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Archbishop of Canterbury | Q29282 | The archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and a principal leader of the Church of England, the ceremonial head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the bishop of the diocese of Canterbury. The first archbishop was Augustine of Canterbury, the "Apostle to the English", who was sent to England by Pope Gregory the Great and arrived in 597. The position is currently vacant following the resignation of Justin Welby, the 105th archbishop, effective 7 January 2025. During the vacancy the official functions of the office have been delegated primarily to the archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, with some also undertaken by the bishop of London, Sarah Mullally, and the bishop of Dover, Rose Hudson-Wilkin.
From Augustine until William Warham, the archbishops of Canterbury were in full communion with the Catholic Church and usually received the pallium from the pope. During the English Reformation, King Henry VIII broke communion with Rome and proclaimed himself the head of the Church of England. Thomas Cranmer, appointed in 1533, was the first Protestant archbishop of Canterbury and would become one of the most important figures in the development of Anglicanism.
The archbishop is appointed by the British monarch on the advice of the prime minister of the United Kingdom and formally elected by the college of canons of Canterbury Cathedral. In practice, however, candidates are chosen by the Crown Nominations Commission, a Church of England body which advises the prime minister. The Archbishops' Secretary for Appointments wrote to General Synod members regarding appointment of a successor to Justin Welby in January 2025; meetings up to September 2025 were expected, to shortlist candidates. |
Antibody | Q79460 | An antibody (Ab) or immunoglobulin (Ig) is a large, Y-shaped protein belonging to the immunoglobulin superfamily which is used by the immune system to identify and neutralize antigens such as bacteria and viruses, including those that cause disease. Antibodies can recognize virtually any size antigen, able to perceive diverse chemical compositions. Each antibody recognizes one or more specific antigens. Antigen literally means "antibody generator", as it is the presence of an antigen that drives the formation of an antigen-specific antibody. Each tip of the "Y" of an antibody contains a paratope that specifically binds to one particular epitope on an antigen, allowing the two molecules to bind together with precision. Using this mechanism, antibodies can effectively "tag" a microbe or an infected cell for attack by other parts of the immune system, or can neutralize it directly (for example, by blocking a part of a virus that is essential for its invasion).
More narrowly, an antibody (Ab) can refer to the free (secreted) form of these proteins, as opposed to the membrane-bound form found in a B cell receptor. The term immunoglobulin can then refer to both forms. Since they are, broadly speaking, the same protein, the terms are often treated as synonymous.
To allow the immune system to recognize millions of different antigens, the antigen-binding sites at both tips of the antibody come in an equally wide variety. The rest of the antibody structure is much less variable; in humans, antibodies occur in five classes, sometimes called isotypes: IgA, IgD, IgE, IgG, and IgM. Human IgG and IgA antibodies are also divided into discrete subclasses (IgG1, IgG2, IgG3, IgG4; IgA1 and IgA2). The class refers to the functions triggered by the antibody (also known as effector functions), in addition to some other structural features. Antibodies from different classes also differ in where they are released in the body and at what stage of an immune response. Between species, while classes and subclasses of antibodies may be shared (at least in name), their functions and distribution throughout the body may be different. For example, mouse IgG1 is closer to human IgG2 than human IgG1 in terms of its function.
The term humoral immunity is often treated as synonymous with the antibody response, describing the function of the immune system that exists in the body's humors (fluids) in the form of soluble proteins, as distinct from cell-mediated immunity, which generally describes the responses of T cells (especially cytotoxic T cells). In general, antibodies are considered part of the adaptive immune system, though this classification can become complicated. For example, natural IgM, which are made by B-1 lineage cells that have properties more similar to innate immune cells than adaptive, refers to IgM antibodies made independently of an immune response that demonstrate polyreactivity- they recognize multiple distinct (unrelated) antigens. These can work with the complement system in the earliest phases of an immune response to help facilitate clearance of the offending antigen and delivery of the resulting immune complexes to the lymph nodes or spleen for initiation of an immune response. Hence in this capacity, the function of antibodies is more akin to that of innate immunity than adaptive. Nonetheless, in general, antibodies are regarded as part of the adaptive immune system because they demonstrate exceptional specificity (with some exceptions), are produced through genetic rearrangements (rather than being encoded directly in the germline), and are a manifestation of immunological memory.
In the course of an immune response, B cells can progressively differentiate into antibody-secreting cells or into memory B cells. Antibody-secreting cells comprise plasmablasts and plasma cells, which differ mainly in the degree to which they secrete antibody, their lifespan, metabolic adaptations, and surface markers. Plasmablasts are rapidly proliferating, short-lived cells produced in the early phases of the immune response (classically described as arising extrafollicularly rather than from a germinal center) which have the potential to differentiate further into plasma cells. Occasionally plasmablasts are mis-described as short-lived plasma cells; formally this is incorrect. Plasma cells, in contrast, do not divide (they are terminally differentiated), and rely on survival niches comprising specific cell types and cytokines to persist. Plasma cells will secrete huge quantities of antibody regardless of whether or not their cognate antigen is present, ensuring that antibody levels to the antigen in question do not fall to 0, provided the plasma cell stays alive. The rate of antibody secretion, however, can be regulated, for example, by the presence of adjuvant molecules that stimulate the immune response such as TLR ligands. Long-lived plasma cells can live for potentially the entire lifetime of the organism. Classically, the survival niches that house long-lived plasma cells reside in the bone marrow, though it cannot be assumed that any given plasma cell in the bone marrow will be long-lived. However, other work indicates that survival niches can readily be established within the mucosal tissues- though the classes of antibodies involved show a different hierarchy from those in the bone marrow. B cells can also differentiate into memory B cells which can persist for decades similarly to long-lived plasma cells. These cells can be rapidly recalled in a secondary immune response, undergoing class switching, affinity maturation, and differentiating into antibody-secreting cells.
Antibodies are central to the immune protection elicited by most vaccines and infections (although other components of the immune system certainly participate and for some diseases are considerably more important than antibodies in generating an immune response, e.g. in the case of herpes zoster). Durable protection from infections caused by a given microbe – that is, the ability of the microbe to enter the body and begin to replicate (not necessarily to cause disease) – depends on sustained production of large quantities of antibodies, meaning that effective vaccines ideally elicit persistent high levels of antibody, which relies on long-lived plasma cells. At the same time, many microbes of medical importance have the ability to mutate to escape antibodies elicited by prior infections, and long-lived plasma cells cannot undergo affinity maturation or class switching. This is compensated for through memory B cells: novel variants of a microbe that still retain structural features of previously encountered antigens can elicit memory B cell responses that adapt to those changes. It has been suggested that long-lived plasma cells secrete B cell receptors with higher affinity than those on the surfaces of memory B cells, but findings are not entirely consistent on this point.
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American Airlines | Q32396 | American Airlines, Inc. is a major airline in the United States headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, within the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, and is the largest airline in the world in terms of passengers carried and daily flights. American, along with its regional subsidiaries and contractors operating under the brand name American Eagle, operate an extensive international and domestic network with almost 6,800 flights per day to nearly 350 destinations in 48 countries. The airline is also a founding member of the Oneworld alliance, one of the world's three major airline alliances.
American Airlines and American Eagle operate out of ten hubs, with Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) being the largest. The airline serves more than 200 million passengers annually, and averages more than 500,000 daily. As of 2024, the company employs 103,440 staff members. |
Anthony Hopkins | Q65932 | Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins (born 31 December 1937) is a Welsh actor. Considered one of Britain's most recognisable and prolific actors, he is known for his performances on the screen and stage. Hopkins has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, four BAFTA Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Laurence Olivier Award. He has also received the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2005 and the BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement in 2008. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to drama in 1993.
After graduating from the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in 1957, Hopkins trained at RADA (the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) in London. He was then spotted by Laurence Olivier, who invited him to join the Royal National Theatre in 1965. Productions at the National included King Lear (his favourite Shakespeare play), Coriolanus, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra. In 1985, he received acclaim and a Laurence Olivier Award for his performance in the David Hare play Pravda. His last stage play was a West End production of M. Butterfly in 1989.
Hopkins's early film roles include The Lion in Winter (1968), A Bridge Too Far (1977), and The Elephant Man (1980). He won two Academy Awards for Best Actor for playing Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and an octogenarian with dementia in The Father (2020), becoming the oldest Best Actor Oscar winner for the latter. His other Oscar-nominated films include The Remains of the Day (1993), Nixon (1995), Amistad (1997), and The Two Popes (2019). Other notable films include 84 Charing Cross Road (1987), Howards End (1992), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), Shadowlands (1993), Legends of the Fall (1994), The Mask of Zorro (1998), and the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Thor films (2011–2017).
For his work on television, Hopkins received a British Academy Television Award for Best Actor for his performance in War and Peace (1972). He won two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series for The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case (1976) and The Bunker (1981). Other notable projects include the BBC film The Dresser (2015), PBS's King Lear (2018), and the HBO series Westworld (2016–2018). |
Australian rules football | Q50776 | Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by kicking the oval ball between the central goal posts (worth six points), or between a central and outer post (worth one point, otherwise known as a "behind").
During general play, players may position themselves anywhere on the field and use any part of their bodies to move the ball. The primary methods are kicking, handballing and running with the ball. There are rules on how the ball can be handled; for example, players running with the ball must intermittently bounce or touch it on the ground. Throwing the ball is not allowed, and players must not get caught holding the ball. A distinctive feature of the game is the mark, where players anywhere on the field who catch the ball from a kick (with specific conditions) are awarded unimpeded possession. Possession of the ball is in dispute at all times except when a free kick or mark is paid. Players can tackle using their hands or use their whole body to obstruct opponents. Dangerous physical contact (such as pushing an opponent in the back), interference when marking, and deliberately slowing the play are discouraged with free kicks, distance penalties, or suspension for a certain number of matches depending on the severity of the infringement. The game features frequent physical contests, spectacular marking, fast movement of both players and the ball, and high scoring.
The sport's origins can be traced to football matches played in Melbourne, Victoria, in 1858, inspired by English public school football games. Seeking to develop a game more suited to adults and Australian conditions, the Melbourne Football Club published the first laws of Australian football in May 1859.
Australian football has the highest spectator attendance and television viewership of all sports in Australia, while the Australian Football League (AFL), the sport's only fully professional competition, is the nation's wealthiest sporting body. The AFL Grand Final, held annually at the 100,000-capacity Melbourne Cricket Ground, is the highest-attended club championship event of any football code. The sport is also played at amateur level in many countries and in several variations. Its rules are governed by the AFL Commission with the advice of the AFL's Laws of the Game Committee. |
A cappella | Q185298 | Music performed a cappella ( AH kə-PEL-ə, UK also AK ə-PEL-ə, Italian: [a kkapˈpɛlla]; lit. 'in [the style of] the chapel'), less commonly spelled acapella in English, is music performed by a singer or a singing group without instrumental accompaniment. The term a cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato musical styles. In the 19th century, a renewed interest in Renaissance polyphony, coupled with an ignorance of the fact that vocal parts were often doubled by instrumentalists, led to the term coming to mean unaccompanied vocal music. The term is also used, rarely, as a synonym for alla breve. |
Arrangement | Q379755 | In music, an arrangement is a musical adaptation of an existing composition. Differences from the original composition may include reharmonization, melodic paraphrasing, orchestration, or formal development. Arranging differs from orchestration in that the latter process is limited to the assignment of notes to instruments for performance by an orchestra, concert band, or other musical ensemble. Arranging "involves adding compositional techniques, such as new thematic material for introductions, transitions, or modulations, and endings. Arranging is the art of giving an existing melody musical variety". In jazz, a memorized (unwritten) arrangement of a new or pre-existing composition is known as a head arrangement.
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Apoptosis | Q14599311 | Apoptosis (from Ancient Greek: ἀπόπτωσις, romanized: apóptōsis, lit. 'falling off') is a form of programmed cell death that occurs in multicellular organisms and in some eukaryotic, single-celled microorganisms such as yeast. Biochemical events lead to characteristic cell changes (morphology) and death. These changes include blebbing, cell shrinkage, nuclear fragmentation, chromatin condensation, DNA fragmentation, and mRNA decay. The average adult human loses 50 to 70 billion cells each day due to apoptosis. For the average human child between 8 and 14 years old, each day the approximate loss is 20 to 30 billion cells.
In contrast to necrosis, which is a form of traumatic cell death that results from acute cellular injury, apoptosis is a highly regulated and controlled process that confers advantages during an organism's life cycle. For example, the separation of fingers and toes in a developing human embryo occurs because cells between the digits undergo a form of apoptosis that is genetically determined. Unlike necrosis, apoptosis produces cell fragments called apoptotic bodies that phagocytes are able to engulf and remove before the contents of the cell can spill out onto surrounding cells and cause damage to them.
Because apoptosis cannot stop once it has begun, it is a highly regulated process. Apoptosis can be initiated through one of two pathways. In the intrinsic pathway the cell kills itself because it senses cell stress, while in the extrinsic pathway the cell kills itself because of signals from other cells. Weak external signals may also activate the intrinsic pathway of apoptosis. Both pathways induce cell death by activating caspases, which are proteases, or enzymes that degrade proteins. The two pathways both activate initiator caspases, which then activate executioner caspases, which then kill the cell by degrading proteins indiscriminately.
In addition to its importance as a biological phenomenon, defective apoptotic processes have been implicated in a wide variety of diseases. Excessive apoptosis causes atrophy, whereas an insufficient amount results in uncontrolled cell proliferation, such as cancer. Some factors like Fas receptors and caspases promote apoptosis, while some members of the Bcl-2 family of proteins inhibit apoptosis. |
African National Congress | Q83162 | The African National Congress (ANC) is a political party in South Africa. It originated as a liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid and has governed the country since 1994, when the first post-apartheid election resulted in Nelson Mandela being elected as President of South Africa. Cyril Ramaphosa, the incumbent national president, has served as president of the ANC since 18 December 2017.
Founded on 8 January 1912 in Bloemfontein as the South African Native National Congress, the organisation was formed to advocate for the rights of black South Africans. When the National Party government came to power in 1948, the ANC's central purpose became to oppose the new government's policy of institutionalised apartheid. To this end, its methods and means of organisation shifted; its adoption of the techniques of mass politics, and the swelling of its membership, culminated in the Defiance Campaign of civil disobedience in 1952–53. The ANC was banned by the South African government between April 1960 – shortly after the Sharpeville massacre – and February 1990. During this period, despite periodic attempts to revive its domestic political underground, the ANC was forced into exile by increasing state repression, which saw many of its leaders imprisoned on Robben Island. Headquartered in Lusaka, Zambia, the exiled ANC dedicated much of its attention to a campaign of sabotage and guerrilla warfare against the apartheid state, carried out under its military wing, uMkhonto we Sizwe, which was founded in 1961 in partnership with the South African Communist Party (SACP). The ANC was condemned as a terrorist organisation by the governments of South Africa, the United States, and the United Kingdom. However, it positioned itself as a key player in the negotiations to end apartheid, which began in earnest after the ban was repealed in 1990. For much of that time, the ANC leadership, along with many of its most active members, operated from abroad. After the Soweto Uprising of 1976, the ANC remained committed to achieving its objectives through armed struggle, led by its military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe. These circumstances significantly shaped the ANC during its years in exile.
In the post-apartheid era, the ANC continues to identify itself foremost as a liberation movement, although it is also a registered political party. Partly due to its Tripartite Alliance with the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, it had retained a comfortable electoral majority at the national level and in most provinces, and has provided each of South Africa's five presidents since 1994. South Africa is considered a dominant-party state. However, the ANC's electoral majority has declined consistently since 2004, and in the 2021 local elections, its share of the national vote dropped below 50% for the first time ever. Over the last decade, the party has been embroiled in a number of controversies, particularly relating to widespread allegations of political corruption among its members.
Following the 2024 general election, the ANC lost its majority in parliament for the first time in South Africa's democratic history. However, it still remained the largest party, with just over 40% of the vote. The party also lost its majority in Kwa-Zulu Natal, Gauteng and Northern Cape. Despite these setbacks, the ANC retained power at the national level through a grand coalition referred to as the Government of National Unity, including parties which together have 72% of the seats in Parliament. |
Artillery | Q64418 | Artillery consists of ranged weapons that launch munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry firearms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach defensive walls and fortifications during sieges, and led to heavy, fairly immobile siege engines. As technology improved, lighter, more mobile field artillery cannons were developed for battlefield use. This development continues today; modern self-propelled artillery vehicles are highly mobile weapons of great versatility generally providing the largest share of an army's total firepower.
Originally, the word "artillery" referred to any group of soldiers primarily armed with some form of manufactured weapon or armour. Since the introduction of gunpowder and cannon, "artillery" has largely meant cannon, and in contemporary usage, usually refers to shell-firing guns, howitzers, and mortars (collectively called barrel artillery, cannon artillery or gun artillery) and rocket artillery. In common speech, the word "artillery" is often used to refer to individual devices, along with their accessories and fittings, although these assemblages are more properly called "equipment". However, there is no generally recognized generic term for a gun, howitzer, mortar, and so forth: the United States uses "artillery piece", but most English-speaking armies use "gun" and "mortar". The projectiles fired are typically either "shot" (if solid) or "shell" (if not solid). Historically, variants of solid shot including canister, chain shot and grapeshot were also used. "Shell" is a widely used generic term for a projectile, which is a component of munitions.
By association, artillery may also refer to the arm of service that customarily operates such engines. In some armies, the artillery arm has operated field, coastal, anti-aircraft, and anti-tank artillery; in others these have been separate arms, and with some nations coastal has been a naval or marine responsibility.
In the 20th century, target acquisition devices (such as radar) and techniques (such as sound ranging and flash spotting) emerged, primarily for artillery. These are usually utilized by one or more of the artillery arms. The widespread adoption of indirect fire in the early 20th century introduced the need for specialist data for field artillery, notably survey and meteorological, and in some armies, provision of these are the responsibility of the artillery arm. The majority of combat deaths in the Napoleonic Wars, World War I, and World War II were caused by artillery. In 1944, Joseph Stalin said in a speech that artillery was "the god of war". |
Asian Development Bank | Q188822 | The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is a regional development bank to promote social and economic development in Asia. The bank is headquartered in Metro Manila, Philippines and maintains 31 field offices around the world
The bank was established on 19 December 1966 and admits the members of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP, formerly the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East or ECAFE), and non-regional developed countries. Starting with 31 members at its establishment, by 2019 ADB had 69 members.
The ADB was modeled closely on the World Bank and has a similar weighted voting system, where votes are distributed in proportion with members' capital subscriptions. ADB releases an annual report that summarizes its operations, budget, and other materials for review by the public. The ADB-Japan Scholarship Program (ADB-JSP) enrolls about 300 students annually in academic institutions located in 10 countries within the Region. After completing their study programs, scholars are expected to contribute to the economic and social development of their home countries. ADB holds the status of an official United Nations Observer.
As of 31 December 2020, Japan and the United States each holds the largest proportion of shares at 15.571%. China holds 6.429%, India holds 6.317%, and Australia holds 5.773%. |
Administrative law | Q171251 | Administrative law is a division of law governing the activities of executive branch agencies of government. Administrative law includes executive branch rulemaking (executive branch rules are generally referred to as "regulations"), adjudication, and the enforcement of laws. Administrative law is considered a branch of public law.
Administrative law deals with the decision-making of administrative units of government that are part of the executive branch in such areas as international trade, manufacturing, the environment, taxation, broadcasting, immigration, and transport.
Administrative law expanded greatly during the 20th century, as legislative bodies worldwide created more government agencies to regulate the social, economic and political spheres of human interaction.
Civil law countries often have specialized administrative courts that review these decisions.
In the last fifty years, administrative law, in many countries of the civil law tradition, has opened itself to the influence of rules posed by supranational legal orders, in which judicial principles have strong importance: it has led, for one, to changes in some traditional concepts of the administrative law model, as has happened with the public procurements or with judicial control of administrative activity and, for another, has built a supranational or international public administration, as in the environmental sector or with reference to education, for which, within the United Nations' system, it has been possible to assist to a further increase of administrative structure devoted to coordinate the States' activity in that sector. |
Accounting | Q4116214 | Accounting, also known as accountancy, is the process of recording and processing information about economic entities, such as businesses and corporations. Accounting measures the results of an organization's economic activities and conveys this information to a variety of stakeholders, including investors, creditors, management, and regulators. Practitioners of accounting are known as accountants. The terms "accounting" and "financial reporting" are often used interchangeably.
Accounting can be divided into several fields including financial accounting, management accounting, tax accounting and cost accounting. Financial accounting focuses on the reporting of an organization's financial information, including the preparation of financial statements, to the external users of the information, such as investors, regulators and suppliers. Management accounting focuses on the measurement, analysis and reporting of information for internal use by management to enhance business operations. The recording of financial transactions, so that summaries of the financials may be presented in financial reports, is known as bookkeeping, of which double-entry bookkeeping is the most common system. Accounting information systems are designed to support accounting functions and related activities.
Accounting has existed in various forms and levels of sophistication throughout human history. The double-entry accounting system in use today was developed in medieval Europe, particularly in Venice, and is usually attributed to the Italian mathematician and Franciscan friar Luca Pacioli. Today, accounting is facilitated by accounting organizations such as standard-setters, accounting firms and professional bodies. Financial statements are usually audited by accounting firms, and are prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). GAAP is set by various standard-setting organizations such as the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) in the United States and the Financial Reporting Council in the United Kingdom. As of 2012, "all major economies" have plans to converge towards or adopt the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).
