black-eyed Susan Either of two North American coneflowers ( Rud- beckia hirta and R. serotina ) having flower heads with deep yellow to orange petals and dark conical centers. The stems are rough and hairy; the leaves are large and ovate at the base of the plant and narrow at the top.
black-figure pottery Type of Greek pottery that originated in Corinth c. 700 bc. The figures were painted in black pigment on the natural red clay ground. Finishing details were then incised into the black pigment,
(Ursus americanus) that, despite
American black bear (Ursus america¬ nus)
LEONARD LEE RUE III
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Black Forest ► black market I 227
revealing the red ground. The great Attic painters (mid 6th century bc), most notably Exekias, developed nar¬ rative scene decoration and perfected the style. It continued to be popular until the advent of red-figure pottery ( c. 530 bc).
Black Forest German Schwarz- wald Vshfarts-.vahA Mountain region, Baden-Wlirttemberg, south¬ western Germany. It extends in a fairly narrow strip about 100 mi (160 km) along the eastern bank of the upper Rhine River, from the Neckar River to the Swiss border. Its highest peak is Feldberg, at 4,897 ft (1,493 m). Its name comes from its dark interior, the higher parts being thickly forested with fir and pine. It is the source of the Neckar and Danube rivers. The setting of many of the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales, it is famed for the beauty and charm of its villages and rolling hills. Winter sports are prominent in the area, which also has many mineral springs and watering places, including the spa town of Baden-Baden.
Black Friday Day (Sept. 24, 1869) when plunging gold prices precipi¬ tated a U.S. stock-market panic. An attempt by Jay Gould and James Fisk to corner the market in gold and drive up its price depended on prevent¬ ing the sale of government gold, an arrangement assured through the two men’s political influence. When Pres. Ulysses S. Grant heard of the scheme, he ordered the government to sell $4 million in gold, which caused the price to drop and produced a panic selling of other stocks.
black gum or sour gum Most widely distributed tupelo, Nyssa syl- vatica, also known as black tupelo or pepperidge tree. It is found in moist areas of the eastern U.S. from Maine south to the Gulf Coast and west¬ ward to Oklahoma. Its wood is light and soft but tough. The black gum is sometimes grown as an ornamental and is prized for its brilliant scar¬ let autumnal foliage.
Dionysus and satyrs, amphora painted in the black-figure style by the Amasis Painter, c. 540 bc; in the Antikenmu- seum, Basel, Switz.
COURTESY OF THE ANTIKENMUSEUM, BASEL, SWITZ.; PHOTOGRAPH, COLORPHOTO HANS HINZ
Black Hand Secret Serbian society formed in 1911 primarily by army officers, which used terrorist methods to promote the liberation of Serbs outside Serbia from Habsburg or Ottoman rule. It conducted propaganda campaigns, organized armed bands in Macedonia, and established revo¬ lutionary cells throughout Bosnia. Within Serbia it dominated the army and wielded tremendous influence over the government. It gained its greatest notoriety with the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand in 1914. After a trial in 1917, three leaders were executed and more than
200 were imprisoned. The name also run by immigrant Sicilian and Italian gangsters in the Italian communities of many large U.S. cities c. 1890- 1920. Local merchants and wealthy individuals would receive threaten¬ ing notes printed with black hands, daggers, or other menacing symbols that demanded money on pain of death or destruction of property. It declined with the beginning of Pro¬ hibition and large-scale bootlegging.
Black Hawk (b. 1767, Sauk Sau- tenuk, Va.—d. Oct. 3, 1838, village on the Des Moines River, Iowa, U.S.) Sauk Indian leader. Long antagonistic to whites, Black Hawk was driven into Iowa from Illinois in 1831. Defying the government orders to vacate villages along the Rock River in Illinois, he led a fac¬ tion of Sauk and Fox Indians back across the Mississippi River the fol¬ lowing year. This act led to the brief
referred to several extortion rackets
Black Hawk, oil painting by George Catlin, 1832; in the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institu¬ tion, Washington, D.C.
COURTESY OF NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, WASHINGTON, D.C.
but tragic Black Hawk War of 1832. He himself survived the final battle, a massacre. The ruthlessness of the war so affected neighbouring Indian groups that by 1837 most had fled far west, leaving most of the North¬ west Territory to white settlers.
Black Hills Group of mountains in western South Dakota and north¬ eastern Wyoming, U.S. Occupying about 6,000 sq mi (15,540 sq km), they lie between the Cheyenne and Belle Fourche rivers and rise to a maximum elevation of 7,242 ft (2,207 m) at Harney Peak. Their name refers to the dark appearance that their rounded hilltops and well-forested slopes present at a distance. The Sioux Indians were guaranteed treaty rights to the region in 1868; however, the discovery of gold in 1874 led to an influx of white miners and to the Black Hills War (1876), including the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Tourist attractions include the mining town of Dead- wood, Mount Rushmore and Jewel Cave national monuments, Wind Cave National Park, and Custer State Park, all in South Dakota, and Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming.
black hole Cosmic body with gravity (see gravitation) so intense that nothing, not even light, can escape. It is suspected to form in the death and collapse of a star that has retained at least three times the Sun’s mass. Stars with less mass evolve into white dwarf stars or neutron stars. Details of a black hole’s structure are calculated from Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity: a “singularity” of zero volume and infinite density pulls in all matter and energy that comes within an event horizon, defined by the Schwarzschild radius, around it. Black holes cannot be observed directly because they are small and emit no light. However, their enor¬ mous gravitational fields affect nearby matter, which is drawn in and emits X rays as it collides at high speed outside the event horizon. Some black holes may have nonstellar origins. Astronomers speculate that supermas- sive black holes at the centres of quasars and many galaxies are the source of energetic activity that is observed. Stephen W. Hawking theorized the creation of numerous tiny black holes, possibly no more massive than an asteroid, during the big bang. These primordial “mini black holes” lose mass over time and disappear as a result of Hawking radiation. Although black holes remain theoretical, the case for their existence is supported by many observations of phenomena that match their predicted effects.
black humour Humour marked by the use of morbid, ironic, or gro¬ tesquely comic episodes that ridicule human folly. The term came into common use in the 1960s to describe the work of novelists such as Joseph Heller, whose Catch-22 (1961) is an outstanding example; Kurt Vonnegut, particularly in Slaughterhouse Five (1969); and Thomas Pynchon, in V (1963) and Gravity’s Rainbow (1973). A film exemplar is Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1963). The term black comedy has been applied to some playwrights in the Theatre of the Absurd, especially Eugene Ionesco.
black lead See graphite
Black Legend Stories from the Spanish colonies in the Americas that led to the general belief, eagerly endorsed by such rivals as Britain and Holland, that Spain exceeded other nations in cruelty to its subject popu¬ lations. The 16th-century historians Bartolome de Las Casas and Garcilaso de la Vega documented the treatment of the Indians in New Spain (Mexico and Guatemala) and Peru, respectively, and laid the foundation for the legend. Though Spain may not actually have surpassed other colonial powers in cruelty, the Spanish conquest clearly reduced the numbers of indigenous peoples rapidly and caused them great suffering.