Bahaʾi is a relatively new world religion that was founded and initially developed in Iran in the 1860s. It emerged from Iranian Shiʾa Islam and drew most of its initial adherents from the earlier Babism movement in Iran. Adh...

Welcome to the Bahamas, the tropical oasis you have always dreamed of. What makes the Bahamas so special? Could it be the gorgeous waters? Is it the 700 islands? Or what about just relaxing in the sun? Whatever you are ...

For years Bahrain has faced the effects of drug narcotics trafficking. Though Bahrain has never itself had an issue with drug trafficking to the point of instating strict laws or creating narcotics investigators funded by there ...

ALL-FATHER. Nineteenth-century reports on southeastern Australia showed a widespread belief in a male spirit who transcended others in this part of the continent. Known by diverse names, including Baiame, Bunjil, Daramulun, Kohin, and Mung...

SCHENIRER, SARAH (1883–1935), was a pioneer in religious education for Jewish females and founder of Bais̀ Yaʿaḳov educational institutions. Born to a Belzer Hasidic family in Kraków, descendant of rabbin...

Belgian-born chemist Leo Hendrik Baekeland (1863-1944), working independently, patented Bakelite in 1909. For several years Baekeland had been searching for a solvent to dissolve the product of a condensation reaction between formaldehyde ...

Baker, Lynne Rudder(1944 Philosophy of Mind. Bibliography Baker, Lynne Rudder. Explaining Attitudes: A Practical Approach to the Mind. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Baker, Lynne Rudder. Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View....

Bakili MuluziPresident (pronounced "ba-KIH-ree moo-LOO-zee") "There is evidence that countries that embrace democracy experience economic growth." The landlocked Republic of Malawi, formerly called Nyasalan...

TILAK, BAL GANGADHAR (1856–1920), was an Indian political leader. Known by his followers as Lokamanya, "revered by the people, " but as the "father of Indian unrest" by the British authorities in India, T...

Balanced polymorphism is a situation in which two different versions of a gene are maintained in a population of organisms because individuals carrying both versions are better able to survive than those who have two copies of either versi...

The bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), one of North America's largest birds of prey with a wingspan of up to 7.5 ft (2.3 m), is a member of the family Accipitridae. Adult bald eagles are dark brown to black with a white head a...

Alopecia means hair loss or baldness. Hair loss occurs for many reasons, from pulling hair out to having it killed off by cancer chemotherapy. Some causes are considered natural, while others signal health problems. Some conditions are con...

Baldwin I (ca. 1058-1118), a Norman known earlier as Baldwin of Boulogne and a chief lay leader of the First Crusade, reigned as king of Jerusalem from 1100 to 1118. Son of the Norman Count of Boulogne, Baldwin joined the First Crusade wit...

The Balinese are the ethnic and cultural group inhabiting the island of Bali in Indonesia in the Indian Ocean east of Java. Though like other Indonesians they are primarily of Malay ancestry, the Balinese are distinguished by their Hindu r...

BALINESE RELIGION. Eight degrees south of the equator, toward the middle of the belt of islands that form the southern arc of the Indonesian archipelago, lies the island of Bali, home of the last surviving Hindu-Buddhist civilization of In...

Scholars employ the phrase "Mesoamerican ballgame" to refer to a diverse number of sport or ritual activities involving the use of a ball. All Mesoamerican peoples practiced "the ballgame" in one form or another...

Ballad of Dogs’ Beach by José Cardoso Pires Born in São João do Peso, in central Portugal on February 2, 1925, José Cardoso Pires moved to Lisbon with his family while he was still a child. He completed hi...

Ballistics is the study of projectile motion. A projectile is an object that has been launched, shot, hurled, thrown or by other means projected and which continues in motion due to its own inertia. The path of the projectile is determined...

During the period of time when the European pioneers were moving across the United States and Canada, they adapted a Scandinavian method of building houses called mortise-and-tenon construction, in which the projecting tenon at the end of ...

Baluchistan, a mountainous region overlapping Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan, consists of Baluchistan Province in southwestern Pakistan (2002 pop. 7.2 million, 344,747 square kilometers; capital Quetta) and Baluchestan va Sistan Province ...

Baltasar Jerónimo Gracián y Morales (1601-1658), Spanish humorist, satirist, baroque stylist, and philosophical novelist, is classed with the greatest prose masters of Spain's Golden Age. Born into a religious family in Calat...

Latvians, Lithuanians, and Old Prussians constitute the Baltic language and cultural unit. The Old Prussians, who lived in the territory of the present-day Kaliningrad district and eastern Germany, were conquered during the period of eastw...

The most remote region of Pakistan, Baltistan lies in the portion of Jammu and Kashmir that is controlled by Pakistan. It is situated in the Northern Mountains, at Pamir-Nod, where the Hindu Kush, Pamir, Karakorum, and Himalayan Mountains ...

Bamboos are members of the grass family (Poaceae). Like other grasses, bamboos have jointed stems, small flowers enclosed in structures known as spikelets, a specially modified embryo within the seed, and a grainlike fruit. However, bamboo...