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Andalusia | Q5783 | Andalusia (UK: AN-də-LOO-see-ə, -zee-ə, US: -zh(ee-)ə, -sh(ee-)ə; Spanish: Andalucía [andaluˈθi.a] , locally also [-ˈsi.a]) is the southernmost autonomous community in Peninsular Spain, located in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, in southwestern Europe. It is the most populous and the second-largest autonomous community in the country. It is officially recognized as a historical nationality and a national reality. The territory is divided into eight provinces: Almería, Cádiz, Córdoba, Granada, Huelva, Jaén, Málaga, and Seville. Its capital city is Seville, while the seat of its High Court of Justice is the city of Granada.
Andalusia is immediately south of the autonomous communities of Extremadura and Castilla-La Mancha; west of the autonomous community of Murcia and the Mediterranean Sea; east of Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean; and north of the Mediterranean Sea and the Strait of Gibraltar. The British Overseas Territory and city of Gibraltar, located at the eastern end of the Strait of Gibraltar, shares a 1.2 kilometres (3⁄4 mi) land border with the Andalusian province of Cádiz.
The main mountain ranges of Andalusia are the Sierra Morena and the Baetic System, consisting of the Subbaetic and Penibaetic Mountains, separated by the Intrabaetic Basin and with the latter system containing the Iberian Peninsula's highest point (Mulhacén, in the subrange of Sierra Nevada). In the north, the Sierra Morena separates Andalusia from the plains of Extremadura and Castile–La Mancha on Spain's Meseta Central. To the south, the geographic subregion of Upper Andalusia lies mostly within the Baetic System, while Lower Andalusia is in the Baetic Depression of the valley of the Guadalquivir.
The name Andalusia is derived from the Arabic word Al-Andalus (الأندلس), which in turn may be derived from the Vandals, the Goths or pre-Roman Iberian tribes. The toponym al-Andalus is first attested by inscriptions on coins minted in 716 by the new Muslim government of Iberia. These coins, called dinars, were inscribed in both Latin and Arabic. The region's history and culture have been influenced by the Tartessians, Iberians, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Visigoths, Byzantines, Berbers, Arabs, Jews, Romanis and Castilians. During the Islamic Golden Age, Córdoba surpassed Constantinople to be Europe's biggest city, and became the capital of Al-Andalus and a prominent center of education and learning in the world, producing numerous philosophers and scientists. The Crown of Castile conquered and settled the Guadalquivir Valley in the 13th century. The mountainous eastern part of the region (the Emirate of Granada) was subdued in the late 15th century. Atlantic-facing harbors prospered upon trade with the New World. Chronic inequalities in the social structure caused by uneven distribution of land property in large estates induced recurring episodes of upheaval and social unrest in the agrarian sector in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Andalusia has historically been an agricultural region, compared to the rest of Spain and the rest of Europe. Still, the growth of the community in the sectors of industry and services was above average in Spain and higher than many communities in the Eurozone. The region has a rich culture and a strong identity. Many cultural phenomena that are seen internationally as distinctively Spanish are largely or entirely Andalusian in origin. These include flamenco and, to a lesser extent, bullfighting and Hispano-Moorish architectural styles, both of which are also prevalent in some other regions of Spain.
Andalusia's hinterland is the hottest area of Europe, with Córdoba and Seville averaging above 36 °C (97 °F) in summer high temperatures. These high temperatures, typical of the Guadalquivir valley are usually reached between 16:00 (4 p.m.) and 21:00 (9 p.m.) (local time), tempered by sea and mountain breezes afterwards. However, during heat waves late evening temperatures can locally stay around 35 °C (95 °F) until close to midnight, and daytime highs of over 40 °C (104 °F) are common. |
Aspartame | Q182040 | Aspartame is an artificial non-saccharide sweetener commonly used as a sugar substitute in foods and beverages. 200 times sweeter than sucrose, it is a methyl ester of the aspartic acid/phenylalanine dipeptide with brand names NutraSweet, Equal, and Canderel. Discovered in 1965, aspartame was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1974 and re-approved in 1981 after its initial approval was briefly revoked.
Aspartame is one of the most studied food additives in the human food supply. Reviews by over 100 governmental regulatory bodies found the ingredient safe for consumption at the normal acceptable daily intake limit.
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AutoCAD | Q83570 | AutoCAD is a 2D and
3D computer-aided design (CAD) software application developed by Autodesk. It was first released in December 1982 for the CP/M and IBM PC platforms as a desktop app running on microcomputers with internal graphics controllers. Initially a DOS application, subsequent versions were later released for other platforms including Classic Mac OS (1992), Microsoft Windows (1993) and macOS (2010), iOS (2010), and Android (2011).
AutoCAD is a general drafting and design application used in industry by architects, project managers, engineers, interior designers, graphic designers, city planners, and other professionals to prepare technical drawings. After discontinuing the sale of perpetual licenses in January 2016, commercial versions of AutoCAD are licensed through a term-based subscription or Autodesk Flex, a pay-as-you-go option introduced on September 24, 2021. Subscriptions to the desktop version of AutoCAD include access to the web and mobile applications. However, users can subscribe separately to the AutoCAD Web App online or AutoCAD Mobile through an in-app purchase.
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AutoCAD DXF | Q691652 | AutoCAD DXF (Drawing Interchange Format, or Drawing Exchange Format) is a computer-aided design (CAD) data file format developed by Autodesk to enable CAD data exchange and interoperability between AutoCAD on different computing platforms. |
Australian Army | Q781360 | The Australian Army is the principal land warfare force of Australia. It is a part of the Australian Defence Force (ADF), along with the Royal Australian Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force. The Army is commanded by the Chief of Army (CA), who is subordinate to the Chief of the Defence Force (CDF) who commands the ADF. The CA is also directly responsible to the Minister for Defence, with the Department of Defence administering the ADF and the Army.
The Australian Army was formed in 1901 as the Commonwealth Military Forces, through the amalgamation of the colonial forces of Australia following the Federation of Australia. Although Australian soldiers have been involved in a number of minor and major conflicts throughout Australia's history, only during the Second World War has Australian territory come under direct attack.
The Australian Army was initially composed almost completely of part-time soldiers, where the vast majority were in units of the Citizens Military Force (CMF or Militia) (1901–1980) during peacetime, with limits set on the regular Army. Since all reservists were barred from forcibly serving overseas, volunteer expeditionary forces (1st AIF, ANMEF, 2nd AIF) were formed to enable the Army to send large numbers of soldiers to serve overseas during periods of war. This period lasted from federation until post-1947, when a standing peacetime regular army was formed and the Australian Army Reserve (1980–present) began to decline in importance.
During its history, the Australian Army has fought in a number of major wars, including the Second Boer War, the First and Second World Wars, Korean War, Malayan Emergency, Indonesia-Malaysia Confrontation, Vietnam War, the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021) and the Iraq War. Since 1947, the Australian Army has also been involved in many peacekeeping operations, usually under the auspices of the United Nations. Today, it participates in multilateral and unilateral military exercises and provides emergency disaster relief and humanitarian aid in response to domestic and international crises. |
Aerodynamics | Q8424 | Aerodynamics (Ancient Greek: ἀήρ aero (air) + Ancient Greek: δυναμική (dynamics)) is the study of the motion of air, particularly when affected by a solid object, such as an airplane wing. It involves topics covered in the field of fluid dynamics and its subfield of gas dynamics, and is an important domain of study in aeronautics. The term aerodynamics is often used synonymously with gas dynamics, the difference being that "gas dynamics" applies to the study of the motion of all gases, and is not limited to air. The formal study of aerodynamics began in the modern sense in the eighteenth century, although observations of fundamental concepts such as aerodynamic drag were recorded much earlier. Most of the early efforts in aerodynamics were directed toward achieving heavier-than-air flight, which was first demonstrated by Otto Lilienthal in 1891. Since then, the use of aerodynamics through mathematical analysis, empirical approximations, wind tunnel experimentation, and computer simulations has formed a rational basis for the development of heavier-than-air flight and a number of other technologies. Recent work in aerodynamics has focused on issues related to compressible flow, turbulence, and boundary layers and has become increasingly computational in nature.
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Advertising | Q37038 | Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to present a product or service in terms of utility, advantages, and qualities of interest to consumers. It is typically used to promote a specific good or service, but there are a wide range of uses, the most common being commercial advertisement.
Commercial advertisements often seek to generate increased consumption of their products or services through "branding", which associates a product name or image with certain qualities in the minds of consumers. On the other hand, ads that intend to elicit an immediate sale are known as direct-response advertising. Non-commercial entities that advertise more than consumer products or services include political parties, interest groups, religious organizations, and governmental agencies. Non-profit organizations may use free modes of persuasion, such as a public service announcement. Advertising may also help to reassure employees or shareholders that a company is viable or successful.
In the 19th century, soap businesses were among the first to employ large-scale advertising campaigns. Thomas J. Barratt was hired by Pears to be its brand manager—the first of its kind—and in addition to creating slogans and images, he recruited West End stage actress and socialite Lillie Langtry to become the poster girl for Pears, making her the first celebrity to endorse a commercial product. Modern advertising originated with the techniques introduced with tobacco advertising in the 1920s, most significantly with the campaigns of Edward Bernays, considered the founder of modern, "Madison Avenue" advertising.
Worldwide spending on advertising in 2015 amounted to an estimated US$529.43 billion. Advertising's projected distribution for 2017 was 40.4% on TV, 33.3% on digital, 9% on newspapers, 6.9% on magazines, 5.8% on outdoor, and 4.3% on radio. Internationally, the largest ("Big Five") advertising agency groups are Omnicom, WPP, Publicis, Interpublic, and Dentsu.
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Active Server Pages | Q344266 | Active Server Pages (ASP) is Microsoft's first server-side scripting language and engine for dynamic web pages.
It was first released in December 1996, before being superseded in January 2002 by ASP.NET. |
Alcoholism | Q15326 | Alcoholism is the continued drinking of alcohol despite it causing problems. Some definitions require evidence of dependence and withdrawal. Problematic use of alcohol has been mentioned in the earliest historical records. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated there were 283 million people with alcohol use disorders worldwide as of 2016. The term alcoholism was first coined in 1852, but alcoholism and alcoholic are considered stigmatizing and likely to discourage seeking treatment, so diagnostic terms such as alcohol use disorder and alcohol dependence are often used instead in a clinical context.
Alcohol is addictive, and heavy long-term alcohol use results in many negative health and social consequences. It can damage all the organ systems, but especially affects the brain, heart, liver, pancreas, and immune system. Heavy alcohol usage can result in trouble sleeping, and severe cognitive issues like dementia, brain damage, or Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome. Physical effects include irregular heartbeat, an impaired immune response, liver cirrhosis, increased cancer risk, and severe withdrawal symptoms if stopped suddenly. These health effects can reduce life expectancy by 10 years. Drinking during pregnancy may harm the child's health, and drunk driving increases the risk of traffic accidents. Alcoholism is also associated with increases in violent and non-violent crime. While alcoholism directly resulted in 139,000 deaths worldwide in 2013, in 2012 3.3 million deaths may be attributable globally to alcohol.
The development of alcoholism is attributed to both environment and genetics equally. The use of alcohol to self-medicate stress or anxiety can turn into alcoholism. Someone with a parent or sibling with an alcohol use disorder is three to four times more likely to develop an alcohol use disorder themselves, but only a minority of them do. Environmental factors include social, cultural and behavioral influences. High stress levels and anxiety, as well as alcohol's inexpensive cost and easy accessibility, increase the risk. People may continue to drink partly to prevent or improve symptoms of withdrawal. After a person stops drinking alcohol, they may experience a low level of withdrawal lasting for months. Medically, alcoholism is considered both a physical and mental illness. Questionnaires are usually used to detect possible alcoholism. Further information is then collected to confirm the diagnosis.
Treatment of alcoholism may take several forms. Due to medical problems that can occur during withdrawal, alcohol cessation should be controlled carefully. One common method involves the use of benzodiazepine medications, such as diazepam. These can be taken while admitted to a health care institution or individually. The medications acamprosate or disulfiram may also be used to help prevent further drinking. Mental illness or other addictions may complicate treatment. Various individual or group therapy or support groups are used to attempt to keep a person from returning to alcoholism. Among them is the abstinence based mutual aid fellowship Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). A 2020 scientific review found that clinical interventions encouraging increased participation in AA (AA/twelve step facilitation (AA/TSF))—resulted in higher abstinence rates over other clinical interventions, and most studies in the review found that AA/TSF led to lower health costs.
Many terms, some slurs and some informal, have been used to refer to people affected by alcoholism such as tippler, sot, drunk, drunkard, piss ant, dipsomaniac and souse. |
Austria-Hungary | Q28513 | Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Habsburg Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. A military and diplomatic alliance, it consisted of two sovereign states with a single monarch who was titled both the Emperor of Austria and the King of Hungary. Austria-Hungary constituted the last phase in the constitutional evolution of the Habsburg monarchy: it was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 in the aftermath of the Austro-Prussian War, following wars of independence by Hungary in opposition to Habsburg rule. It was dissolved shortly after Hungary terminated the union with Austria in 1918 at the end of World War 1.
One of Europe's major powers, Austria-Hungary was geographically the second-largest country in Europe (after Russia) and the third-most populous (after Russia and the German Empire), while being among the 10 most populous countries worldwide. The Empire built up the fourth-largest machine-building industry in the world. With the exception of the territory of the Bosnian Condominium, the Empire of Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary were separate sovereign countries in international law.
At its core was the dual monarchy, which was a real union between Cisleithania, the northern and western parts of the former Austrian Empire, and Transleithania (Kingdom of Hungary). Following the 1867 reforms, the Austrian and Hungarian states were co-equal in power. The two countries conducted unified diplomatic and defence policies. For these purposes, "common" ministries of foreign affairs and defence were maintained under the monarch's direct authority, as was a third finance ministry responsible only for financing the two "common" portfolios. A third component of the union was the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, an autonomous region under the Hungarian crown, which negotiated the Croatian–Hungarian Settlement in 1868. After 1878, Bosnia and Herzegovina came under Austro-Hungarian joint military and civilian rule until it was fully annexed in 1908, provoking the Bosnian crisis.
Austria-Hungary was one of the Central Powers in World War I, which began with an Austro-Hungarian war declaration on the Kingdom of Serbia on 28 July 1914. It was already effectively dissolved by the time the military authorities signed the armistice of Villa Giusti on 3 November 1918. The Kingdom of Hungary and the First Austrian Republic were treated as its successors de jure, whereas the independence of the First Czechoslovak Republic, the Second Polish Republic, and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, respectively, and most of the territorial demands of the Kingdom of Romania and the Kingdom of Italy were also recognized by the victorious powers in 1920.
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Admiralty (United Kingdom) | Q396266 | The Admiralty was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom that was responsible for the command of the Royal Navy.
Historically, its titular head was the Lord High Admiral – one of the Great Officers of State. For much of its history, from the early 18th century until its abolition, the role of the Lord High Admiral was almost invariably put "in commission" and exercised by the Lords Commissioner of the Admiralty, who sat on the governing Board of Admiralty, rather than by a single person. The Admiralty was replaced by the Admiralty Board in 1964, as part of the reforms that created the Ministry of Defence and its Navy Department (later Navy Command).
Before the Acts of Union 1707, the Office of the Admiralty and Marine Affairs administered the Royal Navy of the Kingdom of England, which merged with the Royal Scots Navy and then absorbed the responsibilities of the Lord High Admiral of the Kingdom of Scotland with the unification of the Kingdom of Great Britain. The Admiralty was among the most important departments of the British Government, because of the Royal Navy's role in the expansion and maintenance of the English overseas possessions in the 17th century, the British Empire in the 18th century, and subsequently.
The modern Admiralty Board, to which the functions of the Admiralty were transferred in 1964, is a committee of the tri-service Defence Council of the United Kingdom. This Admiralty Board meets only twice a year, and the day-to-day running of the Royal Navy is controlled by a Navy Board (not to be confused with the historic Navy Board). It is common for the various authorities now in charge of the Royal Navy to be referred to as simply 'The Admiralty'.
The title of Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom was vested in the monarch from 1964 to 2011. The title was awarded to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh by Queen Elizabeth II on his 90th birthday and since his death in 2021 has reverted to the monarch. There also continues to be a Vice-Admiral of the United Kingdom and a Rear-Admiral of the United Kingdom, both of which are honorary offices. |
Australian Broadcasting Corporation | Q781365 | The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is Australia’s principal public service broadcaster. It is funded by grants from the federal government and is administered by a government-appointed board. The ABC is a state-owned corporation that is politically independent and accountable; for example, through its production of annual reports, and is bound by provisions contained within the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2013 and the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013, with its charter enshrined in legislation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983. ABC Commercial, a profit-making division of the corporation, also helps to generate funding for content provision.
The ABC was established as the Australian Broadcasting Commission on 1 July 1932 by an Act of Federal Parliament. It effectively replaced the Australian Broadcasting Company, a private company established in 1924 to provide programming for A-class radio stations. The ABC was given statutory powers that reinforced its independence from the government and enhanced its news-gathering role. Modelled after the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which is funded by a television licence, the ABC was originally financed by licence fees on households with a broadcast receiver. However, the licence fees soon proved to be insufficient due to Australia's small population and the vast area to be serviced. In 1947 a proposal to increase the fee for a broadcast listeners' licence from £1 to £1/5/ was scotched, and in 1949 the Chifley government decided that the ABC would be directly funded by the taxpayer, with licence fees subsumed into general revenue. Later funding was supplemented with commercial activities related to its core broadcasting mission. The Australian Broadcasting Commission became the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 1983.
The ABC provides radio, television, online, and mobile services throughout metropolitan and regional Australia. ABC Radio operates four national networks, a large number of ABC Local Radio stations, several digital stations, and the international service Radio Australia. ABC Television operates five free-to-air channels, as well as the ABC iview streaming service and the ABC Australia satellite channel. News and current affairs content across all platforms is produced by the news division.
The postal address of the ABC in every Australian capital city is PO Box 9994, as a tribute to the record-breaking Test batting average of Australian cricketer Sir Donald Bradman. |
Atlanta | Q23556 | Atlanta ( at-LAN-tə) is the capital and most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, and a portion of the city extends into neighboring DeKalb County. With a population of 520,070 (2024 estimate) living within the city limits, Atlanta is the eighth most populous city in the Southeast and 36th most populous city in the United States according to the 2020 U.S. census. Atlanta is classified as an Beta + global city and is the principal city of the much larger Atlanta metropolitan area, the core of which includes Cobb, Clayton and Gwinnett counties, in addition to Fulton and DeKalb. Metro Atlanta is home to more than 6.4 million people (2024 estimate), making it the eighth-largest U.S. metropolitan area. Situated among the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains at an elevation of just over 1,000 feet (300 m) above sea level, Atlanta features unique topography that includes rolling hills, lush greenery, and the densest urban tree coverage of any major city in the United States.
Atlanta was originally founded as the terminus of a major state-sponsored railroad, but it soon became the convergence point among several railroads, spurring its rapid growth. The largest was the Western and Atlantic Railroad, from which the name "Atlanta" is derived, signifying the city's growing reputation as a major hub of transportation. During the American Civil War, it served a strategically important role for the Confederacy until it was captured in 1864. The city was almost entirely burned to the ground during General William T. Sherman's March to the Sea. However, the city rebounded dramatically in the post-war period and quickly became a national industrial center and the unofficial capital of the "New South". After World War II, it also became a manufacturing and technology hub. During the 1950s and 1960s, it became a major organizing center of the American civil rights movement, with Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, and many other locals becoming prominent figures in the movement's leadership. In the modern era, Atlanta has remained a major center of transportation, with Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport becoming the world's busiest airport by passenger traffic in 1998 (a position it has held every year since, except for 2020), with an estimated 93.7 million passengers in 2022.
With a nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of $473 billion in 2021, Atlanta has the 11th-largest economy among cities in the U.S. and the 22nd-largest in the world. Its economy is considered diverse, with dominant sectors in industries including transportation, aerospace, logistics, healthcare, news and media operations, film and television production, information technology, finance, and biomedical research and public policy. Atlanta established itself on the world stage when it won and hosted the 1996 Summer Olympics. The Games impacted Atlanta's development growth into the 21st century, and significantly sparked investment in the city's universities, parks, and tourism industry. The gentrification of some of its neighborhoods has intensified in the 21st century with the growth of the Atlanta Beltline. This has altered its demographics, politics, aesthetics, and culture. |
ACF Fiorentina | Q2052 | ACF Fiorentina, commonly referred to as Fiorentina (pronounced [fjorenˈtiːna]), is an Italian professional football club based in Florence, Tuscany. The original team was founded by a merger in August 1926, while the current club was refounded in August 2002 following bankruptcy. Fiorentina have played at the top level of Italian football for the majority of their existence; only four clubs have played in more Serie A seasons.
Fiorentina has won two Italian league titles, in 1955–56 and again in 1968–69, as well as six Coppa Italia trophies and one Supercoppa Italiana. On the European stage, Fiorentina won the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup in 1960–61. They also lost five finals, finishing runners-up in the 1956–57 European Cup (the first Italian team to reach the final in the top continental competition), the 1961–62 Cup Winners' Cup, the 1989–90 UEFA Cup, and in the 2022–23 and 2023–24 editions of the UEFA Conference League, being the first club to record two consecutive final appearances and two consecutive defeats in the competition's history.
