All articles starting with B
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British English
British English (BrE) is the standard variety of English spoken and written in the UK, marked by Received Pronunciation, distinct vocabulary, grammar, and spelling from American English, and its global role in teaching and assessment.
British European Airways Flight 548
British European Airways Flight 548, known as the Staines air disaster, crashed near Staines after take-off from Heathrow on 18 June 1972, killing all 118 aboard.
British expedition against Balangingi
The British expedition against Balangingi is not documented in the historical record; the major assaults on the Sulu raiding base were Spanish, culminating in the decisive 1848 expedition.
British Expedition to Abyssinia
The British Expedition to Abyssinia (1867–1868) was a punitive campaign from British India, led by Sir Robert Napier, that freed European hostages held by Emperor Tewodros II.
British Expeditionary Force (World War I)
The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was the field army Britain sent to France and Belgium in August 1914, growing to more than two million men.
British Expeditionary Force (World War II)
The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was the British Army field force sent to France in 1939 under Lord Gort, evacuated from Dunkirk in June 1940.
British Figure Skating Championships
The British Figure Skating Championships are Great Britain's national figure skating championships, dating to 1894 and deciding senior, junior, and novice titles in all four disciplines.
British Film Institute
British Film Institute (BFI), UK's lead organisation for film and the moving image: cultural charity founded 1933, Royal Charter 1983, custodian of the BFI National Archive (1935), DCMS-sponsored NDPB and National Lottery distributor with a £150m 2026-2029 funding plan.
British firms (organised crime)
British firms are self-organized football supporter groups, such as West Ham's Inter City Firm and Leeds' Service Crew, that arranged match-day violence; some provided opportunity structures for organized crime, declining since the 1990s.
British flat racing Champion Jockey
British flat racing Champion Jockey: the jockey with most winners in a British flat season, decided by wins, historically Lincoln-to-November, since 2015 from the 2000 Guineas to British Champions Day; Gordon Richards won 26 titles and 269 wins in 1947; Oisin Murphy has five recent titles.
British Free Corps
The British Free Corps, or Britisches Freikorps, was a Waffen-SS unit in World War II made up of British and Dominion prisoners of war recruited by Nazi Germany.
British genocide
British genocide: a genocide-studies debate term for alleged genocidal violence by the British state and settlers, from Tasmania (Lawson's The Last Man) to Boer camps, Kenya, and decolonization, per Shaw 2011.
British Geological Survey
The British Geological Survey is the United Kingdom's national geological survey, founded in 1835 and described as the world's oldest, providing geoscientific data, advice, and mapping to government, industry, and the public.
British Gliding Association
The British Gliding Association (BGA), founded in 1930, is the governing body for gliding in the United Kingdom, representing 76 clubs and about 6,000 members from its Leicester headquarters.
British Grand Prix
British Grand Prix: annual motor race first held at Brooklands in 1926, at Silverstone since 1948, and the inaugural Formula One World Championship round on 13 May 1950, won by Farina; record 564,000 attendance in 2026.
British Guiana
British Guiana, officially the Crown Colony of Guiana, was a British colony on South America's northern coast, now Guyana, known for sugar grown on reclaimed polder estates by enslaved and indentured labor.
British Guiana 1c magenta
British Guiana 1c magenta: unique 1856 one-cent provisional stamp of British Guiana (Guyana), printed by Baum and Dallas; the sole surviving copy, initialled EDW, is the world's rarest and most valuable stamp, last sold for $8.3 million in 2021.
British Guiana Constitution of 1953
The British Guiana Constitution of 1953 was a colonial constitution introducing universal adult suffrage and a ministerial system, suspended by Britain months after the PPP won the first election.
British Heart Foundation
British Heart Foundation (BHF), UK heart charity founded July 1961, charity 225971; largest independent funder of cardiovascular research, over 670 shops, Heart Helpline, The Circuit defibrillator network, led by CEO Charmaine Griffiths.
British Home Championship
British Home Championship: annual football tournament of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland/Northern Ireland, 1884-1984, the world's first international competition; England won 54 titles, Northern Ireland the last.
British Home Stores
British Home Stores (BHS), British department store chain founded 1928 in Brixton, sold clothing and homeware; bought by Philip Green in 2000 for £200m, sold for £1 in 2015, collapsed into administration April 2016 with a £571m pension deficit.
British Honduras
British Honduras was the British Crown colony on Central America's Caribbean coast from 1862, crown colony 1871, internal self-government 1964, renamed Belize in June 1973, independent September 1981.
British Hong Kong (英属香港)
British Hong Kong (英属香港): Crown colony of Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and the New Territories, 1841–1997, acquired by the Treaty of Nanking, Convention of Peking, and 1898 99-year lease; returned to China 1 July 1997 under the Joint Declaration.
British Horseracing Authority
British Horseracing Authority (BHA), founded 31 July 2007, is Britain's unified governing and regulatory body for horseracing, merging the British Horseracing Board and Horseracing Regulatory Authority; it licenses participants, runs the Rules of Racing, and leads equine welfare.
British Household Panel Survey
The British Household Panel Survey, run by the University of Essex, followed the same UK households annually from 1991 to 2009 and became the base for Understanding Society.
British humour
British humour: the UK's comic tradition of irony, understatement, self-deprecation, sarcasm and class satire, rooted in music hall, reinvented by 1979 alternative comedy, anchored by the BBC and the Edinburgh Fringe, and consistently less appreciated by American audiences than by British ones.
British Indian Army
The British Indian Army, commonly called the Indian Army, was the principal military force in British India from Crown rule until it was divided between India and Pakistan in 1947.
British Indian Association
The British Indian Association (ব্রিটিশ ইন্ডিয়ান অ্যাসোসিয়েশন) was a Calcutta political organization founded in 1851 by merging the Landholders' Society and the Bengal British India Society.
British Indian Ocean Territory
British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), Chagos Archipelago: UK Overseas Territory created 8 November 1965 from Mauritius; hosts joint UK-US base on Diego Garcia; 2025 treaty to transfer sovereignty to Mauritius is signed but ratification is paused.
British Indians
British Indians: UK residents identifying as Indian or British Indian, 1,864,304 people (3.1% of England and Wales) at Census 2021; also called the Indian diaspora in Britain; history spans 18th-century servants, post-war waves, East African Asians, and 2023's 253,000 arrivals.