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Ballymena ... banana

Ballymena: town and seat of Ballymena district, Northern Ireland. It lies in the River Main valley 24 miles (40 km) northwest of the city of Belfast. The town is the market ...
Ballymena: district, Northern Ireland. It was established in 1973 and was formerly in County Antrim. Ballymena borders the districts of Magherafelt to the west, Ballymoney and Moyle to the north, Larne ...
Ballymoney: town, seat, and district (established 1973), formerly within County Antrim, Northern Ireland. The town of Ballymoney, located on the eastern side of the valley on a tributary of the River ...
balm: any of several fragrant herbs of the mint family, particularly Melissa officinalis, also called balm gentle, or lemon balm, and cultivated in temperate climates for its fragrant leaves, which are ...
Balmaceda, Jose Manuel: liberal reformer and president of Chile (1886-91) whose conflict with his legislature precipitated a civil war.
Balmain, Pierre: French couturier who founded a fashion house that made his name a byword for elegance during the post-World War II years. His clients included the Duchess of Windsor, the Queen ...
Balmer, Johann Jakob: Swiss mathematician who discovered a formula basic to the development of atomic theory and the field of atomic spectroscopy.
Balmes, Jaime Luciano: ecclesiastic, political writer, and philosopher whose liberal ideas were strongly opposed by conservative Roman Catholics.
Balmoral Castle: private residence of the British sovereign, on the right bank of the River Dee, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, at 926 feet (282 metres) above sea level. After its acquisition (1852) by Albert, ...
Balnaves, Henry: politician and diplomat who was one of the chief promoters of the Reformation in Scotland.
Balochi: group of tribes speaking the Balochi language and estimated at about 4,800,000 inhabitants in the province of Balochistan in Pakistan and also neighbouring areas of Iran, Afghanistan, Bahrain, and Punjab ...
Balochi language: modern Iranian language of the Indo-Iranian group of the Indo-European language family. Balochi speakers live mainly in an area now composed of parts of southeastern Iran and southwestern Pakistan that ...
Balochistan: westernmost province of Pakistan. It is bordered by Iran (west), by Afghanistan (northwest), by North-West Frontier and Punjab provinces (northeast and east), by Sindh province (southeast), and by the Arabian ...
Balodis, Janis: army officer and politician who was a principal figure in the foundation and government of independent Latvia. He was commander in chief of the army and navy in Latvia's war ...
Balon, Jean: ballet dancer whose extraordinarily light, elastic leaps reputedly inspired the ballet term "ballon" used to describe a dancer's ability to ascend without apparent effort and to land smoothly and softly. ...
Balqash: city, east-central Kazakhstan. The city is a landing on the northern shore of Lake Balqash. A major centre of nonferrous (copper, predominantly, and molybdenum) metallurgy, it came into being in ...
Balquhidder: village, Stirling council area, historic county of Perthshire, Scotland. It lies near the east end of Loch Voil. Balquhidder is famous as the burial place of the outlaw Rob Roy ...
Balranald: town, southern New South Wales, Australia, on the Murrumbidgee River, near its junction with the Murray. Settled in 1847 and proclaimed a town in 1851, it was an important livestock-ferrying ...
balsa: common, fast-growing tropical tree, occurring from southern Mexico to Bolivia, that is noted for its extremely lightweight and light-coloured wood. Balsa has pale bark and, like many tropical trees, has ...
balsam: aromatic resinous substance that flows from a plant, either spontaneously or from an incision; it consists of a resin dispersed in benzoic or cinnamic acid esters and is used chiefly ...
Balsamon, Theodore: the principal Byzantine legal scholar of the medieval period and patriarch of Antioch (c. 1185-95).
Balsas River: river in south-central Mexico, one of that country's largest rivers. It rises as the Atoyac River at the confluence of the San Martin and Zahuapan rivers in Puebla state and ...
Balt: member of a people of the Indo-European linguistic family living on the southeastern shores of the Baltic Sea. (The name Balt, coined in the 19th century, is derived from the ...
Balthus: reclusive French painter who, in the midst of 20th-century avant-gardism, explored the traditional categories of European painting: the landscape, the still life, the subject painting, and the portrait. He is ...
Balti: city, northern Moldova, on the Raut (Reut) River. Balti, dating from the 15th century, is a major railway junction and the centre of the rich agricultural Balti Steppe. Most industries ...