Fiorentina is one of fifteen European teams that have played in the finals of all three major continental competitions (the European Cup/Champions League, the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup and the UEFA Cup/Europa League) and in 2023, by reaching the Europa Conference League final, Fiorentina became the first team to reach all four major European club competition finals (excluding the one-off match of the UEFA Super Cup).
Since 1931, the club have played at the Stadio Artemio Franchi, which currently has a capacity of 43,147. The stadium has used several names over the years and has undergone several renovations. Fiorentina are known widely by the nickname Viola, a reference to their distinctive purple colours. |
Azores | Q25263 | The Azores ( ə-ZORZ, US also , AY-zorz; Portuguese: Açores, Portuguese pronunciation: [ɐˈsoɾɨʃ] ), officially the Autonomous Region of the Azores (Região Autónoma dos Açores), is one of the two autonomous regions of Portugal (along with Madeira). It is an archipelago composed of nine volcanic islands in the Macaronesia region of the North Atlantic Ocean, about 1,400 km (870 mi) west of Lisbon, about 1,500 km (930 mi) northwest of Morocco, about 1,930 km (1,200 mi) southeast of Newfoundland, Canada, and the same distance southwest of Cork, Ireland.
Its main industries are agriculture, dairy farming, livestock, fishing, and tourism, which has become a major service activity in the region. In the 20th century and to some extent into the 21st, they have served as a waypoint for refueling aircraft flying between Europe and North America. The government of the Azores employs a large percentage of the population directly or indirectly in the service and tertiary sectors. The largest city of the Azores is Ponta Delgada. The culture, dialect, cuisine, and traditions of the Azorean islands vary considerably, because these remote islands were settled sporadically over a span of two centuries.
There are nine major Azorean islands and an islet cluster, in three main groups. These are Flores and Corvo, to the west; Graciosa, Terceira, São Jorge, Pico, and Faial in the centre; and São Miguel, Santa Maria, and the Formigas islets to the east. They extend for more than 600 km (370 mi) and lie in a northwest–southeast direction. All of the islands have volcanic origins, although some, such as Santa Maria, have had no recorded activity in the time since the islands were settled several centuries ago. Mount Pico, on the island of Pico, is the highest point in Portugal, at 2,351 m (7,713 ft). If measured from their base at the bottom of the ocean to their peaks, the Azores are among the tallest mountains on the planet.
The Azores are located at the seismically active Azores triple junction plate boundary where the North American plate, Eurasian plate and Nubian plate meet.
The climate of the Azores is very mild for such a northerly location, being influenced by its distance from the continents and by the passing Gulf Stream. Because of the marine influence, temperatures remain mild year-round. Daytime temperatures normally fluctuate between 16 and 25 °C (61 and 77 °F) depending on season. Temperatures above 30 °C (86 °F) or below 3 °C (37 °F) are unknown in the major population centres. It is also generally wet and cloudy. |
Outback | Q569073 | The Outback is a remote, vast, sparsely populated area of Australia. The Outback is more remote than the bush. While often envisaged as being arid, the Outback regions extend from the northern to southern Australian coastlines and encompass a number of climatic zones, including tropical and monsoonal climates in northern areas, arid areas in the "red centre" and semi-arid and temperate climates in southerly regions. The total population is estimated at 607,000 people.
Geographically, the Outback is unified by a combination of factors, most notably a low human population density, a largely intact natural environment and, in many places, low-intensity land uses, such as pastoralism (livestock grazing) in which production is reliant on the natural environment. The Outback is deeply ingrained in Australian heritage, history and folklore. In Australian art the subject of the Outback has been vogue, particularly in the 1940s. In 2009, as part of the Q150 celebrations, the Queensland Outback was announced as one of the Q150 Icons of Queensland for its role as a "natural attraction".
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Bonn | Q586 | Bonn (German pronunciation: [bɔn] ) is a federal city in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, located on the banks of the Rhine. With a population exceeding 300,000, it lies about 24 km (15 mi) south-southeast of Cologne, in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region. This metropolitan area, Germany's largest, is also the second largest in the European Union by GDP, with over 11 million residents.
Bonn served as the capital of West Germany from 1949 until 1990 and was the seat of government for reunified Germany until 1999, when the government relocated to Berlin. The city holds historical significance as the birthplace of Germany's current constitution, the Basic Law.
Founded in the 1st century BC as a settlement of the Ubii and later part of the Roman province Germania Inferior, Bonn is among Germany's oldest cities. It was the capital city of the Electorate of Cologne from 1597 to 1794 and served as the residence of the Archbishops and Prince-electors of Cologne. The period during which Bonn was the capital of West Germany is often referred to by historians as the Bonn Republic.
Following the German reunification, a political compromise known as the Berlin-Bonn Act ensured that the German federal government retained a significant presence in Bonn. As of 2019, approximately one-third of all ministerial jobs remain in the city. Bonn is considered an unofficial secondary capital of Germany and is the location of the secondary seats of the president, the chancellor, and the Bundesrat. Bonn is also the location of the primary seats of six federal ministries and twenty federal authorities. The city's title as Federal City (German: Bundesstadt) underscores its political importance.
The global headquarters of Deutsche Post DHL and Deutsche Telekom, both DAX-listed corporations, are in Bonn. The city is home to the University of Bonn and a total of 20 United Nations institutions, the highest number in all of Germany. These institutions include the headquarters for Secretariat of the UN Framework Convention Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Secretariat of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), and the UN Volunteers programme. Birthplace of composer Ludwig van Beethoven, a center of Rhenish carnival, and its geography by the Middle Rhine make it an important tourist destination. |
Baltic Sea | Q545 | The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by the countries of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the North and Central European Plain regions. It is the world's largest brackish water basin.
The sea stretches from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 10°E to 30°E longitude. It is a shelf sea and marginal sea of the Atlantic with limited water exchange between the two, making it an inland sea. The Baltic Sea drains through the Danish straits into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, Great Belt and Little Belt. It includes the Gulf of Bothnia (divided into the Bothnian Bay and the Bothnian Sea), the Gulf of Finland, the Gulf of Riga and the Bay of Gdańsk.
The "Baltic Proper" is bordered on its northern edge, at latitude 60°N, by Åland and the Gulf of Bothnia, on its northeastern edge by the Gulf of Finland, on its eastern edge by the Gulf of Riga, and in the west by the Swedish part of the southern Scandinavian Peninsula.
The Baltic Sea is connected by artificial waterways to the White Sea via the White Sea–Baltic Canal and to the German Bight of the North Sea via the Kiel Canal. |
The Bronx | Q18426 | The Bronx ( BRONKS) is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the U.S. state of New York. It shares a land border with Westchester County to its north; to its south and west, the New York City borough of Manhattan is across the Harlem River; and to its south and east is the borough of Queens, across the East River. The Bronx, the only New York City borough not primarily located on an island, has a land area of 42 square miles (109 km2) and a population of 1,472,654 at the 2020 census. It has the fourth-largest area, fourth-highest population, and third-highest population density of the boroughs.
The Bronx is divided by the Bronx River into a hillier section in the west, and a flatter eastern section. East and west street names are divided by Jerome Avenue. The West Bronx was annexed to New York City in 1874, and the areas east of the Bronx River in 1895. Bronx County was separated from New York County (modern-day Manhattan) in 1914. About a quarter of the Bronx's area is open space, including Woodlawn Cemetery, Van Cortlandt Park, Pelham Bay Park, the New York Botanical Garden, and the Bronx Zoo in the borough's north and center. The Thain Family Forest at the New York Botanical Garden is thousands of years old and is New York City's largest remaining tract of the original forest that once covered the city. These open spaces are primarily on land reserved in the late 19th century as urban development progressed north and east from Manhattan. The Bronx is also home to Yankee Stadium of Major League Baseball.
The word "Bronx" originated with Swedish-born (or Faroese-born) Jonas Bronck, who established the first European settlement in the area as part of the New Netherland colony in 1639. European settlers displaced the native Lenape after 1643. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Bronx received many immigrant and migrant groups as it was transformed into an urban community, first from European countries particularly Ireland, Germany, Italy, and Eastern Europe, and later from the Caribbean region (particularly Puerto Rico, Trinidad, Haiti, Guyana, Jamaica, Barbados, and the Dominican Republic), and immigrants from West Africa (particularly from Ghana and Nigeria), African American migrants from the Southern United States, Panamanians, Hondurans, and South Asians.
The Bronx contains the poorest congressional district in the United States, New York's 15th. The borough also features upper- and middle-income neighborhoods, such as Riverdale, Fieldston, Spuyten Duyvil, Schuylerville, Pelham Bay, Pelham Gardens, Morris Park, and Country Club. Parts of the Bronx saw a steep decline in population, livable housing, and quality of life starting from the mid-to-late 1960s, continuing throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, ultimately culminating in a wave of arson in the late 1970s, a period when hip hop music evolved. The South Bronx, in particular, experienced severe urban decay. The borough began experiencing new population growth starting in the late 1990s and continuing to the present day. |
Belgium | Q31 | Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to the south, and the North Sea to the west. Belgium covers an area of 30,689 km2 (11,849 sq mi) and has a population of more than 11.8 million; its population density of 383/km2 (990/sq mi) ranks 22nd in the world and sixth in Europe. The capital and largest metropolitan region is Brussels; other major cities are Antwerp, Ghent, Charleroi, Liège, Bruges, Namur, and Leuven.
Belgium is a parliamentary constitutional monarchy with a complex federal system structured on regional and linguistic grounds. The country is divided into three highly autonomous regions: the Flemish Region (Flanders) in the north, the Walloon Region (Wallonia) in the south, and the Brussels-Capital Region in the middle. Belgium is also home to two main linguistic communities: the Dutch-speaking Flemish Community, which constitutes about 60 percent of the population, and the French-speaking French Community, which constitutes about 40 percent of the population; a small German-speaking Community, comprising around one percent of the population, exists in the East Cantons. Belgium's linguistic diversity and related political conflicts are reflected in its complex system of governance, made up of six different governments. Belgium is a developed country with an advanced high-income economy. It is one of the six founding members of the European Union, with its capital of Brussels serving as the de facto capital of the EU, hosting the official seats of the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, the European Council, and one of two seats of the European Parliament (the other being Strasbourg). Brussels also hosts the headquarters of many major international organizations, such as NATO.
In antiquity, present-day Belgium was dominated by the Belgae before being annexed into the Roman Empire in the mid first century BC. During the Middle Ages, Belgium's central location kept it relatively prosperous and connected both commercially and politically to its larger neighbours; it was part of the Carolingian Empire, the succeeding Holy Roman Empire, and subsequently the Burgundian Netherlands. Following rule by Habsburg Spain (1556–1714), the Austrian Habsburgs (1714–1794), and Revolutionary France (1794–1815), most of modern-day Belgium was incorporated into the United Kingdom of the Netherlands after the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Centuries of being contested and controlled by various European powers earned Belgium the moniker "the Battlefield of Europe", a reputation reinforced in the 20th century by both world wars.
Belgium as it exists today was established following the 1830 Belgian Revolution. In the 19th century, it was one of the earliest participants of the Industrial Revolution, and the first country in continental Europe to become industrialised. By the early 20th century, it possessed several colonies, notably the Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi, which gained independence between 1960 and 1962. The second half of the 20th century was marked by rising tensions between the Dutch-speakers and French-speakers, fueled by differences in political culture and the unequal economic development of Flanders and Wallonia. This has resulted in several far-reaching state reforms, including the transition from a unitary to federal structure between 1970 and 1993. Tensions persist amid ongoing reforms; the country faces a strong separatist sentiment among the Flemish, controversial language laws, and a fragmented political landscape that resulted in a record 589 days without a government formation following the 2010 federal election. |
Blues | Q9759 | Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues has incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale, and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or "worried notes"), usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove.
Blues music is characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current structure became standard: the AAB pattern, consisting of a line sung over the four first bars, its repetition over the next four, and then a longer concluding line over the last bars. Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating the racial discrimination and other challenges experienced by African Americans.
Many elements, such as the call-and-response format and the use of blue notes, can be traced back to the music of Africa. The origins of the blues are also closely related to the religious music of the African-American community, the spirituals. The first appearance of the blues is often dated to after the ending of slavery, with the development of juke joints occurring later. It is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the former slaves. Chroniclers began to report about blues music at the dawn of the 20th century. The first publication of blues sheet music was in 1908. Blues has since evolved from unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves into a wide variety of styles and subgenres. Blues subgenres include country blues, Delta blues and Piedmont blues, as well as urban blues styles such as Chicago blues and West Coast blues. World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues and the progressive opening of blues music to a wider audience, especially white listeners. In the 1960s and 1970s, a hybrid form called blues rock developed, which blended blues styles with rock music. |
Bill Clinton | Q1124 | William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician and lawyer who was the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the attorney general of Arkansas from 1977 to 1979 and as the governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981, and again from 1983 to 1992. Clinton, whose policies reflected a centrist "Third Way" political philosophy, became known as a New Democrat.
Born and raised in Arkansas, Clinton graduated from Georgetown University in 1968, and later from Yale Law School, where he met his future wife, Hillary Rodham. After graduating from law school, Clinton returned to Arkansas and won election as state attorney general, followed by two non-consecutive tenures as Arkansas governor. As governor, he overhauled the state's education system and served as chairman of the National Governors Association. Clinton was elected president in the 1992 election, defeating the incumbent Republican Party president George H. W. Bush, and the independent businessman Ross Perot. He became the first president to be born in the Baby Boomer generation and the youngest to serve two full terms.
Clinton presided over the second longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history. He signed into law the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act but failed to pass his plan for national health care reform. Starting in the mid-1990s, he began an ideological evolution as he became much more conservative in his domestic policy, advocating for and signing the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, the State Children's Health Insurance Program and financial deregulation measures. He appointed Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer to the U.S. Supreme Court. In foreign policy, Clinton ordered U.S. military intervention in the Bosnian and Kosovo wars, eventually signing the Dayton Peace agreement. He also called for the expansion of NATO in Eastern Europe and many former Warsaw Pact members joined NATO during his presidency. Clinton's foreign policy in the Middle East saw him sign the Iraq Liberation Act which gave aid to groups against Saddam Hussein. He also participated in the Oslo I Accord and Camp David Summit to advance the Israeli–Palestinian peace process, and assisted the Northern Ireland peace process.
Clinton won re-election in the 1996 election, defeating Republican nominee Bob Dole and returning Reform Party nominee Ross Perot. In his second term, Clinton made use of permanent normal trade. Many of his second term accomplishments were overshadowed by the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal, when it was revealed in early 1998 that he had been engaging in an eighteen-month-long sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. This scandal escalated throughout the year, culminating in December when Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives, becoming the first U.S. president to be impeached since Andrew Johnson. The two impeachment articles that the House passed were centered around perjury and Clinton using the powers of the presidency to commit obstruction of justice. In January 1999, Clinton's impeachment trial began in the Senate, where he was acquitted two months later on both charges. During the last three years of Clinton's presidency, the Congressional Budget Office reported a budget surplus—the first and only such surplus since 1969.
Clinton left office in 2001 with the joint-highest approval rating of any U.S. president. His presidency ranks among the middle to upper tier in historical rankings of U.S. presidents. His personal conduct and misconduct allegations have made him the subject of substantial scrutiny. Since leaving office, Clinton has been involved in public speaking and humanitarian work. He created the Clinton Foundation to address international causes such as the prevention of HIV/AIDS and global warming. In 2009, he was named the United Nations special envoy to Haiti. After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Clinton founded the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund with George W. Bush and Barack Obama. He has remained active in Democratic Party politics, campaigning for his wife's 2008 and 2016 presidential campaigns. Following Jimmy Carter's death in December 2024, he is the earliest-serving living former U.S. president and the only living president to have served in the 20th century.
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Beer | Q44 | Beer is an alcoholic beverage produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches from cereal grain—most commonly malted barley, although wheat, maize (corn), rice, and oats are also used. The grain is mashed to convert starch in the grain to sugars, which dissolve in water to form wort. Fermentation of the wort by yeast produces ethanol and carbonation in the beer. Beer is one of the oldest and most widely consumed alcoholic drinks in the world, and one of the most popular of all drinks. Most modern beer is brewed with hops, which add bitterness and other flavours and act as a natural preservative and stabilising agent. Other flavouring agents, such as gruit, herbs, or fruits, may be included or used instead of hops. In commercial brewing, natural carbonation is often replaced with forced carbonation.
Beer is distributed in bottles and cans, and is commonly available on draught in pubs and bars. The brewing industry is a global business, consisting of several dominant multinational companies and many thousands of smaller producers ranging from brewpubs to regional breweries. The strength of modern beer is usually around 4% to 6% alcohol by volume (ABV).
Some of the earliest writings mention the production and distribution of beer: the Code of Hammurabi (1750 BC) included laws regulating it, while "The Hymn to Ninkasi", a prayer to the Mesopotamian goddess of beer, contains a recipe for it. Beer forms part of the culture of many nations and is associated with social traditions such as beer festivals, as well as activities like pub games.
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Bit | Q8805 | The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communication. The name is a portmanteau of binary digit. The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values. These values are most commonly represented as either "1" or "0", but other representations such as true/false, yes/no, on/off, or +/− are also widely used.
The relation between these values and the physical states of the underlying storage or device is a matter of convention, and different assignments may be used even within the same device or program. It may be physically implemented with a two-state device.
A contiguous group of binary digits is commonly called a bit string, a bit vector, or a single-dimensional (or multi-dimensional) bit array. A group of eight bits is called one byte, but historically the size of the byte is not strictly defined. Frequently, half, full, double and quadruple words consist of a number of bytes which is a low power of two. A string of four bits is usually a nibble.
In information theory, one bit is the information entropy of a random binary variable that is 0 or 1 with equal probability, or the information that is gained when the value of such a variable becomes known. As a unit of information or negentropy, the bit is also known as a shannon, named after Claude E. Shannon. As a measure of the length of a digital string that is encoded as symbols over a 0-1 (binary) alphabet, the bit has been called a binit, but this usage is now rare.
In data compression, the goal is to find a shorter representation for a string, so that it requires fewer bits when stored or transmitted; the string would be "compressed" into the shorter representation before doing so, and then "decompressed" into its original form when read from storage or received. The field of algorithmic information theory is devoted to the study of the "irreducible information content" of a string (i.e. its shortest-possible representation length, in bits), under the assumption that the receiver has minimal a priori knowledge of the method used to compress the string. In error detection and correction, the goal is to add redundant data to a string, to enable the detection and/or correction of errors during storage or transmission; the redundant data would be computed before doing so, and stored or transmitted, and then "checked" or "corrected" when the data is read or received.
The symbol for the binary digit is either "bit", per the IEC 80000-13:2008 standard, or the lowercase character "b", per the IEEE 1541-2002 standard. Use of the latter may create confusion with the capital "B" which is the international standard symbol for the byte. |
Britney Spears | Q11975 | Britney Jean Spears (born December 2, 1981) is an American singer. Often referred to as the "Princess of Pop", she has sold over 150 million records worldwide, making her one of the world's best-selling music artists. An influential figure in popular music, Spears became the best-selling teenage artist of all time, credited with the revival of teen pop during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Spears began her professional career in 1992 as a cast member of The All-New Mickey Mouse Club and signed with Jive Records five years later. Her first two studio albums, ...Baby One More Time (1999) and Oops!... I Did It Again (2000), are among the best-selling albums of all time. She adopted a more mature and provocative style for her albums Britney (2001) and In the Zone (2003). Spears was the executive producer of her fifth studio album, Blackout (2007), often referred to as her best work. She returned to the top of the U.S. Billboard 200 chart with the albums Circus (2008) and Femme Fatale (2011), and began a concert residency, Britney: Piece of Me (2013–2017), to promote her next two albums, Britney Jean (2013) and Glory (2016). Spears' catalog of high-charting singles includes "...Baby One More Time", "Oops!... I Did It Again", "I'm a Slave 4 U", "Toxic", "Gimme More", "Womanizer", "3", "Hold It Against Me", and "Scream & Shout".
Spears' life, including her high-profile relationships and personal struggles during the 2000s, received widespread media coverage. In 2008, she suffered a mental breakdown and was involuntarily placed in a conservatorship. In 2019, her legal battle over her conservatorship led to the establishment of the #FreeBritney movement and a release of Samantha Stark's documentary Framing Britney Spears (2021). The conservatorship was terminated in 2021, following her public testimony in which she accused her management team and family of abuse. Spears' 2023 memoir, The Woman in Me, reached number one on The New York Times Best Seller list in its first week of release. Her other ventures include starring in the film Crossroads (2002) and launching numerous products, with her 2005 fragrance Fantasy with Elizabeth Arden, Inc. generating over $1.5 billion in sales.
In the United States, Spears is the fourth best-selling female album artist of the Nielsen SoundScan era, as well as the best-selling female album artist of the 2000s. Her accolades include a Grammy Award, 15 Guinness World Records, six MTV Video Music Awards, seven Billboard Music Awards (including the Millennium Award), the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Billboard ranked her sixth on their list of the Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century. "...Baby One More Time" was named the greatest debut single of all time by Rolling Stone in 2020. Forbes listed Spears as the world's highest-paid female musician in 2001 and 2012. By 2012, she had topped Yahoo!'s list of most searched celebrities seven times in twelve years. Time named Spears one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2021, placing first in the reader poll. |
Brazil | Q155 | Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest and easternmost country in South America. It is the world's fifth-largest country by area and the seventh-largest by population, with over 212 million people. The country is a federation composed of 26 states and a Federal District, which hosts the capital, Brasília. Its most populous city is São Paulo, followed by Rio de Janeiro. Brazil has the most Portuguese speakers in the world and is the only country in the Americas where Portuguese is an official language.
Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the east, Brazil has a coastline of 7,491 kilometers (4,655 mi). Covering roughly half of South America's land area, it borders all other countries and territories on the continent except Ecuador and Chile. Brazil encompasses a wide range of tropical and subtropical landscapes, as well as wetlands, savannas, plateaus, and low mountains. It contains most of the Amazon basin, including the world’s largest river system and most extensive virgin tropical forest. Brazil has diverse wildlife, a variety of ecological systems, and extensive natural resources spanning numerous protected habitats. The country ranks first among 17 megadiverse countries, with its natural heritage being the subject of significant global interest, as environmental degradation (through processes such as deforestation) directly affect global issues such as climate change and biodiversity loss.
Brazil was inhabited by various indigenous peoples prior to the landing of Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral in 1500. It was claimed and settled by Portugal, which imported enslaved Africans to work on plantations. Brazil remained a colony until 1815, when it was elevated to the rank of a united kingdom with Portugal after the transfer of the Portuguese court to Rio de Janeiro. Prince Pedro of Braganza declared the country's independence in 1822, establishing the Empire of Brazil, a unitary state governed under a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Brazil's first constitution in 1824 established a bicameral legislature, now called the National Congress, and enshrined principles such as freedom of religion and the press, but retained slavery, which was gradually abolished throughout the 19th century until its final abolition in 1888. Brazil became a presidential republic following a military coup d'état in 1889. An armed revolution in 1930 put an end to the First Republic and brought Getúlio Vargas to power. While initially committing to democratic governance, Vargas assumed dictatorial powers following a self-coup in 1937, marking the beginning of the Estado Novo. Democracy was restored after Vargas' ousting in 1945. An authoritarian military dictatorship emerged in 1964 and ruled until 1985, after which civilian governance resumed. Brazil's current constitution, enacted in 1988, defines it as a democratic federal republic.
Brazil is a regional and middle power and rising global power. It is an emerging, upper-middle income economy and newly industrialized country, with one of the 10 largest economies in the world in both nominal and PPP terms, the largest economy in Latin America and the Southern Hemisphere, and the largest share of wealth in South America. With a complex and highly diversified economy, Brazil is one of the world's major or primary exporters of various agricultural goods, mineral resources, and manufactured products. Due to its rich culture and history, the country ranks thirteenth in the world by number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Brazil is a founding member of the United Nations, the G20, BRICS, G4, Mercosur, Organization of American States, Organization of Ibero-American States, and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries; it is also an observer state of the Arab League and a major non-NATO ally of the United States. |
Black Forest | Q4204 | The Black Forest (German: Schwarzwald [ˈʃvaʁtsvalt] ) is a large forested mountain range in the state of Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany, bounded by the Rhine Valley to the west and south and close to the borders with France and Switzerland. It is the source of the Danube and Neckar rivers.
Its highest peak is the Feldberg with an elevation of 1,493 metres (4,898 ft) above sea level. Roughly oblong in shape, with a length of 160 kilometres (100 miles) and breadth of up to 50 km (30 mi), it has an area of about 6,009 km2 (2,320 sq mi).
Historically, the area was known for forestry and the mining of ore deposits, but tourism has now become the primary industry, accounting for around 300,000 jobs. There are several ruined military fortifications dating back to the 17th century. |
Black Sea | Q166 | The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine. The Black Sea is supplied by major rivers, principally the Danube, Dnieper and Dniester. Consequently, while six countries have a coastline on the sea, its drainage basin includes parts of 24 countries in Europe.
The Black Sea, not including the Sea of Azov, covers 436,400 km2 (168,500 sq mi), has a maximum depth of 2,212 m (7,257 ft), and a volume of 547,000 km3 (131,000 cu mi).
Most of its coasts ascend rapidly.
These rises are the Pontic Mountains to the south, bar the southwest-facing peninsulas, the Caucasus Mountains to the east, and the Crimean Mountains to the mid-north.
In the west, the coast is generally small floodplains below foothills such as the Strandzha; Cape Emine, a dwindling of the east end of the Balkan Mountains; and the Dobruja Plateau considerably farther north. The longest east–west extent is about 1,175 km (730 mi). Important cities along the coast include (clockwise from the Bosporus) Burgas, Varna, Constanța, Odesa, Sevastopol, Novorossiysk, Sochi, Poti, Batumi, Trabzon and Samsun.
The Black Sea has a positive water balance, with an annual net outflow of 300 km3 (72 cu mi) per year through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles into the Aegean Sea. While the net flow of water through the Bosporus and Dardanelles (known collectively as the Turkish Straits) is out of the Black Sea, water generally flows in both directions simultaneously: Denser, more saline water from the Aegean flows into the Black Sea underneath the less dense, fresher water that flows out of the Black Sea. This creates a significant and permanent layer of deep water that does not drain or mix and is therefore anoxic. This anoxic layer is responsible for the preservation of ancient shipwrecks which have been found in the Black Sea, which ultimately drains into the Mediterranean Sea, via the Turkish Straits and the Aegean Sea. The Bosporus strait connects it to the small Sea of Marmara which in turn is connected to the Aegean Sea via the strait of the Dardanelles. To the north, the Black Sea is connected to the Sea of Azov by the Kerch Strait.
The water level has varied significantly over geological time. Due to these variations in the water level in the basin, the surrounding shelf and associated aprons have sometimes been dry land. At certain critical water levels, connections with surrounding water bodies can become established. It is through the most active of these connective routes, the Turkish Straits, that the Black Sea joins the World Ocean. During geological periods when this hydrological link was not present, the Black Sea was an endorheic basin, operating independently of the global ocean system (similar to the Caspian Sea today). Currently, the Black Sea water level is relatively high; thus, water is being exchanged with the Mediterranean. The Black Sea undersea river is a current of particularly saline water flowing through the Bosporus Strait and along the seabed of the Black Sea, the first of its kind discovered. |
Bible | Q1845 | The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek. The texts include instructions, stories, poetry, prophecies, and other genres. The collection of materials accepted as part of the Bible by a particular religious tradition or community is called a biblical canon. Believers generally consider it to be a product of divine inspiration, but the way they understand what that means and interpret the text varies.
The religious texts were compiled by different religious communities into various official collections. The earliest contained the first five books of the Bible, called the Torah in Hebrew and the Pentateuch (meaning 'five books') in Greek. The second-oldest part was a collection of narrative histories and prophecies (the Nevi'im). The third collection, the Ketuvim, contains psalms, proverbs, and narrative histories. Tanakh (Hebrew: תָּנָ״ךְ, romanized: Tanaḵ) is an alternate term for the Hebrew Bible, which is composed of the first letters of the three components comprising scriptures written originally in Hebrew: the Torah ('Teaching'), the Nevi'im ('Prophets'), and the Ketuvim ('Writings'). The Masoretic Text is the medieval version of the Tanakh—written in Hebrew and Aramaic—that is considered the authoritative text of the Hebrew Bible by modern Rabbinic Judaism. The Septuagint is a Koine Greek translation of the Tanakh from the third and second centuries BCE; it largely overlaps with the Hebrew Bible.
Christianity began as an outgrowth of Second Temple Judaism, using the Septuagint as the basis of the Old Testament. The early Church continued the Jewish tradition of writing and incorporating what it saw as inspired, authoritative religious books. The gospels, which are narratives about the life and teachings of Jesus, along with the Pauline epistles, and other texts quickly coalesced into the New Testament. The oldest parts of the Bible may be as early as c. 1200 BCE, while the New Testament had mostly formed by 4th century CE.
With estimated total sales of over five billion copies, the Christian Bible is the best-selling publication of all time. The Bible has had a profound influence both on Western culture and history and on cultures around the globe. The study of it through biblical criticism has also indirectly impacted culture and history. The Bible is currently translated or is being translated into about half of the world's languages.
Some view biblical texts as morally problematic, historically inaccurate, or corrupted by time; others find it a useful historical source for certain peoples and events or a source of ethical teachings.
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British Columbia | Q1973 | British Columbia is the westernmost province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, forests, lakes, mountains, inland deserts and grassy plains. British Columbia borders the province of Alberta to the east; the territories of Yukon and Northwest Territories to the north; the U.S. states of Washington, Idaho and Montana to the south, and Alaska to the northwest. With an estimated population of over 5.7 million as of 2025, it is Canada's third-most populous province. The capital of British Columbia is Victoria, while the province's largest city is Vancouver. Vancouver and its suburbs together make up the third-largest metropolitan area in Canada, with the 2021 census recording 2.6 million people in Metro Vancouver. British Columbia is Canada's third-largest province in terms of total area, after Quebec and Ontario.
The first known human inhabitants of the area settled in British Columbia at least 10,000 years ago. Such groups include the Coast Salish, Tsilhqotʼin, and Haida peoples, among many others. One of the earliest British settlements in the area was Fort Victoria, established in 1843, which gave rise to the city of Victoria, the capital of the Colony of Vancouver Island. The Colony of British Columbia (1858–1866) was subsequently founded by Richard Clement Moody, and by the Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment, in response to the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush. Moody selected the site for and founded the mainland colony's capital New Westminster. The colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia were incorporated in 1866, subsequent to which Victoria became the united colony's capital. In 1871, British Columbia entered Confederation as the sixth province of Canada, in enactment of the British Columbia Terms of Union.
British Columbia is a diverse and cosmopolitan province, drawing on a plethora of cultural influences from its British Canadian, European, and Asian diasporas, as well as the Indigenous population. Though the province's ethnic majority originates from the British Isles, many British Columbians also trace their ancestors to continental Europe, East Asia, and South Asia. Indigenous Canadians constitute about 6 percent of the province's total population. Christianity is the largest religion in the region, though the majority of the population is non-religious. English is the common language of the province, although Punjabi, Mandarin Chinese, and Cantonese also have a large presence in the Metro Vancouver region. The Franco-Columbian community is an officially recognized linguistic minority, and around one percent of British Columbians claim French as their mother tongue. British Columbia is home to at least 34 distinct Indigenous languages.
Major sectors of British Columbia's economy include forestry, mining, filmmaking and video production, tourism, real estate, construction, wholesale, and retail. Its main exports include lumber and timber, pulp and paper products, copper, coal, and natural gas. British Columbia exhibits high property values and is a significant centre for maritime trade: the Port of Vancouver is the largest port in Canada and the most diversified port in North America. Although less than 5 percent of the province's territory is arable land, significant agriculture exists in the Fraser Valley and Okanagan due to the warmer climate. British Columbia is home to 45% of all publicly listed companies in Canada. |
The Buddha | Q9441 | Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha (lit. 'the awakened one'), was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist legends, he was born in Lumbini, in what is now Nepal, to royal parents of the Shakya clan, but renounced his home life to live as a wandering ascetic. After leading a life of mendicancy, asceticism, and meditation, he attained nirvana at Bodh Gayā in what is now India. The Buddha then wandered through the lower Indo-Gangetic Plain, teaching and building a monastic order. Buddhist tradition holds he died in Kushinagar and reached parinirvana ("final release from conditioned existence").
According to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha taught a Middle Way between sensual indulgence and severe asceticism, leading to freedom from ignorance, craving, rebirth, and suffering. His core teachings are summarized in the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, a training of the mind that includes ethical training and kindness toward others, and meditative practices such as sense restraint, mindfulness, dhyana (meditation proper). Another key element of his teachings are the concepts of the five skandhas and dependent origination, describing how all dharmas (both mental states and concrete 'things') come into being, and cease to be, depending on other dharmas, lacking an existence on their own svabhava).
While in the Nikayas he frequently refers to himself as the Tathāgata, the earliest attestation of the title Buddha is from the 3rd century BCE, meaning 'Awakened One' or 'Enlightened One'. His teachings were compiled by the Buddhist community in the Vinaya, his codes for monastic practice, and the Sutta Piṭaka, a compilation of teachings based on his discourses. These were passed down in Middle Indo-Aryan dialects through an oral tradition. Later generations composed additional texts, such as systematic treatises known as Abhidharma, biographies of the Buddha, collections of stories about his past lives known as Jataka tales, and additional discourses, i.e., the Mahāyāna sūtras.
Buddhism evolved into a variety of traditions and practices, represented by Theravāda, Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna, and spread beyond the Indian subcontinent. While Buddhism declined in India, and mostly disappeared after the 8th century CE due to a lack of popular and economic support, Buddhism is more prominent in Southeast and East Asia.
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Bridge | Q12280 | A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or railway) without blocking the path underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually something that is otherwise difficult or impossible to cross. There are many different designs of bridges, each serving a particular purpose and applicable to different situations. Designs of bridges vary depending on factors such as the function of the bridge, the nature of the terrain where the bridge is constructed and anchored, the material used to make it, and the funds available to build it.
The earliest bridges were likely made with fallen trees and stepping stones. The Neolithic people built boardwalk bridges across marshland. The Arkadiko Bridge, dating from the 13th century BC, in the Peloponnese is one of the oldest arch bridges in existence and use.
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Board game | Q131436 | A board game is a type of tabletop game that involves small objects (game pieces) that are placed and moved in particular ways on a specially designed patterned game board, potentially including other components, e.g. dice. The earliest known uses of the term "board game" are between the 1840s and 1850s.
While game boards are a necessary and sufficient condition of this genre, card games that do not use a standard deck of cards, as well as games that use neither cards nor a game board, are often colloquially included, with some referring to this genre generally as "table and board games" or simply "tabletop games". |
Bird | Q5113 | Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (Latin: [ˈaːwεs]), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweight skeleton. Birds live worldwide and range in size from the 5.5 cm (2.2 in) bee hummingbird to the 2.8 m (9 ft 2 in) common ostrich. There are over 11,000 living species and they are split into 44 orders. More than half are passerine or "perching" birds. Birds have wings whose development varies according to species; the only known groups without wings are the extinct moa and elephant birds. Wings, which are modified forelimbs, gave birds the ability to fly, although further evolution has led to the loss of flight in some birds, including ratites, penguins, and diverse endemic island species. The digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments, particularly seabirds and some waterbirds, have further evolved for swimming. The study of birds is called ornithology.
Birds are feathered theropod dinosaurs and constitute the only known living dinosaurs. Likewise, birds are considered reptiles in the modern cladistic sense of the term, and their closest living relatives are the crocodilians. Birds are descendants of the primitive avialans (whose members include Archaeopteryx) which first appeared during the Late Jurassic. According to some estimates, modern birds (Neornithes) evolved in the Late Cretaceous or between the Early and Late Cretaceous (100 Ma) and diversified dramatically around the time of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago, which killed off the pterosaurs and all non-ornithuran dinosaurs.
Many social species preserve knowledge across generations (culture). Birds are social, communicating with visual signals, calls, and songs, and participating in such behaviour as cooperative breeding and hunting, flocking, and mobbing of predators. The vast majority of bird species are socially (but not necessarily sexually) monogamous, usually for one breeding season at a time, sometimes for years, and rarely for life. Other species have breeding systems that are polygynous (one male with many females) or, rarely, polyandrous (one female with many males). Birds produce offspring by laying eggs which are fertilised through sexual reproduction. They are usually laid in a nest and incubated by the parents. Most birds have an extended period of parental care after hatching.
Many species of birds are economically important as food for human consumption and raw material in manufacturing, with domesticated and undomesticated birds being important sources of eggs, meat, and feathers. Songbirds, parrots, and other species are popular as pets. Guano (bird excrement) is harvested for use as a fertiliser. Birds figure throughout human culture. About 120 to 130 species have become extinct due to human activity since the 17th century, and hundreds more before then. Human activity threatens about 1,200 bird species with extinction, though efforts are underway to protect them. Recreational birdwatching is an important part of the ecotourism industry. |
Bulgaria | Q219 | Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey to the south, Serbia and North Macedonia to the west, and Romania to the north. It covers a territory of 110,994 square kilometres (42,855 sq mi) and is the sixteenth-largest country in Europe by area and the tenth largest within the European Union. Sofia is the nation's capital and largest city; other major cities include Burgas, Plovdiv, and Varna.
One of the earliest societies in the lands of modern-day Bulgaria was the Karanovo culture (6,500 BC). In the 6th to 3rd century BC, the region was a battleground for ancient Thracians, Persians, Celts and Macedonians; stability came when the Roman Empire conquered the region in AD 45. After the Roman state splintered, tribal invasions in the region resumed. Around the 6th century, these territories were settled by the early Slavs. The Bulgars, led by Asparuh, attacked from the lands of Old Great Bulgaria and permanently invaded the Balkans in the late 7th century. They established the First Bulgarian Empire, victoriously recognised by treaty in 681 AD by the Byzantine Empire. It dominated most of the Balkans and significantly influenced Slavic cultures by developing the Cyrillic script. Under the rule of the Krum's dynasty, the country rose to the status of a mighty empire and great power. The First Bulgarian Empire lasted until the early 11th century, when Byzantine emperor Basil II conquered and dismantled it. A successful Bulgarian revolt in 1185 established a Second Bulgarian Empire, which reached its apex under Ivan Asen II (1218–1241). After numerous exhausting wars and feudal strife, the empire disintegrated and in 1396 fell under Ottoman rule for nearly five centuries.
The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 resulted in the formation of the third and current Bulgarian state, which declared independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1908. Many ethnic Bulgarians were left outside the new nation's borders, which stoked irredentist sentiments that led to several conflicts with its neighbours and alliances with Germany in both world wars. In 1946, Bulgaria came under the Soviet-led Eastern Bloc and became a socialist state. The ruling Communist Party gave up its monopoly on power after the revolutions of 1989 and allowed multiparty elections. Bulgaria then transitioned into a democracy.
Since adopting a democratic constitution in 1991, Bulgaria has been a parliamentary republic composed of 28 provinces, with a high degree of political, administrative, and economic centralisation. Its high-income economy is part of the European Single Market and is largely based on services, followed by manufacturing and mining—and agriculture. Bulgaria has been influenced by its role as a transit country for natural gas and oil pipelines, as well as its strategic location on the Black Sea. Its foreign relations have been shaped by its geographical location and its modern membership in the European Union and NATO. |
The Bahamas | Q778 | The Bahamas, officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an archipelagic and island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the Atlantic Ocean. It contains 97 per cent of the archipelago's land area and 88 per cent of its population. It comprises more than 3,000 islands, cays and islets in the Atlantic Ocean, and is located north of Cuba and northwest of the island of Hispaniola (split between the Dominican Republic and Haiti) and the Turks and Caicos Islands, southeast of the U.S. state of Florida and east of the Florida Keys. The capital and largest city is Nassau on the island of New Providence. The Royal Bahamas Defence Force describes the Bahamas' territory as encompassing 470,000 km2 (180,000 sq mi) of ocean space.
The Bahama islands were inhabited by the Arawak and Lucayans, a branch of the Arawakan-speaking Taíno, for many centuries. Christopher Columbus was the first European to see the islands, making his first landfall in the "New World" in 1492 when he landed on the island of San Salvador. Later, the Kingdom of Spain shipped the native Lucayans to Hispaniola and enslaved them there, after which the Bahama islands were mostly deserted from 1513 until 1648, as nearly all native Bahamians had been forcibly removed for enslavement or had died of European diseases. In 1649 English colonists from Bermuda, known as the Eleutheran Adventurers, settled on the island of Eleuthera.
The Bahamas became a crown colony of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1718 when the British clamped down on piracy. After the American Revolutionary War, the Crown resettled thousands of American Loyalists to the Bahamas; they took slaves with them and established plantations on land grants. African slaves and their descendants constituted the majority of the population from this period on. The slave trade was abolished by the British in 1807. Although slavery in the Bahamas was not abolished until 1834, the Bahamas became a haven of manumission for African slaves, from outside the British West Indies, in 1818. Africans liberated from illegal slave ships were resettled on the islands by the Royal Navy, while some North American slaves and Seminoles escaped to the Bahamas from Florida. Bahamians were even known to recognise the freedom of slaves carried by the ships of other nations which reached the Bahamas. Today Black Bahamians make up 90 per cent of the population of 400,516.
The country became an independent Commonwealth realm separate from the United Kingdom in 1973, led by its first prime minister, Sir Lynden Pindling. It maintains Charles III as its monarch; the appointed representative of the Crown is the governor-general of the Bahamas. The Bahamas has the fourteenth-largest gross domestic product per capita in the Americas. Its economy is based on tourism and offshore finance. Though the Bahamas is in the Lucayan Archipelago, and not on the Caribbean Sea, it is still considered part of the wider Caribbean region. The Bahamas is a full member of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) but is not part of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy. |
Bangladesh | Q902 | Bangladesh, officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world and among the most densely populated with a population of over 171 million within an area of 148,460 square kilometres (57,320 sq mi). Bangladesh shares land borders with India to the north, west, and east, and Myanmar to the southeast. It has a coastline along the Bay of Bengal to its south and is separated from Bhutan and Nepal by the Siliguri Corridor, and from China by the Indian state of Sikkim to its north. Dhaka, the capital and largest city, is the nation's political, financial, and cultural centre. Chittagong is the second-largest city and the busiest port of the country.
