Bell, Cool Papa orig. James Thomas Bell (b. May 17, 1903, Starkville, Miss., U.S.—d. March 7, 1991, St. Louis, Mo.) U.S. baseball player. Bell was a switch-hitting outfielder for most of his career. Play¬ ing primarily in the Negro leagues, he is said to have stolen 175 bases in a 200-game season and is reputed to have been the fastest base runner of all time. Also a fine hitter, he once batted .391 over a five-year period. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972.
Bell, Gertrude (b. July 14, 1868, Washington Hall, Durham, Eng.—d. July 12, 1926, Baghdad, Iraq) British traveler, writer, and colonial admin¬ istrator. After graduating from Oxford, she journeyed throughout the Middle East. After World War I she wrote a well-received report on the administration of Mesopotamia between the end of the war (1918) and the Iraqi rebellion of 1920 and later helped determine postwar boundaries. In 1921 she helped place a son of the sharif of Mecca, Faysal I, on the Iraqi throne. In helping create the National Museum of Iraq, she promoted the idea that excavated antiquities should stay in their country of origin.
Bell, John (b. Feb. 15, 1797, near Nashville, Tenn., U.S.—d. Sept. 10, 1869, Dover, Tenn.) U.S. politician. He represented Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives (1827-41) and Senate (1847-59). Although a large slaveholder, he opposed efforts to expand slavery to U.S. territories and voted against admitting Kansas as a slave state. His defense of the Union brought him the 1860 nomination for president on the Constitu¬ tional Union ticket, but he carried only three states. He later supported the South in the American Civil War.
Bell Burnell, (Susan) Jocelyn orig. Susan Jocelyn Bell (b. July 15, 1943, Belfast, N.Ire.) British astronomer. As a research assistant at the
University of Cambridge, she assisted in constructing a large radio tele¬ scope and discovered pulsars, cosmic sources of peculiar radio pulses, providing the first direct evidence for the existence of rapidly spinning neutron stars. The 1974 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded for the dis¬ covery of pulsars to Antony Hewish (her adviser) and Martin Ryle, spark¬ ing a controversy over the omission of Bell Burnell. She subsequently became a professor at Open University and vice president of the Royal Astronomical Society.
bell curve See normal distribution
Bell Laboratories U.S. research and development company (founded 1925) that develops telecommunications equipment and carries out defense-related research. Formerly part of AT&T, it now belongs to Lucent Technologies, Inc., which spun off from AT&T in 1996. Bell Labs has produced thousands of inventions, including the first synchronous- sound motion-picture system, the electrical-relay digital computer, the laser, the solar cell, UNIX, and the C and C++ programming languages. Several Bell researchers have won Nobel Prizes: Clinton Davisson, for demon¬ strating the wave nature of matter; John Bardeen, Walter H. Brattain, and William B. Shockley, for inventing the transistor; and Arno Penzias and Robert W. Wilson, for discovering cosmic microwave background radia¬ tion. It operates today in some 20 countries.
Bell palsy See paralysis
bell ringing See change ringing
Bella, Ahmed Ben See Ahmed Ben Bella
belladonna Tall, bushy, herbaceous plant, the deadly nightshade {Atropa belladonna), of the nightshade family; also, the crude drug con¬ sisting of its dried leaves or roots. The plant is a native of wooded or waste areas in central and southern Eurasia. It has dull green leaves, vio¬ let or greenish flowers, shiny black berries about the size of cherries, and a large, tapering root. Belladonna is highly poisonous and is cultivated for medicinal substances (alkaloids) that are derived from the crude drug and used in sedatives, stimulants, and antispasmodics. Because of toxic¬ ity and undesirable side effects, however, these substances are being replaced by synthetic drugs.