Baltic Entente: mutual-defense pact signed by Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia on Sept. 12, 1934, that laid the basis for close cooperation among those states, particularly in foreign affairs. Shortly after World War ...
Baltic languages: group of Indo-European languages that includes modern Latvian and Lithuanian, spoken on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, and the extinct Old Prussian, Yotvingian, Curonian, Selonian, and Semigallian languages. ...
Baltic religion: religious beliefs and practices of the Balts, ancient inhabitants of the Baltic region of eastern Europe who spoke languages belonging to the Baltic family of languages.
Baltic Sea: arm of the North Atlantic Ocean, extending northward from the latitude of southern Denmark almost to the Arctic Circle and separating the Scandinavian Peninsula from the rest of continental Europe.
Baltic states: northeastern region of Europe containing the countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea.
Baltic states: present-day states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, located on the extreme eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. They are bounded by the sea on the west and north, by Russia ...
Baltimore: city, north-central Maryland, U.S., about 40 miles (65 km) northeast of Washington, D.C. It lies at the head of the Patapsco River estuary, 15 miles (25 km) above Chesapeake Bay. ...
Baltimore: county, north-central Maryland, U.S. It almost surrounds (but excludes) the city of Baltimore and is bounded by Pennsylvania to the north, the Gunpowder River and Chesapeake Bay to the southeast, ...
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad: first steam-operated railway in the United States to be chartered as a common carrier of freight and passengers (1827). The B&O Railroad Company was established by Baltimore (Md.) merchants to ...
Baltimore clipper: small, fast sailing ship developed by Chesapeake Bay (U.S.) builders in the 18th century. Its speed made it valuable for use as a privateer, for conveying perishables, and in the ...
Baltimore Sun, The: morning newspaper published in Baltimore, long one of the most influential dailies in the United States. It was founded in Baltimore in 1837 by A.S. Abell as a four-page tabloid. ...
Baltimore, Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron: founder of the colony of Maryland. He was the eldest son of the 1st Baron Baltimore, who had initiated the idea of a sanctuary for Roman Catholics in the Americas.
Baltimore, Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron: English statesman who was commissioned governor of the American colony of Maryland in 1661 and succeeded as proprietor of the colony in 1675.
Baltimore, David: American virologist who shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1975 with Howard M. Temin and Renato Dulbecco. Working independently, Baltimore and Temin discovered reverse transcriptase, an enzyme ...
Baltimore, George Calvert, 1st Baron: English statesman who projected the founding of the North American province of Maryland, in an effort to find a sanctuary for practicing Roman Catholics.
Baltistan: geographic region of the Northern Areas, in the Pakistani-administered sector of the Kashmir region, in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent. Drained by the Indus River and tributaries such ...
Baltiysk: city and port, Kaliningrad oblast (province), northwestern Russia. It lies at the entrance to the tip of the narrow peninsula separating Frisches Lagoon from the Baltic Sea. Originally the German ...
Balto-Slavic languages: hypothetical language group comprising the languages of the Baltic and Slavic subgroups of the Indo-European language family. Those scholars who accept the Balto-Slavic hypothesis attribute the large number of close ...
Baltra Island: one of the smaller of the Galapagos Islands, with an area of 8 square miles (21 square km). It lies in the eastern Pacific Ocean, about 600 miles (1,000 km) ...
Baluchi rug: floor covering woven by the Balochi people living in Afghanistan and eastern Iran. The patterns in these rugs are highly varied, many consisting of repeated motifs, diagonally arranged across the ...
Balue, Jean: French cardinal, the treacherous minister of King Louis XI.
Balurghat: town, northern West Bengal state, northeastern India, just east of the Atrai River. Connected by road with English Bazar (India) and Dinajpur and Rajshahi (Bangladesh), it is a regional distributing ...
balustrade: low screen formed by railings of stone, wood, metal, glass, or other materials and designed to prevent falls from roofs, balconies, terraces, stairways, and other elevated architectural elements.
Baluze, Etienne: French scholar, notable both as a historian and as the collector and publisher of documents and manuscripts.
Balzac, Honore de: French literary artist who produced a vast number of novels and short stories collectively called La Comedie humaine (The Human Comedy). He helped to ...