The territory of modern Bangladesh was a stronghold of many Buddhist and Hindu dynasties in ancient history. Following the Muslim conquest in 1204, the region saw Sultanate and Mughal rule. During the Mughal period, particularly under the Bengal Subah, the region emerged as one of the most prosperous and commercially active parts of the empire, known for its thriving textile industry and agricultural productivity. The Battle of Plassey in 1757 marked the beginning of British colonial rule for the following two centuries. In the aftermath of the Partition of British India in 1947, East Bengal became the eastern and most populous wing of the newly formed Dominion of Pakistan and was later renamed to East Pakistan. Following over two decades of political repression and systematic racism from the West Pakistan-based government, East Pakistan experienced a civil war in 1971; ultimately leading to a war for independence. The Mukti Bahini, with assistance from Indian forces, waged a successful armed revolution; and at the expense of a genocide, Bangladesh became a sovereign nation on 16 December 1971. Post-Independence, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman led the country until his assassination in 1975. Presidency was later transferred to Ziaur Rahman, who himself was assassinated in 1981. The 1980s was dominated by the dictatorship of Hussain Muhammad Ershad, who was overthrown in a mass uprising in 1990. Following the democratisation in 1991, the "Battle of the Begums" between Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina defined the country's politics for the next three decades. Hasina was overthrown in a student–led mass uprising in August 2024, and an interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus was formed.
Bangladesh is a unitary parliamentary republic based on the Westminster system. It is a middle power with the second-largest economy in South Asia. Bangladesh is home to the third-largest Muslim population in the world and the fifth-most spoken native language. It maintains the third-largest military in South Asia and is the largest contributor to the peacekeeping operations of the United Nations. It consists of eight divisions, 64 districts, and 495 sub-districts, and is home to the largest mangrove forest in the world. However, Bangladesh has one of the largest refugee populations in the world and continues to face challenges such as endemic corruption, lack of human rights, political instability, overpopulation, and adverse effects of climate change. It has twice chaired the Climate Vulnerable Forum and is a member of BIMSTEC, SAARC, OIC and the Commonwealth of Nations.
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Barbados | Q244 | Barbados is an island country in the Atlantic Ocean. It is part of the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies and the easternmost island of the Caribbean region. It lies on the boundary of the South American and Caribbean plates. Its capital and largest city is Bridgetown.
Inhabited by Kalinago people since the 13th century, and prior to that by other Indigenous peoples, Barbados was claimed for the Crown of Castile by Spanish navigators in the late 15th century. It first appeared on a Spanish map in 1511. The Portuguese Empire claimed the island between 1532 and 1536, but abandoned it in 1620 with their only remnants being the introduction of wild boars intended as a supply of meat whenever the island was visited. An English ship, the Olive Blossom, arrived in Barbados on 14 May 1625; its men took possession of the island in the name of King James I. In 1627, the first permanent settlers arrived from England, and Barbados became an English and later British colony. During this period, the colony operated on a plantation economy, relying on the labour of African slaves who worked on the island's plantations. Slavery continued until it was phased out through most of the British Empire by the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
On 30 November 1966, Barbados moved toward political independence and assumed the status of a Commonwealth realm, becoming a separate jurisdiction with Elizabeth II as the Queen of Barbados. On 30 November 2021, Barbados transitioned to a republic within the Commonwealth, replacing its monarchy with a ceremonial president.
Barbados's population is predominantly of African ancestry. While it is technically an Atlantic island, Barbados is closely associated with the Caribbean and is ranked as one of its leading tourist destinations. |
Belarus | Q184 | Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an area of 207,600 square kilometres (80,200 sq mi) with a population of 9.1 million. The country has a hemiboreal climate and is administratively divided into six regions. Minsk is the capital and largest city; it is administered separately as a city with special status.
For most of the medieval period, the lands of modern-day Belarus was ruled by independent city-states such as the Principality of Polotsk. Around 1300 these lands came fully under the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and subsequently by the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; this period lasted for 500 years until the 1792-1795 partitions of Poland-Lithuania placed Belarus within the Russian Empire for the first time. In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution in 1917, different states arose competing for legitimacy amid the Civil War, ultimately ending in the rise of the Byelorussian SSR, which became a founding constituent republic of the Soviet Union in 1922. After the Polish-Soviet War (1918–1921), Belarus lost almost half of its territory to Poland. Much of the borders of Belarus took their modern shape in 1939, when some lands of the Second Polish Republic were reintegrated into it after the Soviet invasion of Poland, and were finalized after World War II. During World War II, military operations devastated Belarus, which lost about a quarter of its population and half of its economic resources. In 1945, the Byelorussian SSR became a founding member of the United Nations, along with the Soviet Union. The republic was home to a widespread and diverse anti-Nazi insurgent movement which dominated politics until well into the 1970s, overseeing Belarus's transformation from an agrarian to an industrial economy.
The parliament of the republic proclaimed the sovereignty of Belarus on 27 July 1990, and during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Belarus gained independence on 25 August 1991. Following the adoption of a new constitution in 1994, Alexander Lukashenko was elected Belarus's first president in the country's first and only free election after independence, serving as president ever since. Lukashenko heads a highly centralized authoritarian government. Belarus ranks low in international measurements of freedom of the press and civil liberties. It has continued several Soviet-era policies, such as state ownership of large sections of the economy. In 2000, Belarus and Russia signed a treaty for greater cooperation, forming the Union State.
The country has been a member of the United Nations since its founding and has joined the CIS, the CSTO, the EAEU, the OSCE, and the Non-Aligned Movement. It has shown no aspirations of joining the European Union but maintains a bilateral relationship with the bloc, and also participates in the Baku Initiative.
Belarus is among the only three European countries (along with Russia and Kosovo) not a member of the Council of Europe; it attempted to join in 1993 but was refused admission because of electoral malpractice and serious human rights concerns (Belarus is the only European country that continues to use capital punishment). Its limited relationship with the Council was suspended in 2022 due its facilitation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine from its territory in April of that year. |
Belize | Q242 | Belize is a country on the north-eastern coast of Central America. It is bordered by Mexico to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and Guatemala to the west and south. It also shares a maritime boundary with Honduras to the southeast. Part of the Caribbean region, Belize is a member of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the Commonwealth Caribbean, the historical British West Indies.
The Maya civilization spread into the area of Belize between 1500 BCE and 300 CE and flourished until about 1200. European contact began in 1502–04 when Christopher Columbus sailed along the Gulf of Honduras. European exploration was begun by English settlers in 1638. Spain and Britain both laid claim to the land until Britain defeated the Spanish in the Battle of St. George's Caye (1798). It became a British colony in 1840, and a Crown colony in 1862. Belize achieved its independence from the United Kingdom on 21 September 1981. It is the only mainland Central American country which is a Commonwealth realm, with King Charles III as its monarch and head of state, represented by a governor-general.
Belize's abundance of terrestrial and marine plants and animals and its diversity of ecosystems, including extensive coral reefs, give it a key place in the globally significant Mesoamerican Biological Corridor. It is considered a Central American and Caribbean nation with strong ties to both the American and Caribbean regions.
It has an area of 22,970 square kilometres (8,867 sq mi) and a population of 397,483 (2022). Its mainland is about 290 km (180 mi) long and 110 km (68 mi) wide. It is the least populated and least densely populated country in Central America. Its population growth rate of 1.87% per year (2018 estimate) is the second-highest in the region and one of the highest in the Western Hemisphere. Its capital is Belmopan, and its largest city is the namesake city of Belize City. The country has a diverse society composed of many cultures and languages. It is the only Central American country where English is the official language. Belizean Creole and Spanish are widely spoken, followed by the Mayan languages and Garifuna. Over half the population is multilingual due to the diverse linguistic backgrounds of the population. It is known for its September Celebrations and punta music.
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Benin | Q962 | Benin, officially the Republic of Benin, is a country in West Africa. It was formerly known as Dahomey. It is bordered by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, Burkina Faso to the north-west, and Niger to the north-east. The majority of its population lives on the southern coastline of the Bight of Benin, part of the Gulf of Guinea in the northernmost tropical portion of the Atlantic Ocean. The capital is Porto-Novo, and the seat of government is in Cotonou, the most populous city and economic capital. Benin covers an area of 112,622 km2 (43,484 sq mi), and its population in 2021 was estimated to be approximately 13 million. It is a tropical country with an economy heavily dependent on agriculture and is an exporter of palm oil and cotton.
From the 17th to the 19th century, political entities in the area included the Kingdom of Dahomey, the city-state of Porto Novo, and other states to the north. This region was referred to as the Slave Coast of West Africa from the early 17th century due to the high number of people who were sold and trafficked during the Atlantic slave trade to the New World. France took over the territory in 1894, incorporating it into French West Africa as French Dahomey. In 1960, Dahomey gained full independence from France. As a sovereign state, Benin has had democratic governments, military coups, and military governments. A self-described Marxist–Leninist state called the People's Republic of Benin existed between 1975 and 1990. In 1991, it was replaced by the multi-party Republic of Benin.
The official language of Benin is French, with indigenous languages such as Fon, Bariba, Yoruba and Dendi also spoken. The largest religious group in Benin is Christianity (52.2%), followed by Islam (24.6%) and African Traditional Religions (17.9%). Benin is a member of the United Nations, the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the South Atlantic Peace and Cooperation Zone, Francophonie, the Community of Sahel–Saharan States, the African Petroleum Producers Association and the Niger Basin Authority. |
Bermuda | Q23635 | Bermuda is a British Overseas Territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. The closest land outside the territory is in the American state of North Carolina, about 1,035 km (643 mi) to the west-northwest.
Bermuda is an archipelago consisting of 181 islands, although the most significant islands are connected by bridges and appear to form one landmass. It has a land area of 54 square kilometres (21 sq mi). Bermuda has a tropical climate, with warm winters and hot summers. Its climate also exhibits oceanic features similar to other coastal areas in the Northern Hemisphere with warm, moist air from the ocean ensuring relatively high humidity and stabilising temperatures. Bermuda is prone to severe weather from recurving tropical cyclones; however, it receives some protection from a coral reef and its position north of the Main Development Region, which limits the direction and severity of approaching storms.
Bermuda is named after Spanish explorer Juan de Bermúdez, who discovered the archipelago in 1505. The islands have been permanently inhabited since 1612 when an English settlement was established at St. George's, which is also the territory's largest settlement. Forming part of British America, Bermuda was governed under Royal charter by the Somers Isles Company until 1684, when it became a crown colony. The first enslaved Africans were taken to Bermuda in 1616. The Somers Isles Company ensured a steady flow of free but indentured servants until 1684, and most tobacco farms owned by overseas adventurers were sold to the tenants or other occupants after Bermuda-grown tobacco became steadily less profitable following the 1620s, becoming family farms that switched from growing tobacco for export to producing food (initially for local consumption). Consequently, a plantation economy did not develop and the slave trade largely ceased by the end of the 17th century. The economy instead became maritime-focused, with the colony serving as a base for merchants, privateers and the Royal Navy, giving its name to the Bermuda rig and Bermuda sloop. It became an imperial fortress, the most important British naval and military base in the western hemisphere with vast funds lavished on its Royal Naval Dockyard and military defences until the 1950s. Tourism has been a significant contributor to Bermuda's economy since the 19th century and after World War II, the territory became a prominent offshore financial centre and tax haven.
Divided into nine parishes, Bermuda is a self-governing parliamentary democracy with a bicameral parliament located in the capital Hamilton. The House of Assembly dates from 1620, making it one of the world's oldest legislatures. The premier is the head of government and is formally appointed by the governor, who is nominated by the British government as the representative of the King. The United Kingdom is responsible for foreign affairs and defence. An independence referendum was held in 1995 with a large majority voting against independence. As of 2019, Bermuda had a population of around 64,000 people, making it the second-most populous of the British Overseas Territories. Black Bermudians, a diverse population primarily of any mixture of African, European, and Native American ancestry, make up around 50% of the population, while White Bermudians, primarily of British, Irish and Portuguese descent, make up 30% of the population. There are smaller groups from other races or identifying as mixed race and about 30% of the population is not Bermudian by birth. The last remaining colony in the former British North America (following the 1867 Confederation of Canada and the Colony of Newfoundland becoming the Dominion of Newfoundland in 1907), Bermuda has a distinct dialect of English and has historically had strong ties with other English-speaking countries in the Americas, including the United States, Canada, and the Commonwealth Caribbean. It is an associate member of the Caribbean Community. |
Bolivia | Q750 | Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, warm valleys, high-altitude Andean plateaus, and snow-capped peaks, encompassing a wide range of climates and biomes across its regions and cities. It includes part of the Pantanal, the largest tropical wetland in the world, along its eastern border. It is bordered by Brazil to the north and east, Paraguay to the southeast, Argentina to the south, Chile to the southwest, and Peru to the west. The seat of government is La Paz, which contains the executive, legislative, and electoral branches of government, while the constitutional capital is Sucre, the seat of the judiciary. The largest city and principal industrial center is Santa Cruz de la Sierra, located on the Llanos Orientales (eastern tropical lowlands), a mostly flat region in the east of the country with a diverse non-Andean culture.
The sovereign state of Bolivia is a constitutionally unitary state divided into nine departments. Its geography varies as the elevation fluctuates, from the western snow-capped peaks of the Andes to the eastern lowlands, situated within the Amazon basin. One-third of the country is within the Andean mountain range. With an area of 1,098,581 km2 (424,164 sq mi), Bolivia is the fifth-largest country in South America after Brazil, Argentina, Peru and Colombia, and, alongside Paraguay, is one of two landlocked countries in the Americas. It is the largest landlocked country in the Southern Hemisphere. The country's population, estimated at 12 million, is multiethnic, including Amerindians, Mestizos, Asians, Arabs, Jews, and the descendants of Europeans and Africans. Spanish is the official and predominant language, although 36 indigenous languages also have official status, of which the most commonly spoken are Guaraní, Aymara, and Quechua.
Centuries prior to Spanish colonization, much of what would become Andean Bolivia formed part of the Tiwanaku polity, which collapsed around 1000 AD. The Colla–Inca War of the 1440s marked the beginning of Inca rule in western Bolivia. The eastern and northern lowlands of Bolivia were inhabited by independent non-Andean Amazonian and Guaraní tribes. Spanish conquistadores, arriving from Cusco, Peru, forcibly took control of the region in the 16th century.
During the subsequent Spanish colonial period, Bolivia was administered by the Real Audiencia of Charcas. Spain built its empire in large part upon the silver that was extracted from Cerro Rico in Potosí. Following an unsuccessful rebellion in Sucre on May 25, 1809, sixteen years of fighting would follow before the establishment of the Republic, named for Simón Bolívar. Over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Bolivia lost control of several peripheral territories to neighboring countries, such as Brazil's of the Acre territory, and the War of the Pacific (1879), in which Chile seized the country's Pacific coastal region.
20th century Bolivia experienced a succession of military and civilian governments until Hugo Banzer led a U.S.-backed coup d'état in 1971, replacing the socialist government of Juan José Torres with a military dictatorship. Banzer's regime cracked down on left-wing and socialist opposition parties, and other perceived forms of dissent, resulting in the torturing and murders of countless Bolivian citizens. Banzer was ousted in 1978 and, twenty years later, returned as the democratically elected President of Bolivia (1997–2001). Under the 2006–2019 presidency of Evo Morales, the country saw significant economic growth and political stability but was also accused of democratic backsliding, and was described as a competitive authoritarian regime. Freedom House classifies Bolivia as a partly-free democracy as of 2023, with a 66/100 score.
Modern Bolivia is a member of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), Organization of American States (OAS), Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO), Bank of the South, ALBA, the Union of South American Nations (USAN), and Southern Common Market (Mercosur). Bolivia remains a developing country, and the second-poorest in South America, though it has slashed poverty rates and now has one of the fastest-growing economies on the continent (in terms of GDP). Its main economic resources include agriculture, forestry, fishing, mining, and goods such as textiles and clothing, refined metals, and refined petroleum. Bolivia is very geologically rich, with mines producing tin, silver, lithium, and copper. The country is also known for its production of coca plants and refined cocaine. In 2021, estimated coca cultivation and cocaine production was reported to be 39,700 hectares and 317 metric tons, respectively.
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Bosnia and Herzegovina | Q225 | Bosnia and Herzegovina, sometimes known as Bosnia-Herzegovina and informally as Bosnia, is a country in Southeast Europe. Situated on the Balkan Peninsula, it borders Serbia to the east, Montenegro to the southeast, and Croatia to the north and southwest. In the south it has a 20-kilometre-long (12-mile) coast on the Adriatic Sea. Bosnia has a moderate continental climate with hot summers and cold, snowy winters. In the central and eastern regions, the geography is mountainous, in the northwest it is moderately hilly, and in the northeast it is predominantly flat. Herzegovina, the smaller, southern region, has a Mediterranean climate and is mostly mountainous. Sarajevo is the capital and the largest city.
The area has been inhabited since at least the Upper Paleolithic, but evidence suggests that during the Neolithic age, permanent human settlements were established, including those that belonged to the Butmir, Kakanj, and Vučedol cultures. After the arrival of the first Indo-Europeans, the area was populated by several Illyrian and Celtic civilizations. The ancestors of the South Slavic peoples that populate the area today arrived during the 6th through the 9th century. In the 12th century, the Banate of Bosnia was established; by the 14th century, this had evolved into the Kingdom of Bosnia. In the mid-15th century, it was annexed into the Ottoman Empire, under whose rule it remained until the late 19th century; the Ottomans brought Islam to the region. From the late 19th century until World War I, the country was annexed into the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. In the interwar period, Bosnia and Herzegovina was part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. After World War II, it was granted full republic status in the newly formed Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In 1992, following the breakup of Yugoslavia, the republic proclaimed independence. This was followed by the Bosnian War, which lasted until late 1995 and ended with the signing of the Dayton Agreement.
The country is home to three main ethnic groups: Bosniaks are the largest group, Serbs the second-largest, and Croats the third-largest. Minorities include Jews, Roma, Albanians, Montenegrins, Ukrainians and Turks. Bosnia and Herzegovina has a bicameral legislature and a presidency made up of one member from each of the three major ethnic groups. However, the central government's power is highly limited, as the country is largely decentralized. It comprises two autonomous entities—the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska—and a third unit, the Brčko District, governed by its own local government.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is a developing country. Its economy is dominated by industry and agriculture, followed by tourism and the service sector. Tourism has increased significantly in recent years. The country has a social security and universal healthcare system, and primary and secondary education is free. Bosnia and Herzegovina is an EU candidate country and has also been a candidate for NATO membership since April 2010. |
Botswana | Q963 | Botswana, officially the Republic of Botswana, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with approximately 70 percent of its territory part of the Kalahari Desert. It is bordered by South Africa to the south and southeast, Namibia to the west and north, Zambia to the north, and Zimbabwe to the northeast. With a population of slightly over 2.4 million people and a comparable land area to France, Botswana is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. It is essentially the nation-state of the Tswana people, who constitute nearly 80 percent of the population.
The Tswana ethnic group are descended mainly from Bantu-speaking peoples who migrated into southern Africa, including modern Botswana, in several waves before AD 600. In 1885, the British colonised the area and declared a protectorate named Bechuanaland. As part of the decolonisation of Africa, Bechuanaland became an independent Commonwealth republic under its current name on 30 September 1966. Since then, it has been a parliamentary republic with a consistent record of uninterrupted democratic elections, though dominated by the Botswana Democratic Party until 2024. As of 2024, Botswana is the third-least corrupt country in Africa according to the Corruption Perceptions Index published by Transparency International.
The economy is dominated by mining and tourism. Botswana has a per capita GDP (purchasing power parity) of about $20,158 as of 2024. Botswana is the world's biggest diamond-producing country. Its relatively high gross national income per capita (by some estimates the fourth-largest in Africa) gives the country a relatively high standard of living and the second-highest Human Development Index of continental Sub-Saharan Africa (after South Africa). Despite this, Botswana continues to grapple with high unemployment rates. Botswana is a member of the Southern African Customs Union, the Southern African Development Community, the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations.
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Brunei | Q921 | Brunei, officially Brunei Darussalam, is a country in Southeast Asia, situated on the northern coast of the island of Borneo. Apart from its coastline on the South China Sea, it is completely surrounded by the Malaysian state of Sarawak, with its territory bifurcated by the Sarawak district of Limbang. Brunei is the only sovereign state entirely on Borneo; the remainder of the island is divided between its multi-landmass neighbours of Malaysia and Indonesia. As of 2023, the country had a population of 455,858, of whom approximately 180,000 resided in the capital and largest city of Bandar Seri Begawan. Its official language is Malay and Islam is the state religion of the country, although other religions are nominally tolerated. The government of Brunei is an absolute monarchy ruled by the Sultan, and it implements a fusion of English common law and jurisprudence inspired by Islam, including sharia.
At the Bruneian Empire's peak during the reign of Sultan Bolkiah (1485–1528), the state is claimed to have had control over the most of Borneo, including modern-day Sarawak and Sabah, as well as the Sulu archipelago and the islands off the northwestern tip of Borneo. There are also claims to its historical control over Seludong, in which Southeast Asian scholars believe the name of the location in question is actually in reference to Mount Selurong, in Indonesia, or Serudong River in eastern Sabah. The maritime state of Brunei was visited by the surviving crew of the Magellan Expedition in 1521, and in 1578 it fought against Spain in the Castilian War.