Bellamy Vbel-o-meX, Edward (b. March 26, 1850, Chicopee Falls, Mass., U.S.—d. May 22, 1898, Chi¬ copee Falls) U.S. writer. Bellamy first became aware of the plight of the urban poor at age 18 while study¬ ing in Germany. He engaged throughout his life in progressive causes and wrote several books reflecting his concerns, but he is known chiefly for his utopian novel Looking Backward (1888), which describes the U.S. in the year 2000 as an ideal socialist state featuring cooperation, brotherhood, and indus¬ try geared to human need. It sold more than a million copies; a sequel,
Equality (1897), was less successful.
Bellarmine Vbel-.ar-monX, Saint Robert Italian Roberto Fran¬ cesco Romolo Bellarmino (b.
Oct. 4, 1542, Monrepulciano,
Tuscany—d. Sept. 17, 1621, Rome; canonized 1930; feast day September 17) Italian cardinal and theologian. He joined the Jesuits in 1560, and after ordination in the Spanish Neth¬ erlands (1570) he began to teach theology. He was made a cardinal in 1599 and an archbishop in 1602. He took a prominent part in the first examination of Galileo’s writings; though somewhat sympathetic to Gali¬ leo, he thought it best to have the Copernican system declared “false and erroneous,” which was done in 1616. He gave impartial attention to Prot¬ estant works and was regarded as an enlightened theologian. He died a pauper, having given all his funds to the poor. In 1931 he was named a Doctor of the Church.
Belle Isle, Strait of Channel, eastern Canada. The northern entrance from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, it is 90 mi (145 km) long and 10-20 mi (16-32 km) wide. It flows between the northern tip
Alexander Graham Bell.
CULVER PICTURES
March 26, 1850, Chicopee Falls,
Bellamy
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, WASHINGTON, D.C.
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Bellerophon ► Belmondo I 195
of Newfoundland and southeastern Labrador and is the most direct route from the Saint Lawrence Seaway and Great Lakes ports to Europe. The cold Labrador Current flows through the strait, extending the period of ice cover and limiting shipping to between June and late November.
Bellerophon \b3-'ler-3-f3n\ Legendary Greek hero. The son of Glau- cus and grandson of Sisyphus, as a youth in Corinth he tamed and rode the winged horse Pegasus. The wife of King Proteus of Argos fell in love with him, and when he rejected her, she falsely accused him of attempted rape. Proteus sent him to the king of Lycia with a message asking that he be killed. The king instead ordered him to kill the monster Chimera, and with the aid of Pegasus he succeeded. He married the king’s daughter but later lost the favour of the gods and became an unhappy wanderer. Another version of the legend holds that he tried to fly up to heaven and was thrown from Pegasus and lamed.
bellflower Any of about 300 annual, perennial, and biennial herba¬ ceous plants of the genus Campan¬ ula (family Campanulaceae) that bear bell-shaped, usually blue flow¬ ers. They are native mainly to north¬ ern temperate regions in both hemispheres, Mediterranean areas, and tropical mountains. Distribution and habitat may be quite diverse.
Species native to northern Eurasia and eastern North America but also grown in gardens are the bluebell (C. rotundifolia) and the tall bellflower (C. americana). The creeping bell¬ flower (C. rapunculoides) is a noto¬ rious garden weed. Among the few food plants in the bellflower family, which includes a total of 40 genera and 700 species, are the rampion (C. rapunculus), eaten as a vegetable in parts of Europe, and some robust members—especially Canarina, Clermontia, and Centropogon —that pro¬ duce edible berries.
Bellini, Vincenzo (b. Nov. 3, 1801, Catania, Sicily—d. Sept. 23, 1835, Puteaux, France) Italian composer. Born into a musical family, he was educated at the Naples Conservatory. He wrote his first opera at age 24 and went on to complete nine more before his death at age 33. The most famous are The Pirate (1827), The Capulets and the Montagues (1830), The Sleepwalker (1831), Norma (1831), and The Puritans (1835). His works, which rely strongly on beautiful vocal melody ( hel canto), rivaled those of his contemporaries Gioacchino Rossini and Gaetano Donizetti in popularity.