Balzac, Jean-Louis Guez de: man of letters and critic, one of the original members of the Academie Francaise; he had a great influence on the development of Classical French prose.
Bamako: capital city, southwestern Mali, on the Niger River. When occupied for the French in 1880 by Captain Joseph-Simon Gallieni, Bamako was a settlement of a few hundred inhabitants, grouped in ...
Bambara: ethnolinguistic group of the upper Niger region of Mali whose language, Bambara (Bamana), belongs to the Mande branch of the Niger-Congo language family. The Bambara are to a great extent ...
Bambara states: two separate West African states, one of which was based on the town of Segou, between the Senegal and Niger rivers, and the other on Kaarta, along the middle Niger ...
Bambara, Toni Cade: American writer, civil-rights activist, and teacher who wrote about the concerns of the African-American community.
Bamberg: city, Bavaria Land (state), south-central Germany. It lies along the canalized Regnitz River, 2 miles (3 km) above the latter's confluence with the Main River, north of ...
Bamberg: county, south-central South Carolina, U.S. Bordered to the northeast by the South Fork Edisto River and to the southwest by the Salkehatchie River, it is also drained by the Little ...
Bamberger, Ludwig: economist and publicist, a leading authority on currency problems in Germany. Originally a radical, he became a moderate liberal in Bismarck's Germany.
Bambocciati: group of relatively small, often anecdotal, paintings of everyday life, made in Rome in the mid-17th century. The word derives from the nickname "Il Bamboccio" ("Large Baby"), applied to the ...
bamboo: any of the tall, treelike grasses comprising the subfamily Bambusoideae of the family Poaceae. More than 75 genera and 1,000 species of bamboos have been proposed in botanical literature, but ...
Bamboo Annals: set of records written on bamboo slips, from the state of Chin, one of the many small states into which China was divided during the late, or Eastern, Chou dynasty ...
bamboo rat: any of four Asiatic species of burrowing, slow-moving, nocturnal rodents. Bamboo rats have a robust, cylindrical body, small ears and eyes, and short, stout legs. The three species of
Bamburgh: coastal village, Berwick-upon-Tweed borough, administrative and historic county of Northumberland, England. The site is dominated by Bamburgh Castle, which stands on a cliff 150 feet (45 metres) above the North ...
Bambuti: a group of Pygmies of the Ituri Forest of eastern Congo (Kinshasa). They are the shortest group of Pygmies in Africa, averaging under 4 feet 6 inches (137 cm) in ...
Bamenda: town, northwestern Cameroon. It is situated in the volcanic Bamenda highlands. Although communications are difficult because of heavy rainfall and rugged relief, the town serves as a trade and export ...
Bamford, Samuel: English radical reformer who was the author of several widely popular poems (principally in the Lancashire dialect) showing sympathy with the condition of the working class. He became a working ...
Bamileke: any of about 90 West African peoples in the Bamileke region of Cameroon. They speak a language of the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo family. They do not refer to ...
Bampton, John: English clergyman who gave his name to one of Protestant Christendom's most distinguished lectureships, the Bampton lectures at Oxford University.
Bamum: a West African people speaking a language that is often used as a lingua franca and belongs to the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo family. Their kingdom, with its capital ...
ban: former Hungarian title denoting a governor of a military district (banat) and later designating a local representative of the Hungarian king in outlying possessions, e.g., Bosnia and Croatia. Originally a ...
Ban Zhao: renowned Chinese scholar and historian of the Dong (Eastern) Han dynasty.
Bana: one of the greatest masters of Sanskrit prose, famed principally for his chronicle, Harsacarita ("Deeds of Harsa"), depicting the court and times of the Buddhist emperor Harsa (reigned c. 606-647) ...
Banaba: coral and phosphate formation 250 miles (400 km) west of the nearest Gilbert Islands, part of Kiribati, in the west central Pacific Ocean. It has a circumference of 6 miles ...
Banach, Stefan: Polish mathematician who founded modern functional analysis and helped develop the theory of topological vector spaces.
Banana: port on the Atlantic coast in far southwestern Congo (Kinshasa), central Africa, at the mouth of the Congo River. One of the nation's older towns, it was known as a ...
banana: fruit of the genus Musa, of the family Musaceae, one of the most important food crops of the world. The banana is consumed extensively throughout the tropics, where it is ...