During the 19th century, the Bruneian Empire began to decline. The Sultanate ceded Sarawak (Kuching) to James Brooke and installed him as the White Rajah, and it ceded Sabah to the British North Borneo Chartered Company. In 1888, Brunei became a British protectorate and was assigned a British resident as colonial manager in 1906. After the Japanese occupation during World War II, a new constitution was written in 1959. In 1962, a small armed rebellion against the monarchy which was indirectly related to the Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation was ended with British assistance and led to the ban of the pro-independent Brunei People's Party. The revolt had also influenced the Sultan's decision not to join the Malaysian Federation while it was being formed. Britain's protectorate over Brunei would eventually end on 1 January 1984, becoming a fully sovereign state.
Brunei has been led by Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah since 1967, and the country's unicameral legislature, the Legislative Council, is simply consultative and are all appointed by the Sultan. The country's wealth derives from its extensive petroleum and natural gas fields. Economic growth during the 1990s and 2000s has transformed Brunei into an industrialised country, with its GDP increasing 56% between 1999 and 2008. Political stability is maintained by the House of Bolkiah by providing a welfare state for its citizens, with free or significant subsidies in regards to housing, healthcare and education. It ranks "very high" on the Human Development Index (HDI)—the second-highest among Southeast Asian states after Singapore, which it maintains close relations with including a Currency Interchangeability Agreement. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Brunei is ranked ninth in the world by gross domestic product per capita at purchasing power parity. Brunei is a member of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the East Asia Summit, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Commonwealth of Nations, and ASEAN.
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Burkina Faso | Q965 | Burkina Faso is a landlocked country in West Africa, bordered by Mali to the northwest, Niger to the northeast, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to the south, and Ivory Coast to the southwest. It covers an area of 274,223 km2 (105,878 sq mi). In 2024, the country had an estimated population of approximately 23,286,000. Previously called the Republic of Upper Volta (1958–1984), it was renamed Burkina Faso by former president Thomas Sankara. Its citizens are known as Burkinabè, and its capital and largest city is Ouagadougou.
The largest ethnic group in Burkina Faso is the Mossi people, who settled the area in the 11th and 13th centuries. They established powerful kingdoms such as Ouagadougou, Tenkodogo, and Yatenga. In 1896, it was colonized by the French as part of French West Africa; in 1958, Upper Volta became a self-governing colony within the French Community. In 1960, it gained full independence with Maurice Yaméogo as president. Since it gained its independence, the country has been subject to instability, droughts, famines and corruption. There have also been various coups, in 1966, 1980, 1982, 1983, 1987, and twice in 2022 (January and September). There were also unsuccessful coup attempts in 1989, 2015, and 2023.
Thomas Sankara came to power following a successful coup in 1983. As president, Sankara embarked on a series of ambitious socioeconomic reforms which included a nationwide literacy campaign, land redistribution to peasants, vaccinations for over 2 million children, railway and road construction, equalized access to education, and the outlawing of female genital mutilation, forced marriages, and polygamy. He served as the country's president until 1987 when he was deposed and assassinated in a coup led by Blaise Compaoré, who became president and ruled the country until his removal on 31 October 2014.
Since the mid-2010s, Burkina Faso has been severely affected by the rise of insurgencies in the Sahel. Several militias, partly allied with the Islamic State (IS) or al-Qaeda, operate in Burkina Faso and across the border in Mali and Niger. More than one million of the country's 23 million inhabitants are internally displaced persons. Burkina Faso's military seized power in a coup d'état on 23 and 24 January 2022, overthrowing President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré. On 31 January, the military junta restored the constitution and appointed Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba as interim president, but he was himself overthrown in a second coup on 30 September and replaced by military captain Ibrahim Traoré.
Burkina Faso remains one of the least developed countries in the world, with a GDP of $16.226 billion in 2022. Approximately 63.8% of its population practices Islam, while 26.3% practices Christianity. The country's four official languages are Mooré, Bissa, Dyula and Fula, with the first one being spoken by over half the population; the Burkinabè government also officially recognizes 60 indigenous languages. The former government and business language was French until January 2024, whose status was demoted to that of a "working language" alongside English by ratification of a constitutional amendment.
The country's territory is geographically biodiverse, and includes plentiful reserves of gold, manganese, copper and limestone. Due to its multicultural make-up, Burkinabè art has a rich and long history, and is globally renowned for its orthodox style. The country is governed as a semi-presidential republic, with executive, legislative and judicial powers. It is a member of the United Nations, La Francophonie and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. On 18 January 2024, Burkina Faso announced its exit from ECOWAS and the African Union after it helped form the Alliance of Sahel States (AES). |
Bell Labs | Q217365 | Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as Bell Labs, is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, the company operates several laboratories in the United States and around the world.
As a former subsidiary of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), Bell Labs and its researchers have been credited with the development of radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, the photovoltaic cell, the charge-coupled device (CCD), information theory, the Unix operating system, and the programming languages B, C, C++, S, SNOBOL, AWK, AMPL, and others, throughout the 20th century. Eleven Nobel Prizes and five Turing Awards have been awarded for work completed at Bell Laboratories.
Bell Labs had its origin in the complex corporate organization of the Bell System telephone conglomerate. The laboratory began operating in the late 19th century as the Western Electric Engineering Department, located at 463 West Street in New York City. After years of advancing telecommunication innovations, the department was reformed into Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1925 and placed under the shared ownership of Western Electric and the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. In the 1960s, laboratory and company headquarters were moved to Murray Hill, New Jersey. Its alumni during this time include a plethora of world-renowned scientists and engineers.
With the breakup of the Bell System, Bell Labs became a subsidiary of AT&T Technologies in 1984, which resulted in a drastic decline in its funding. In 1996, AT&T spun off AT&T Technologies, which was renamed to Lucent Technologies, using the Murray Hill site for headquarters. Bell Laboratories was split with AT&T retaining parts as AT&T Laboratories. In 2006, Lucent merged with French telecommunication company Alcatel to form Alcatel-Lucent, which was acquired by Nokia in 2016.
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Brain | Q1073 | The brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It consists of nervous tissue and is typically located in the head (cephalization), usually near organs for special senses such as vision, hearing, and olfaction. Being the most specialized organ, it is responsible for receiving information from the sensory nervous system, processing those information (thought, cognition, and intelligence) and the coordination of motor control (muscle activity and endocrine system).
While invertebrate brains arise from paired segmental ganglia (each of which is only responsible for the respective body segment) of the ventral nerve cord, vertebrate brains develop axially from the midline dorsal nerve cord as a vesicular enlargement at the rostral end of the neural tube, with centralized control over all body segments. All vertebrate brains can be embryonically divided into three parts: the forebrain (prosencephalon, subdivided into telencephalon and diencephalon), midbrain (mesencephalon) and hindbrain (rhombencephalon, subdivided into metencephalon and myelencephalon). The spinal cord, which directly interacts with somatic functions below the head, can be considered a caudal extension of the myelencephalon enclosed inside the vertebral column. Together, the brain and spinal cord constitute the central nervous system in all vertebrates.
In humans, the cerebral cortex contains approximately 14–16 billion neurons, and the estimated number of neurons in the cerebellum is 55–70 billion. Each neuron is connected by synapses to several thousand other neurons, typically communicating with one another via cytoplasmic processes known as dendrites and axons. Axons are usually myelinated and carry trains of rapid micro-electric signal pulses called action potentials to target specific recipient cells in other areas of the brain or distant parts of the body. The prefrontal cortex, which controls executive functions, is particularly well developed in humans.
Physiologically, brains exert centralized control over a body's other organs. They act on the rest of the body both by generating patterns of muscle activity and by driving the secretion of chemicals called hormones. This centralized control allows rapid and coordinated responses to changes in the environment. Some basic types of responsiveness such as reflexes can be mediated by the spinal cord or peripheral ganglia, but sophisticated purposeful control of behavior based on complex sensory input requires the information integrating capabilities of a centralized brain.
The operations of individual brain cells are now understood in considerable detail but the way they cooperate in ensembles of millions is yet to be solved. Recent models in modern neuroscience treat the brain as a biological computer, very different in mechanism from a digital computer, but similar in the sense that it acquires information from the surrounding world, stores it, and processes it in a variety of ways.
This article compares the properties of brains across the entire range of animal species, with the greatest attention to vertebrates. It deals with the human brain insofar as it shares the properties of other brains. The ways in which the human brain differs from other brains are covered in the human brain article. Several topics that might be covered here are instead covered there because much more can be said about them in a human context. The most important that are covered in the human brain article are brain disease and the effects of brain damage.
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Beastie Boys | Q214039 | The Beastie Boys were an American hip hop and rap rock group formed in New York City in 1979. They were composed of Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz (vocals, guitar), Adam "MCA" Yauch (vocals, bass), and Michael "Mike D" Diamond (vocals, drums). The Beastie Boys were formed out of members of experimental hardcore punk band the Young Aborigines, which was formed in 1979, with Diamond on drums, Jeremy Shatan on bass guitar, John Berry on guitar, and Kate Schellenbach later joining on percussion. When Shatan left New York City in mid-1981, Yauch replaced him on bass and the resulting band was named the Beastie Boys. Berry left shortly thereafter and was replaced by Horovitz.
After achieving local success with the 1983 comedy hip hop single "Cooky Puss", the Beastie Boys made a full transition to hip hop, and Schellenbach left. They toured with Madonna in 1985 and a year later released their debut album, Licensed to Ill (1986), the first rap album to top the Billboard 200 chart. Their second album, Paul's Boutique (1989), composed almost entirely of samples, was a commercial failure that later received critical acclaim. Check Your Head (1992) and Ill Communication (1994) found mainstream success, followed by Hello Nasty (1998), To the 5 Boroughs (2004), The Mix-Up (2007), and Hot Sauce Committee Part Two (2011).
The Beastie Boys have sold 20 million records in the United States and had seven platinum-selling albums from 1986 to 2004. They are the biggest-selling rap group since Billboard began recording sales in 1991. In 2012, they became the third rap group to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In the same year, Yauch died of cancer and the Beastie Boys disbanded. The remaining members have released several retrospective works, including a book, a documentary, and a career-spanning compilation album. |
Bluetooth | Q39531 | Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limited to 2.5 milliwatts, giving it a very short range of up to 10 metres (33 ft). It employs UHF radio waves in the ISM bands, from 2.402 GHz to 2.48 GHz. It is mainly used as an alternative to wired connections to exchange files between nearby portable devices and connect cell phones and music players with wireless headphones, wireless speakers, HIFI systems, car audio and wireless transmission between TVs and soundbars.
Bluetooth is managed by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), which has more than 35,000 member companies in the areas of telecommunication, computing, networking, and consumer electronics. The IEEE standardized Bluetooth as IEEE 802.15.1 but no longer maintains the standard. The Bluetooth SIG oversees the development of the specification, manages the qualification program, and protects the trademarks. A manufacturer must meet Bluetooth SIG standards to market it as a Bluetooth device. A network of patents applies to the technology, which is licensed to individual qualifying devices. As of 2021, 4.7 billion Bluetooth integrated circuit chips are shipped annually. Bluetooth was first demonstrated in space in 2024, an early test envisioned to enhance IoT capabilities.
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Bill Gates | Q5284 | William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American businessman and philanthropist. A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend Paul Allen. Following the company's 1986 initial public offering (IPO), Gates became then the youngest ever billionaire in 1987, at age 31. Forbes magazine ranked him as the world's wealthiest person for 18 out of 24 years between 1995 and 2017, including 13 years consecutively from 1995 to 2007. He became the first centibillionaire in 1999, when his net worth briefly surpassed $100 billion. According to Forbes, as of May 2025, his net worth stood at US$115.1 billion, making him the thirteenth-richest individual in the world.
Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, Gates was privately educated at Lakeside School, where he befriended Allen and developed his computing interests. In 1973, he enrolled at Harvard College, where he took classes including Math 55 and graduate level computer science courses, but he dropped out in 1975 to co-found and lead Microsoft. He served as its CEO for the next 25 years and also became president and chairman of the board when the company incorporated in 1981. Succeeded as CEO by Steve Ballmer in 2000, he transitioned to chief software architect, a position he held until 2008. He stepped down as chairman of the board in 2014 and became technology adviser to CEO Satya Nadella and other Microsoft leaders, a position he still holds. He resigned from the board in 2020.
Over time, Gates has reduced his role at Microsoft to focus on his philanthropic work with the Gates Foundation, the world's largest private charitable organization. Focusing on areas including health, education, and poverty alleviation, Gates became known for his efforts to eradicate transmissible diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, and polio. Gates and his then-wife Melinda French Gates co-chaired the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation until 2024, when the latter resigned following the couple's divorce; the foundation was subsequently renamed, with Gates as its sole chair.
Gates is founder and chairman of several other companies, including BEN, Cascade Investment, TerraPower, Gates Ventures, and Breakthrough Energy. In 2010, he and Warren Buffett founded the Giving Pledge, whereby they and other billionaires pledge to give at least half their wealth to philanthropy. Named as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century by Time magazine in 1999, he has received numerous other honors and accolades, including a Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded jointly to him and French Gates in 2016 for their philanthropic work. The subject of several documentary films, he published the first of three planned memoirs, Source Code: My Beginnings, in 2025.
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Boron | Q618 | Boron is a chemical element; it has symbol B and atomic number 5. In its crystalline form it is a brittle, dark, lustrous metalloid; in its amorphous form it is a brown powder. As the lightest element of the boron group it has three valence electrons for forming covalent bonds, resulting in many compounds such as boric acid, the mineral sodium borate, and the ultra-hard crystals of boron carbide and boron nitride.
Boron is synthesized entirely by cosmic ray spallation and supernovas and not by stellar nucleosynthesis, so it is a low-abundance element in the Solar System and in the Earth's crust. It constitutes about 0.001 percent by weight of Earth's crust. It is concentrated on Earth by the water-solubility of its more common naturally occurring compounds, the borate minerals. These are mined industrially as evaporites, such as borax and kernite. The largest known deposits are in Turkey, the largest producer of boron minerals.
Elemental boron is found in small amounts in meteoroids, but chemically uncombined boron is not otherwise found naturally on Earth.
Several allotropes exist: amorphous boron is a brown powder; crystalline boron is silvery to black, extremely hard (9.3 on the Mohs scale), and a poor electrical conductor at room temperature (1.5 × 10−6 Ω−1 cm−1 room temperature electrical conductivity). The primary use of the element itself is as boron filaments with applications similar to carbon fibers in some high-strength materials.
Boron is primarily used in chemical compounds. About half of all production consumed globally is an additive in fiberglass for insulation and structural materials. The next leading use is in polymers and ceramics in high-strength, lightweight structural and heat-resistant materials. Borosilicate glass is desired for its greater strength and thermal shock resistance than ordinary soda lime glass. As sodium perborate, it is used as a bleach. A small amount is used as a dopant in semiconductors, and reagent intermediates in the synthesis of organic fine chemicals. A few boron-containing organic pharmaceuticals are used or are in study. Natural boron is composed of two stable isotopes, one of which (boron-10) has a number of uses as a neutron-capturing agent.
Borates have low toxicity in mammals (similar to table salt) but are more toxic to arthropods and are occasionally used as insecticides. Boron-containing organic antibiotics are known. Although only traces are required, it is an essential plant nutrient. |
Bundestag | Q154797 | The Bundestag (German: [ˈbʊndəstaːk] , "Federal Diet") is the German federal parliament. It is the only constitutional body of the federation directly elected by the German people. The Bundestag was established by Title III of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (Grundgesetz) in 1949 as one of the legislative bodies of Germany, the other being the Bundesrat. It is thus the historical successor to the earlier Reichstag.
The members of the Bundestag are representatives of the German people as a whole, are not bound by any orders or instructions and are only accountable to their conscience. As of the current 21st legislative period, the Bundestag has a fixed number of 630 members.
The Bundestag is elected every four years by German citizens aged 18 and older. Elections use a mixed-member proportional representation system which combines First-past-the-post voting for constituency-seats with proportional representation to ensure its composition mirrors the national popular vote. The German Bundestag cannot dissolve itself; only the president of Germany can do so under certain conditions.
Together with the Bundesrat, the Bundestag forms the legislative branch of government on federal level. The Bundestag is considerably more powerful than the Bundesrat, which represents the state governments. All bills must first be passed in the Bundestag before they are discussed in the Bundesrat. The Bundesrat can only accept laws passed by the Bundestag without amendment. Only in some areas, where laws directly affect the states, can the Bundesrat reject laws; otherwise, it can only lodge an objection to them, which the Bundestag can overrule. Above all, however, the chancellor and the federal government are solely responsible to the Bundestag. The Bundestag also has sole budgetary authority.
The Bundestag's presiding officer is the president of the Bundestag; he or she is deputized by the Vice Presidents of the Bundestag. Since 2025, Julia Klöckner of the CDU/CSU is the president of the Bundestag. In the protocol order of the federation, the President of the Bundestag ranks second after the President and before the Chancellor.
Since 1999, the Bundestag has met in the Reichstag building in Berlin. The Bundestag also operates in multiple new government buildings in Berlin around the neo-renaissance house and has its own police force (the Bundestagspolizei), directly subordinated to the Bundestag Presidency. |
BMW | Q26678 | Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, trading as BMW Group (commonly abbreviated to BMW (German pronunciation: [ˌbeːʔɛmˈveː] ), sometimes anglicised as Bavarian Motor Works), is a German multinational manufacturer of vehicles and motorcycles headquartered in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. The company was founded in 1916 as a manufacturer of aircraft engines, which it produced from 1917 to 1918 and again from 1933 to 1945, creating engines for aircraft that were used in the Second World War.
The company's automobiles are marketed under the BMW, Mini and Rolls-Royce brands, and motorcycles are marketed under the BMW Motorrad brand. In 2023, BMW was the world's ninth-largest producer of motor vehicles, and the 6th largest by revenue, with 2,555,341 vehicles produced in that year alone. In 2023, the company was ranked 46th in the Forbes Global 2000. The company has significant motor-sport history, especially in touring cars, sports cars, and the Isle of Man TT.
BMW is headquartered in Munich and produces motor vehicles in Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, India, China, and previously also in the Netherlands (ceased in 2023). The Quandt family is a long-term shareholder of the company, following investments by the brothers Herbert and Harald Quandt in 1959 that saved BMW from bankruptcy, with remaining shares owned by the public.
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Book | Q571 | A book is a structured presentation of recorded information, primarily verbal and graphical, through a medium. Originally physical, electronic books and audiobooks are now existent. Physical books are objects that contain printed material, mostly of writing and images. Modern books are typically composed of many pages bound together and protected by a cover, what is known as the codex format; older formats include the scroll and the tablet.
As a conceptual object, a book often refers to a written work of substantial length by one or more authors, which may also be distributed digitally as an electronic book (ebook). These kinds of works can be broadly classified into fiction (containing invented content, often narratives) and non-fiction (containing content intended as factual truth). But a physical book may not contain a written work: for example, it may contain only drawings, engravings, photographs, sheet music, puzzles, or removable content like paper dolls.
The modern book industry has seen several major changes due to new technologies, including ebooks and audiobooks (recordings of books being read aloud). Awareness of the needs of print-disabled people has led to a rise in formats designed for greater accessibility such as braille printing and large-print editions.
Google Books estimated in 2010 that approximately 130 million total unique books had been published. The book publishing process is the series of steps involved in book creation and dissemination. Books are sold at both regular stores and specialized bookstores, as well as online (for delivery), and can be borrowed from libraries or public bookcases. The reception of books has led to a number of social consequences, including censorship.
Books are sometimes contrasted with periodical literature, such as newspapers or magazines, where new editions are published according to a regular schedule. Related items, also broadly categorized as "books", are left empty for personal use: as in the case of account books, appointment books, autograph books, notebooks, diaries and sketchbooks. |
At bat | Q1208705 | In baseball, an at bat (AB) or time at bat is a batter's turn batting against a pitcher. An at bat is different from a plate appearance. A batter is credited with a plate appearance regardless of what happens upon completion of his turn at bat, but a batter is charged with an at bat only if that plate appearance does not have one of the results enumerated below. While at bats are used to calculate certain statistics, including batting average and slugging percentage, players can qualify for the season-ending rankings in these categories only if they accumulate 502 plate appearances during the season.
Batters will not be charged an at bat if their plate appearances end under the following circumstances:
Receiving a base on balls (BB).
Being hit by a pitch (HBP).
Hitting a sacrifice fly or a sacrifice bunt (also known as sacrifice hit).
Being awarded first base due to catcher's interference or fielder's obstruction.
Being replaced by another hitter before their at bat is completed, in which case the plate appearance and any related statistics go to the pinch hitter (unless they are replaced with two strikes and their replacement completes a strikeout, in which case the at bat and strikeout are charged to the first batter).
In addition, if the inning ends during at bat (due to the third out being made by a runner caught stealing, for example), no at bat or plate appearance will result because neither were completed.
An at bat is a specific type of plate appearance in which the batter stands at the plate intending to put the ball in play and get on base. This is why at bats, and not plate appearances, are used to calculate batting average, as plate appearances in general can result in many outcomes that do not necessarily involve putting the ball in play, and batting average specifically measures a batter's contact hitting.
Rule 9.02(a)(1) of the official rules of Major League Baseball defines an at bat as: "Number of times batted, except that no time at bat shall be charged when a player: (A) hits a sacrifice bunt or sacrifice fly; (B) is awarded first base on four called balls; (C) is hit by a pitched ball; or (D) is awarded first base because of interference or obstruction[.]"
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Base on balls | Q587180 | A base on balls (BB), better known as a walk,
occurs in baseball when a batter receives four pitches during a plate appearance that the umpire calls balls, and is in turn awarded first base without the possibility of being called out. The base on balls is defined in Section 2.00 of baseball's Official Rules, and further detail is given in 6.08(a). Despite being known as a "walk", it is considered a faux pas for a professional player to actually walk to first base; the batter-runner and any advancing runners normally jog on such a play.
The term "base on balls" distinguishes a walk from the other manners in which a batter can be awarded first base without liability to be put out (e.g., hit by pitch (HBP), catcher's interference). Though a base on balls, catcher's interference, or a batter hit by a pitched ball all result in the batter (and possibly runners on base) being awarded a base, the term "walk" usually refers only to a base on balls, and not the other methods of reaching base without the bat touching the ball. An important difference is that for a hit batter or catcher's interference, the ball is dead and no one may advance unless forced; the ball is live after a walk (see below for details).
A batter who draws a base on balls is commonly said to have been "walked" by the pitcher. When the batter is walked, runners advance one base without liability to be put out only if forced to vacate their base to allow the batter to take first base. If a batter draws a walk with the bases loaded, all preceding runners are forced to advance, including the runner on third base who is forced to home plate to score a run; when a run is forced on a walk, the batter is credited with a run batted in per rule 9.04.
Receiving a base on balls does not count as a hit or an at bat for a batter but does count as a time on base and a plate appearance. Therefore, a base on balls does not affect a player's batting average, but it can increase his on-base percentage.
A hit by pitch is not counted statistically as a walk, though the effect is mostly the same, with the batter receiving a free pass to first base. One exception is that on hit-by-pitch, the ball is dead, and any runners attempting to steal on the play must return to their original base unless forced to the next base anyway. When a walk occurs, the ball is still live: any runner not forced to advance may nevertheless attempt to advance at his own risk, which might occur on a steal play, passed ball, or wild pitch. Also, because a ball is live when a base on balls occurs, runners on base forced to advance one base may attempt to advance beyond one base, at their own risk. The batter-runner himself may attempt to advance beyond first base, at his own risk. Rule 6.08 addresses this matter as well. An attempt to advance an additional base beyond the base awarded might occur when ball four is a passed ball or a wild pitch. |
Hit (baseball) | Q713493 | In baseball statistics, a hit (denoted by H), also called a base hit, is credited to a batter when the batter safely reaches or passes first base after hitting the ball into fair territory with neither the benefit of an error nor a fielder's choice. |
Stolen base | Q1195130 | In baseball, a stolen base occurs when a runner advances to a base unaided by other actions and the official scorer rules that the advance should be credited to the action of the runner. The umpires determine whether the runner is safe or out at the next base, but the official scorer rules on the question of credit or blame for the advance under Rule 10 (Rules of Scoring) of the MLB's Official Rules.
A stolen base most often occurs when a base runner advances to the next base while the pitcher is pitching the ball to home plate.
Successful base stealers must be fast and have good timing. |
Games played | Q5520121 | Games played (GP) is a statistic used in team sports to indicate the total number of games in which a player has participated (in any capacity); the statistic is generally applied irrespective of whatever portion of the game is contested. |
Bauhaus | Q124354 | The Staatliches Bauhaus (German: [ˈʃtaːtlɪçəs ˈbaʊˌhaʊs] ), commonly known as the Bauhaus (German for 'building house'), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts. The school became famous for its approach to design, which attempted to unify individual artistic vision with the principles of mass production and emphasis on function.
The Bauhaus was founded by architect Walter Gropius in Weimar. It was grounded in the idea of creating a Gesamtkunstwerk ("comprehensive artwork") in which all the arts would eventually be brought together. The Bauhaus style later became one of the most influential currents in modern design, modernist architecture, and architectural education. The Bauhaus movement had a profound influence on subsequent developments in art, architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design, and typography. Staff at the Bauhaus included prominent artists such as Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Gunta Stölzl, and László Moholy-Nagy at various points.
The school existed in three German cities—Weimar, from 1919 to 1925; Dessau, from 1925 to 1932; and Berlin, from 1932 to 1933—under three different architect-directors: Walter Gropius from 1919 to 1928; Hannes Meyer from 1928 to 1930; and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe from 1930 until 1933, when the school was closed by its own leadership under pressure from the Nazi regime, having been painted as a centre of communist intellectualism. Internationally, former key figures of Bauhaus were successful in the United States and became known as the avant-garde for the International Style. The White city of Tel Aviv to which numerous Jewish Bauhaus architects emigrated, has the highest concentration of the Bauhaus' international architecture in the world.
The changes of venue and leadership resulted in a constant shifting of focus, technique, instructors, and politics. For example, the pottery shop was discontinued when the school moved from Weimar to Dessau, even though it had been an important revenue source; when Mies van der Rohe took over the school in 1930, he transformed it into a private school and would not allow any supporters of Hannes Meyer to attend it. |
Bruce Sterling | Q312995 | Michael Bruce Sterling (born April 14, 1954) is an American science fiction author known for his novels and short fiction and editorship of the Mirrorshades anthology. In particular, he is linked to the cyberpunk subgenre.
Sterling's first science-fiction story, "Man-Made Self", was sold in 1976. He is the author of science-fiction novels, including Schismatrix (1985), Islands in the Net (1988), and Heavy Weather (1994). In 1992, he published his first non-fiction book, The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier.
He has been interviewed for documentaries such as Freedom Downtime, TechnoCalyps and Traceroute. |
Brigitte Bardot | Q36268 | Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot ( BRIH-jit bar-DOH; French: [bʁiʒit baʁdo] ; born 28 September 1934), often referred to by her initials B.B., is a French former actress, singer, and model as well as an animal rights activist. Famous for portraying characters with hedonistic lifestyles, she is one of the best known symbols of the sexual revolution. Although she withdrew from the entertainment industry in 1973, she remains a major pop culture icon. She has acted in 47 films, performed in several musicals, and recorded more than 60 songs. She was awarded the Legion of Honour in 1985.
Born and raised in Paris, Bardot was an aspiring ballerina during her childhood. She started her acting career in 1952 and achieved international recognition in 1957 for her role in And God Created Woman (1956), catching the attention of many French intellectuals and earning her the nickname "sex kitten". She was the subject of philosopher Simone de Beauvoir's 1959 essay The Lolita Syndrome, which described her as a "locomotive of women's history" and built upon existentialist themes to declare her the most liberated woman of France. She won a 1961 David di Donatello Best Foreign Actress Award for her work in The Truth (1960). Bardot later starred in Jean-Luc Godard's film Le Mépris (1963). For her role in Louis Malle's film Viva Maria! (1965), she was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress. French President Charles de Gaulle called Bardot "the French export as important as Renault cars".
After retiring from acting in 1973, Bardot became an animal rights activist and created the Brigitte Bardot Foundation. She is known for her strong personality, outspokenness, and speeches on animal defense; she has been fined twice for public insults. She has also been a controversial political figure, as of November 2021 having been fined six times for inciting racial hatred when she criticised immigration and Islam in France and called residents of Réunion "savages". She is married to Bernard d'Ormale, a former adviser to Jean-Marie Le Pen, a far-right French politician. Bardot is a member of the Global 500 Roll of Honour of the United Nations Environment Programme and has received several awards and accolades from UNESCO and PETA. In 2011, Los Angeles Times Magazine ranked her second on the "50 Most Beautiful Women In Film". |
Banjo | Q258896 | The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and in modern forms is usually made of plastic, where early membranes were made of animal skin.
Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by African Americans and had African antecedents. In the 19th century, interest in the instrument was spread across the United States and United Kingdom by traveling shows of the 19th-century minstrel show fad, followed by mass production and mail-order sales, including instructional books. The inexpensive or home-made banjo remained part of rural folk culture, but 5-string and 4-string banjos also became popular for home parlor music entertainment, college music clubs, and early 20th century jazz bands. By the early 20th century, the banjo was most frequently associated with folk, bluegrass and country music, but was also used in some rock, pop and even hip-hop music. Among rock bands, the Eagles, Led Zeppelin, and the Grateful Dead have used the five-string banjo in some of their songs. Some famous pickers of the banjo are Ralph Stanley and Earl Scruggs.
Historically, the banjo occupied a central place in Black American traditional music and rural folk culture before entering the mainstream via the minstrel shows of the 19th century. Along with the fiddle, the banjo is a mainstay of American styles of music, such as bluegrass and old-time music. It is also very frequently used in Dixieland jazz, as well as in Caribbean genres like biguine, calypso, mento and troubadour. |
Benjamin Disraeli | Q82006 | Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881) was a British statesman, Conservative politician and writer who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He played a central role in the creation of the modern Conservative Party, defining its policies and its broad outreach. Disraeli is remembered for his influential voice in world affairs, his political battles with the Liberal Party leader William Ewart Gladstone, and his one-nation conservatism or "Tory democracy". He made the Conservatives the party most identified with the British Empire and military action to expand it, both of which were popular among British voters. He is the only British prime minister to have been born Jewish.
Disraeli was born in Bloomsbury, at that time a part of Middlesex. His father left Judaism after a dispute at his synagogue; Benjamin became an Anglican at the age of 12. After several unsuccessful attempts, Disraeli entered the House of Commons in 1837. In 1846, Prime Minister Robert Peel split the party over his proposal to repeal the Corn Laws, which involved ending the tariff on imported grain. Disraeli clashed with Peel in the House of Commons, becoming a major figure in the party. When Lord Derby, the party leader, thrice formed governments in the 1850s and 1860s, Disraeli served as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons.
Upon Derby's retirement in 1868, Disraeli became prime minister briefly before losing that year's general election. He returned to the Opposition before leading the party to a majority in the 1874 general election. He maintained a close friendship with Queen Victoria who, in 1876, elevated him to the peerage as Earl of Beaconsfield. Disraeli's second term was dominated by the Eastern question—the slow decay of the Ottoman Empire and the desire of other European powers, such as Russia, to gain at its expense. Disraeli arranged for the British to purchase a major interest in the Suez Canal Company in Egypt. In 1878, faced with Russian victories against the Ottomans, he worked at the Congress of Berlin to obtain peace in the Balkans at terms favourable to Britain and unfavourable to Russia, its longstanding enemy. This diplomatic victory established Disraeli as one of Europe's leading statesmen.
World events thereafter moved against the Conservatives. Controversial wars in Afghanistan and South Africa undermined his public support. He angered farmers by refusing to reinstitute the Corn Laws in response to poor harvests and cheap imported grain. With Gladstone conducting a massive speaking campaign, the Liberals defeated Disraeli's Conservatives at the 1880 general election. In his final months, Disraeli led the Conservatives in Opposition. Disraeli wrote novels throughout his career, beginning in 1826, and published his last completed novel, Endymion, shortly before he died at the age of 76. |
British & Irish Lions | Q733600 | The British & Irish Lions is a rugby union team selected from players eligible for the national teams of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. The Lions are a test side and most often select players who have already played for their national team, although they can pick uncapped players who are eligible for any of the four unions. The team tours every four years, with these rotating between Australia, New Zealand and South Africa in order. The most recent test series, the 2021 series against South Africa, was won 2–1 by South Africa.
From 1888 onwards, combined British rugby sides toured the Southern Hemisphere. The first tour was a commercial venture, undertaken without official backing. The six subsequent visits enjoyed a growing degree of support from the authorities, before the 1910 South Africa tour, which was the first tour representative of the four Home Unions. In 1949 the four Home Unions formally created a Tours Committee and for the first time, every player of the 1950 Lions squad had played internationally before the tour. The 1950s tours saw high win rates in provincial games, but the Test series were typically lost or drawn. The series wins in 1971 (New Zealand) and 1974 (South Africa) interrupted this pattern. The last tour of the amateur age took place in 1993. The Lions have also played occasional matches in the Northern Hemisphere either as one-off exhibitions or before a Southern Hemisphere tour. |
Bass guitar | Q46185 | The bass guitar, electric bass guitar () is the lowest-pitched member of the guitar family. It is similar in appearance and construction to an electric but with a longer neck and scale length. The electric bass guitar most commonly has four strings, though five- and six-stringed models are also built. Since the mid-1950s, the bass guitar has replaced the double bass in popular music due to its lighter weight, smaller size, most models' inclusion of frets for easier intonation, and electromagnetic pickups for amplification.
The bass guitar is usually tuned the same as the double bass, corresponding to pitches one octave lower than the four lowest-pitched strings of a guitar (typically E, A, D, and G). It is played with the fingers and thumb or with a pick.
Because the electric bass guitar is acoustically a quiet instrument, it requires external amplification, generally via electromagnetic or piezo-electric pickups. It can also be used with direct input boxes, audio interfaces, mixing consoles, computers, or bass-effects processors which offer headphone jacks.
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Basketball | Q5372 | Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately 9.4 inches (24 cm) in diameter) through the defender's hoop (a basket 18 inches (46 cm) in diameter mounted 10 feet (3.05 m) high to a backboard at each end of the court), while preventing the opposing team from shooting through their own hoop. A field goal is worth two points, unless made from behind the three-point line, when it is worth three. After a foul, timed play stops and the player fouled or designated to shoot a technical foul is given one, two or three one-point free throws. The team with the most points at the end of the game wins, but if regulation play expires with the score tied, an additional period of play (overtime) is mandated.
Players advance the ball by bouncing it while walking or running (dribbling) or by passing it to a teammate, both of which require considerable skill. On offense, players may use a variety of shots – the layup, the jump shot, or a dunk; on defense, they may steal the ball from a dribbler, intercept passes, or block shots; either offense or defense may collect a rebound, that is, a missed shot that bounces from rim or backboard. It is a violation to lift or drag one's pivot foot without dribbling the ball, to carry it, or to hold the ball with both hands then resume dribbling.
The five players on each side fall into five playing positions. The tallest player is usually the center, the second-tallest and strongest is the power forward, a slightly shorter but more agile player is the small forward, and the shortest players or the best ball handlers are the shooting guard and the point guard, who implement the coach's game plan by managing the execution of offensive and defensive plays (player positioning). Informally, players may play three-on-three, two-on-two, and one-on-one.
Invented in 1891 by Canadian-American gym teacher James Naismith in Springfield, Massachusetts, in the United States, basketball has evolved to become one of the world's most popular and widely viewed sports. The National Basketball Association (NBA) is the most significant professional basketball league in the world in terms of popularity, salaries, talent, and level of competition (drawing most of its talent from U.S. college basketball). Outside North America, the top clubs from national leagues qualify to continental championships such as the EuroLeague and the Basketball Champions League Americas. The FIBA Basketball World Cup and Men's Olympic Basketball Tournament are the major international events of the sport and attract top national teams from around the world. Each continent hosts regional competitions for national teams, like EuroBasket and FIBA AmeriCup.
The FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup and women's Olympic basketball tournament feature top national teams from continental championships. The main North American league is the WNBA (NCAA Women's Division I Basketball Championship is also popular), whereas the strongest European clubs participate in the EuroLeague Women. |
Biochemistry | Q7094 | Biochemistry, or biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology, and metabolism. Over the last decades of the 20th century, biochemistry has become successful at explaining living processes through these three disciplines. Almost all areas of the life sciences are being uncovered and developed through biochemical methodology and research. Biochemistry focuses on understanding the chemical basis that allows biological molecules to give rise to the processes that occur within living cells and between cells, in turn relating greatly to the understanding of tissues and organs as well as organism structure and function. Biochemistry is closely related to molecular biology, the study of the molecular mechanisms of biological phenomena.
Much of biochemistry deals with the structures, functions, and interactions of biological macromolecules such as proteins, nucleic acids, carbohydrates, and lipids. They provide the structure of cells and perform many of the functions associated with life. The chemistry of the cell also depends upon the reactions of small molecules and ions. These can be inorganic (for example, water and metal ions) or organic (for example, the amino acids, which are used to synthesize proteins). The mechanisms used by cells to harness energy from their environment via chemical reactions are known as metabolism. The findings of biochemistry are applied primarily in medicine, nutrition, and agriculture. In medicine, biochemists investigate the causes and cures of diseases. Nutrition studies how to maintain health and wellness and also the effects of nutritional deficiencies. In agriculture, biochemists investigate soil and fertilizers with the goal of improving crop cultivation, crop storage, and pest control. In recent decades, biochemical principles and methods have been combined with problem-solving approaches from engineering to manipulate living systems in order to produce useful tools for research, industrial processes, and diagnosis and control of disease—the discipline of biotechnology.
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Badminton | Q7291 | Badminton is a racquet sport played using racquets to hit a shuttlecock across a net. Although it may be played with larger teams, the most common forms of the game are "singles" (with one player per side) and "doubles" (with two players per side). Badminton is often played as a casual outdoor activity in a yard or on a beach; professional games are played on a rectangular indoor court. Points are scored by striking the shuttlecock with the racquet and landing it within the other team's half of the court, within the set boundaries.
Each side may only strike the shuttlecock once before it passes over the net. Play ends once the shuttlecock has struck the floor or ground, or if a fault has been called by the umpire, service judge, or (in their absence) the opposing side.
The shuttlecock is a feathered or (in informal matches) plastic projectile that flies differently from the balls used in many other sports. In particular, the feathers create much higher drag, causing the shuttlecock to decelerate more rapidly. Shuttlecocks also have a high top speed compared to the balls in other racquet sports, making badminton the fastest racquet sport in the world. The flight of the shuttlecock gives the sport its distinctive nature, and in certain languages the sport is named by reference to this feature (e.g., German Federball, literally feather-ball).
The game developed in British India from the earlier game of battledore and shuttlecock. European play came to be dominated by Denmark but the game has become very popular in Asia. In 1992, badminton debuted as a Summer Olympic sport with four events: men's singles, women's singles, men's doubles, and women's doubles; mixed doubles was added four years later. At high levels of play, the sport demands excellent fitness: players require aerobic stamina, agility, strength, speed, and precision. It is also a technical sport, requiring good motor coordination and the development of sophisticated racquet movements involving much greater flexibility in the wrist than some other racquet sports.
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British Airways | Q8766 | British Airways plc (BA) is the flag carrier of the United Kingdom. It is headquartered in London, England, near its main hub at Heathrow Airport.
The airline is the second largest UK-based carrier, based on fleet size and passengers carried, behind easyJet. In January 2011, BA merged with Iberia, creating the International Airlines Group (IAG), a holding company registered in Madrid, Spain. IAG is the world's third-largest airline group in terms of annual revenue and the second-largest in Europe. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and in the FTSE 100 Index. British Airways is the first passenger airline to have generated more than US$1 billion on a single air route in a year (from 1 April 2017, to 31 March 2018, on the New York-JFK – London-Heathrow route).
BA was created in 1974 after a British Airways Board was established by the British government to manage the two nationalised airline corporations, British Overseas Airways Corporation and British European Airways, and two regional airlines, Cambrian Airways and Northeast Airlines. On 31 March 1974, all four companies were merged to form British Airways. However, it marked 2019 as its centenary based on predecessor companies. After almost 13 years as a state company, BA was privatised in February 1987 as part of a wider privatisation plan by the Conservative government. The carrier expanded with the acquisition of British Caledonian in 1987, Dan-Air in 1992, and British Midland International in 2012.
It is a founding member of the Oneworld airline alliance, along with American Airlines, the now-defunct Canadian Airlines, Cathay Pacific, and Qantas. The alliance has since grown to become the third-largest, after SkyTeam and Star Alliance.
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Bicycle | Q11442 | A bicycle, also called a pedal cycle, bike, push-bike or cycle, is a human-powered or motor-assisted, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, with two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A bicycle rider is called a cyclist, or bicyclist.
Bicycles were introduced in the 19th century in Europe. By the early 21st century there were more than 1 billion bicycles. There are many more bicycles than cars. Bicycles are the principal means of transport in many regions. They also provide a popular form of recreation, and have been adapted for use as children's toys. Bicycles are used for fitness, military and police applications, courier services, bicycle racing, and artistic cycling.
The basic shape and configuration of a typical upright or "safety" bicycle, has changed little since the first chain-driven model was developed around 1885. However, many details have been improved, especially since the advent of modern materials and computer-aided design. These have allowed for a proliferation of specialized designs for many types of cycling. In the 21st century, electric bicycles have become popular.
The bicycle's invention has had an enormous effect on society, both in terms of culture and of advancing modern industrial methods. Several components that played a key role in the development of the automobile were initially invented for use in the bicycle, including ball bearings, pneumatic tires, chain-driven sprockets, and tension-spoked wheels.
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Baptists | Q93191 | Baptists are a stream within Protestant Christianity distinguished by baptizing only professing Christian believers (believer's baptism) and doing so by complete immersion. Baptist churches generally subscribe to the doctrines of soul competency (the responsibility and accountability of every person before God), sola fide (salvation by faith alone), sola scriptura (the Bible is the sole infallible authority, as the rule of faith and practice) and congregationalist church government. Baptists recognize generally two sacraments: baptism and communion.
Diverse from their beginning, those identifying as Baptists today may differ widely from one another in what they believe, how they worship, their attitudes toward other Christians, and their understanding of what is important in Christian discipleship. Baptist missionaries have spread various Baptist churches to every continent. The largest Baptist communion of churches is the Baptist World Alliance, and there are many different groupings of Baptist churches and Baptist congregations.
Historians trace the Baptists to the Puritan Nonconformism, more specifically, to the congregation led by John Smyth exiled to Amsterdam in 1609. In accordance with their reading of the New Testament, they rejected paedobaptism and instituted baptism only of professing believers. The Baptists spread across England, where the General Baptists considered Christ's atonement to extend to all people, while the Particular Baptists believed that it extended only to the elect. Thomas Helwys formulated a distinctively Baptist request that the church and the state be kept separate in matters of law, so that individuals might have freedom of religion. Helwys died in prison as a consequence of the religious conflict with English Dissenters under James I. |
Blackjack | Q228044 | Blackjack (formerly black jack or vingt-un) is a casino banking game.: 342 It is the most widely played casino banking game in the world. It uses decks of 52 cards and descends from a global family of casino banking games known as "twenty-one". This family of card games also includes the European games vingt-et-un and pontoon, and the Russian game Ochko. The game is a comparing card game where players compete against the dealer, rather than each other. |
Buffalo, New York | Q40435 | Buffalo is the second largest city in the U.S. state of New York and county seat of Erie County. It lies in Western New York at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River on the Canadian border. With a population of 278,349 according to the 2020 census, Buffalo is the second-most populous city in New York State after New York City, and the 81st-most populous city in the U.S. Buffalo is the primary city of the Buffalo–Niagara Falls metropolitan area, which had an estimated population of 1.1 million in 2020, making it the 49th-largest metro area in the U.S.
Before the 17th century, the region was inhabited by nomadic Paleo-Indians who were succeeded by the Neutral, Erie, and Iroquois nations. In the early 17th century, the French began to explore the region. In the 18th century, Iroquois land surrounding Buffalo Creek was ceded through the Holland Land Purchase, and a small village was established at its headwaters. In 1825, after its harbor was improved, Buffalo was selected as the terminus of the Erie Canal, which led to its incorporation in 1832. The canal stimulated its growth as the primary inland port between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean. Transshipment made Buffalo the world's largest grain port of that era. After the coming of railroads greatly reduced the canal's importance, the city became the second-largest railway hub (after Chicago). During the mid-19th century, Buffalo transitioned to manufacturing, which came to be dominated by steel production. Later, deindustrialization and the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway saw the city's economy decline and diversify. It developed its service industries, such as health care, retail, tourism, logistics, and education, while retaining some manufacturing. In 2019, the gross domestic product of the Buffalo–Niagara Falls MSA was $53 billion (~$62.3 billion in 2023).
The city's cultural landmarks include the oldest urban parks system in the United States, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, the Buffalo History Museum, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Shea's Performing Arts Center, the Buffalo Museum of Science, and several annual festivals. Its educational institutions include the University at Buffalo, Buffalo State University, Canisius University, and D'Youville University. Buffalo is also known for its winter weather, Buffalo wings, and two major-league sports teams: the National Football League's Buffalo Bills and the National Hockey League's Buffalo Sabres. |
Benjamin Franklin | Q34969 | Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1705] – April 17, 1790) was an American polymath: a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and political philosopher. Among the most influential intellectuals of his time, Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States; a drafter and signer of the Declaration of Independence; and the first postmaster general.
Born in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, Franklin became a successful newspaper editor and printer in Philadelphia, the leading city in the colonies, publishing The Pennsylvania Gazette at age 23. He became wealthy publishing this and Poor Richard's Almanack, which he wrote under the pseudonym "Richard Saunders". After 1767, he was associated with the Pennsylvania Chronicle, a newspaper known for its revolutionary sentiments and criticisms of the policies of the British Parliament and the Crown. He pioneered and was the first president of the Academy and College of Philadelphia, which opened in 1751 and later became the University of Pennsylvania. He organized and was the first secretary of the American Philosophical Society and was elected its president in 1769. He was appointed deputy postmaster-general for the British colonies in 1753, which enabled him to set up the first national communications network.
Franklin was active in community affairs and colonial and state politics, as well as national and international affairs. He became a hero in America when, as an agent in London for several colonies, he spearheaded the repeal of the unpopular Stamp Act by the British Parliament. An accomplished diplomat, he was widely admired as the first U.S. ambassador to France and was a major figure in the development of positive Franco–American relations. His efforts proved vital in securing French aid for the American Revolution. From 1785 to 1788, he served as President of Pennsylvania. At some points in his life, he owned slaves and ran "for sale" ads for slaves in his newspaper, but by the late 1750s, he began arguing against slavery, became an active abolitionist, and promoted the education and integration of African Americans into U.S. society.
As a scientist, Franklin's studies of electricity made him a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics. He also charted and named the Gulf Stream current. His numerous important inventions include the lightning rod, bifocals, glass harmonica and the Franklin stove. He founded many civic organizations, including the Library Company, Philadelphia's first fire department, and the University of Pennsylvania.
Franklin earned the title of "The First American" for his early and indefatigable campaigning for colonial unity. He was the only person to sign the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris peace with Britain, and the Constitution. Foundational in defining the American ethos, Franklin has been called "the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become".
Franklin's life and legacy of scientific and political achievement, and his status as one of America's most influential Founding Fathers, have seen him honored for more than two centuries after his death on the $100 bill and in the names of warships, many towns and counties, educational institutions and corporations, as well as in numerous cultural references and a portrait in the Oval Office. His more than 30,000 letters and documents have been collected in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin. Anne Robert Jacques Turgot said of him: "Eripuit fulmen cœlo, mox sceptra tyrannis" ("He snatched lightning from the sky and the scepter from tyrants"). |
Blood | Q7873 | Blood is a body fluid in the circulatory system of humans and other vertebrates that delivers necessary substances such as nutrients and oxygen to the cells, and transports metabolic waste products away from those same cells.
Blood is composed of blood cells suspended in blood plasma. Plasma, which constitutes 55% of blood fluid, is mostly water (92% by volume), and contains proteins, glucose, mineral ions, and hormones. The blood cells are mainly red blood cells (erythrocytes), white blood cells (leukocytes), and (in mammals) platelets (thrombocytes). The most abundant cells are red blood cells. These contain hemoglobin, which facilitates oxygen transport by reversibly binding to it, increasing its solubility. Jawed vertebrates have an adaptive immune system, based largely on white blood cells. White blood cells help to resist infections and parasites. Platelets are important in the clotting of blood.
Blood is circulated around the body through blood vessels by the pumping action of the heart. In animals with lungs, arterial blood carries oxygen from inhaled air to the tissues of the body, and venous blood carries carbon dioxide, a waste product of metabolism produced by cells, from the tissues to the lungs to be exhaled. Blood is bright red when its hemoglobin is oxygenated and dark red when it is deoxygenated.
Medical terms related to blood often begin with hemo-, hemato-, haemo- or haemato- from the Greek word αἷμα (haima) for "blood". In terms of anatomy and histology, blood is considered a specialized form of connective tissue, given its origin in the bones and the presence of potential molecular fibers in the form of fibrinogen. |
Bing Crosby | Q72984 | Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby Jr. (May 3, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an American singer, comedian, entertainer and actor. The first multimedia star, he was one of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century worldwide. Crosby was a leader in record sales, network radio ratings, and motion picture grosses from 1926 to 1977. He was one of the first global cultural icons. Crosby made over 70 feature films and recorded more than 1,600 songs.
Crosby's early career coincided with recording innovations that allowed him to develop an intimate singing style that influenced many male singers who followed, such as Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Dean Martin, Dick Haymes, Elvis Presley, and John Lennon. Yank magazine said that Crosby was "the person who had done the most for the morale of overseas servicemen" during World War II. In 1948, American polls declared him the "most admired man alive", ahead of Jackie Robinson and Pope Pius XII.: 6 In 1948, Music Digest estimated that Crosby's recordings filled more than half of the 80,000 weekly hours allocated to recorded radio music in America.
Crosby won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Going My Way (1944) and was nominated for its sequel, The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), opposite Ingrid Bergman, becoming the first of six actors to be nominated twice for playing the same character. Crosby was the number one box office attraction for five consecutive years from 1944 to 1948. At his screen apex in 1946, Crosby starred in three of the year's five highest-grossing films: The Bells of St. Mary's, Blue Skies, and Road to Utopia. In 1963, he received the first Grammy Global Achievement Award. Crosby is one of 33 people to have three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in the categories of motion pictures, radio, and audio recording. He was also known for his collaborations with his friend Bob Hope, starring in the Road to ... films from 1940 to 1962.
Crosby influenced the development of the post–World War II recording industry. After seeing a demonstration of a German broadcast quality reel-to-reel tape recorder brought to the United States by John T. Mullin, Crosby invested $50,000 in the California electronics company Ampex to build copies. He then persuaded ABC to allow him to tape his shows and became the first performer to prerecord his radio shows and master his commercial recordings onto magnetic tape. Crosby has been associated with the Christmas season since he starred in Irving Berlin's musical film Holiday Inn and also sang "White Christmas" in the film of the same name. Through audio recordings, Crosby produced his radio programs with the same directorial tools and craftsmanship (editing, retaking, rehearsal, time shifting) used in motion picture production, a practice that became the industry standard. In addition to his work with early audio tape recording, Crosby helped finance the development of videotape, bought television stations, bred racehorses, and co-owned the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team, during which time the team won two World Series (1960 and 1971). |
Battleship | Q182531 | A battleship is a large, heavily armored warship with a main battery consisting of large guns, designed to serve as capital ships. From their advent in the late 1880s, battleships were among the largest and most formidable weapon systems ever built, until they were surpassed by aircraft carriers beginning in the 1940s. The modern battleship traces its origin to the sailing ship of the line, which was developed into the steam ship of the line and soon thereafter the ironclad warship. After a period of extensive experimentation in the 1870s and 1880s, ironclad design was largely standardized by the British Royal Sovereign class, which are usually referred to as the first "pre-dreadnought battleships". These ships carried an armament that usually included four large guns and several medium-caliber guns that were to be used against enemy battleships, and numerous small guns for self defense.
Naval powers around the world built dozens of pre-dreadnoughts in the 1890s and early 1900s, though they saw relatively little combat; only two major wars were fought during the period that included pre-dreadnought battles: the Spanish-American War in 1898 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. The following year, the British launched the revolutionary all-big-gun battleship HMS Dreadnought. This ship discarded the medium-caliber guns in exchange for a uniform armament of ten large guns. All other major navies quickly began (or had already started) "dreadnoughts" of their own, leading to a major naval arms race. During World War I, only one major fleet engagement took place: the Battle of Jutland in 1916, but neither side was able to achieve a decisive result.
In the Interwar period, the major naval powers concluded a series of agreements beginning with the Washington Naval Treaty that imposed limits on battleship building to stop a renewed arms race. During this period, relatively few battleships were built, but advances in technology led to the maturation of the fast battleship concept, and several of these ships were built in the 1930s. The treaty system eventually broke down after Japan refused to sign the Second London Naval Treaty in 1936. Although the rise of the aircraft carrier during World War II largely relegated battleships to secondary duties, they still saw significant action during that conflict. Notable engagements include the battles of Cape Spartivento and Cape Matapan in 1940 and 1941, respectively; the sortie by the German battleship Bismarck in 1941; the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942; and the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944. After World War II, most battleships were placed in reserve, broken up, or used as target ships, and few saw significant active service during the Cold War. The four American Iowa-class battleships were reactivated during the Korean War in the early 1950s and again in the 1980s as part of the 600-ship Navy.
Even at the height of their dominance of naval combat, some strategists questioned the usefulness of battleships. Beginning in the mid-1880s, the Jeune École (Young School) argued that construction of expensive capital ships should stop in favor of cheap cruisers and torpedo boats. Despite a period of popularity for the Jeune École, the idea fell out of favor and the battleship remained the arbiter of naval combat until World War II. Even afterward, they remained potent symbols of a country's might and they retained significant psychological and diplomatic effects. A number of battleships—predominantly American—remain as museum ships. |
National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum | Q809892 | The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is a history museum and hall of fame in Cooperstown, New York, operated by a private foundation. It serves as the central collection and gathering space for the history of baseball in the United States displaying baseball-related artifacts and exhibits, honoring those who have excelled in playing, managing, and serving the sport. The Hall's motto is "Preserving History, Honoring Excellence, Connecting Generations". Cooperstown is often used as shorthand (or a metonym) for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. The museum also established and manages the process for honorees into the Hall of Fame.
The Hall of Fame was established in 1939 by Stephen Carlton Clark, an heir to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune. Clark sought to bring tourists to the village hurt by the Great Depression, which reduced the local tourist trade, and Prohibition, which devastated the local hops industry. Clark constructed the Hall of Fame's building, which was dedicated on June 12, 1939. (His granddaughter, Jane Forbes Clark, is the current chairman of the board of directors.) The mythology that future Civil War hero Abner Doubleday invented baseball in Cooperstown in the 1830s was instrumental in the placement and early marketing of the Hall.
An expanded library and research facility opened in 1994. Dale Petroskey became the organization's president in 1999. In 2002, the Hall launched Baseball as America, a traveling exhibit that toured ten American museums over six years. The Hall of Fame has since also sponsored educational programming on the Internet to bring the Hall of Fame to schoolchildren who might not visit. The Hall and Museum completed a series of renovations in spring 2005. The Hall of Fame also presents an annual exhibit at FanFest at the Major League Baseball All-Star Game. |
Bishop | Q29182 | A bishop is an ordained member of the clergy who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance and administration of dioceses. The role or office of the bishop is called episcopacy or the episcopate. Organisationally, several Christian denominations utilise ecclesiastical structures that call for the position of bishops, while other denominations have dispensed with this office, seeing it as a symbol of power. Bishops have also exercised political authority within their dioceses.
Traditionally, bishops claim apostolic succession, a direct historical lineage dating back to the original Twelve Apostles or Saint Paul. The bishops are by doctrine understood as those who possess the full priesthood given by Jesus Christ, and therefore may ordain other clergy, including other bishops. A person ordained as a deacon, priest (i.e. presbyter), and then bishop is understood to hold the fullness of the ministerial priesthood, given responsibility by Christ to govern, teach and sanctify the Body of Christ (the Church). Priests, deacons and lay ministers co-operate and assist their bishops in pastoral ministry.
Some Pentecostal and other Protestant denominations have bishops who oversee congregations, though they do not necessarily claim apostolic succession.
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Bone | Q265868 | A bone is a rigid organ that constitutes part of the skeleton in most vertebrate animals. Bones protect the various other organs of the body, produce red and white blood cells, store minerals, provide structure and support for the body, and enable mobility. Bones come in a variety of shapes and sizes and have complex internal and external structures. They are lightweight yet strong and hard and serve multiple functions.
Bone tissue (osseous tissue), which is also called bone in the uncountable sense of that word, is hard tissue, a type of specialised connective tissue. It has a honeycomb-like matrix internally, which helps to give the bone rigidity. Bone tissue is made up of different types of bone cells. Osteoblasts and osteocytes are involved in the formation and mineralisation of bone; osteoclasts are involved in the resorption of bone tissue. Modified (flattened) osteoblasts become the lining cells that form a protective layer on the bone surface. The mineralised matrix of bone tissue has an organic component of mainly collagen called ossein and an inorganic component of bone mineral made up of various salts. Bone tissue is mineralized tissue of two types, cortical bone and cancellous bone. Other types of tissue found in bones include bone marrow, endosteum, periosteum, nerves, blood vessels, and cartilage.
In the human body at birth, approximately 300 bones are present. Many of these fuse together during development, leaving a total of 206 separate bones in the adult, not counting numerous small sesamoid bones. The largest bone in the body is the femur or thigh-bone, and the smallest is the stapes in the middle ear.
The Ancient Greek word for bone is ὀστέον ("osteon"), hence the many terms that use it as a prefix—such as osteopathy. In anatomical terminology, including the Terminologia Anatomica international standard, the word for a bone is os (for example, os breve, os longum, os sesamoideum). |
Bus | Q5638 | A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a motor vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van, but fewer than the average rail transport. It is most commonly used in public transport, but is also in use for charter purposes, or through private ownership. Although the average bus carries between 30 and 100 passengers, some buses have a capacity of up to 300 passengers. The most common type is the single-deck rigid bus, with double-decker and articulated buses carrying larger loads, and midibuses and minibuses carrying smaller loads. Coaches are used for longer-distance services. Many types of buses, such as city transit buses and inter-city coaches, charge a fare. Other types, such as elementary or secondary school buses or shuttle buses within a post-secondary education campus, are free. In many jurisdictions, bus drivers require a special large vehicle licence above and beyond a regular driving license.
Buses may be used for scheduled bus transport, scheduled coach transport, school transport, private hire, or tourism; promotional buses may be used for political campaigns and others are privately operated for a wide range of purposes, including rock and pop band tour vehicles.
Horse-drawn buses were used from the 1820s, followed by steam buses in the 1830s, and electric trolleybuses in 1882. The first internal combustion engine buses, or motor buses, were used in 1895. Recently, interest has been growing in hybrid electric buses, fuel cell buses, and electric buses, as well as buses powered by compressed natural gas or biodiesel. As of the 2010s, bus manufacturing is increasingly globalised, with the same designs appearing around the world. |
Bali | Q3125978 | Bali (English:; Balinese: ᬩᬮᬶ) is a province of Indonesia and the westernmost of the Lesser Sunda Islands. East of Java and west of Lombok, the province includes the island of Bali and a few smaller offshore islands, notably Nusa Penida, Nusa Lembongan, and Nusa Ceningan to the southeast. The provincial capital, Denpasar, is the most populous city in the Lesser Sunda Islands and the second-largest, after Makassar, in Eastern Indonesia. Denpasar metropolitan area is the extended metropolitan area around Denpasar. The upland town of Ubud in Greater Denpasar is considered Bali's cultural centre. The province is Indonesia's main tourist destination, with a significant rise in tourism since the 1980s, and becoming an Indonesian area of overtourism. Tourism-related business makes up 80% of the Bali economy.
Bali is the only Hindu-majority province in Indonesia, with 86.9% of the population adhering to Balinese Hinduism. It is renowned for its highly developed arts, including traditional and modern dance, sculpture, painting, leather, metalworking, and music. The Indonesian International Film Festival is held every year in Bali. Other international events that have been held in Bali include Miss World 2013, the 2018 Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group and the 2022 G20 summit. In March 2017, TripAdvisor named Bali as the world's top destination in its Traveller's Choice award, which it also earned in January 2021.
Bali is part of the Coral Triangle, the area with the highest biodiversity of marine species, in Coral Triangle, especially fish and turtles. In this area alone, over 500 reef-building coral species can be found. For comparison, this is about seven times as many as in the entire Caribbean. Bali is the home of the Subak irrigation system, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is also home to a unified confederation of kingdoms composed of 10 traditional royal Balinese houses, each house ruling a specific geographic area. The confederation is the successor of the Bali Kingdom. The royal houses, which originated before Dutch colonisation, are not recognised by the government of Indonesia. |
Brown University | Q49114 | Brown University is a private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. One of nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution, it was the first US college to codify that admission and instruction of students was to be equal regardless of the religious affiliation of students.
The university is home to the oldest applied mathematics program in the country and oldest engineering program in the Ivy League. It was one of the early doctoral-granting institutions in the U.S., adding masters and doctoral studies in 1887. In 1969, it adopted its Open Curriculum after student lobbying, which eliminated mandatory general education distribution requirements. In 1971, Brown's coordinate women's institution, Pembroke College, was fully merged into the university.
The university comprises the College, the Graduate School, Alpert Medical School, the School of Engineering, the School of Public Health and the School of Professional Studies. Its international programs are organized through the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, and it is academically affiliated with the Marine Biological Laboratory and the Rhode Island School of Design, which offers undergraduate and graduate dual degree programs. Brown's main campus is in the College Hill neighborhood of Providence. The university is surrounded by a federally listed architectural district with a concentration of Colonial-era buildings. Benefit Street has one of America's richest concentrations of 17th- and 18th-century architecture. Undergraduate admissions are among the most selective in the country, with an acceptance rate of 5% for the class of 2026.
As of March 2022, 11 Nobel Prize winners, 1 Fields Medalist, 7 National Humanities Medalists, and 11 National Medal of Science laureates have been affiliated with Brown as alumni, faculty, or researchers. Alumni also include 29 Pulitzer Prize winners, 21 billionaires, 4 U.S. Secretaries of State, over 100 members of the United States Congress, 58 Rhodes Scholars, 22 MacArthur Genius Fellows, and 38 Olympic medalists. |
Bertrand Russell | Q33760 | Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and public intellectual. He had influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, and various areas of analytic philosophy.
He was one of the early 20th century's prominent logicians and a founder of analytic philosophy, along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, his friend and colleague G. E. Moore, and his student and protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. Russell with Moore led the British "revolt against idealism". Together with his former teacher A. N. Whitehead, Russell wrote Principia Mathematica, a milestone in the development of classical logic and a major attempt to reduce the whole of mathematics to logic (see logicism). Russell's article "On Denoting" has been considered a "paradigm of philosophy".
Russell was a pacifist who championed anti-imperialism and chaired the India League. He went to prison for his pacifism during World War I, and initially supported appeasement against Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany, before changing his view in 1943, describing war as a necessary "lesser of two evils". In the wake of World War II, he welcomed American global hegemony in preference to either Soviet hegemony or no (or ineffective) world leadership, even if it were to come at the cost of using their nuclear weapons. He would later criticise Stalinist totalitarianism, condemn the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War, and become an outspoken proponent of nuclear disarmament.
In 1950, Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought". He was also the recipient of the De Morgan Medal (1932), Sylvester Medal (1934), Kalinga Prize (1957), and Jerusalem Prize (1963). |
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