2,407 articles
Autism Speaks
Autism Speaks, founded February 2005 by Bob and Suzanne Wright with $25 million from Bernie Marcus, is the largest US autism advocacy organization; known for Light It Up Blue, the puzzle piece logo, the 2009 I Am Autism video controversy, and its 2016 removal of 'cure' from its mission.
Ava Lowle Willing
Ava Lowle Willing (1868-1958), later Baroness Ribblesdale, American socialite, first wife of John Jacob Astor IV, mother of Vincent Astor; divorced 1910, remarried Thomas Lister 1919.
Avars (Caucasus)
Avars (Caucasus), self-name ma'arulal, largest indigenous people of Dagestan, Russia, speaking the Northeast Caucasian Avar language (~700,000 speakers), historically centered on the Khunzakh khanate; distinct from the Pannonian Avars.
Awori people
The Awori are a Yoruba subgroup of southwestern Nigeria, concentrated in Lagos and Ogun states and widely credited as the first settlers of the area that became Lagos city.
Aymara people
The Aymara are an Andean Indigenous people of about 3 million around Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, Peru, and Chile, tied to Tiwanaku, speaking the Aymara language, organized in ayllus, and centered demographically in El Alto, Bolivia.
Azerbaijanis
Azerbaijanis, or Azeris, are a Turkic-speaking people and Shiite Muslims. They are the majority in the Republic of Azerbaijan, with 20 to 30 million in Iran.
Baba Nyonya
Baba Nyonya (峇峇娘惹) refers to the Peranakan Chinese, descendants of Chinese immigrants who married local women in the Malay Archipelago and developed a blended culture.
Baby boom
Baby boom: the sustained post-World War II surge in births, roughly 1946–1964 in the US (about 76 million births, peak fertility 3.7 in 1957), also used for later national booms in Canada, Japan, and Spain; distinguishes the demographic event from the baby boomer generation.
Baby boomers
Baby boomers are the U.S. cohort born 1946-1964, about 76 million people, named for the post-World War II fertility boom; distinguished by its demographic definition, contested causes, and outsized aging and economic impact.
Badagas
Badagas, the dominant agricultural community of the Nilgiri Hills, Tamil Nadu; speak Badaga (badagu), a Kannada-descended Dravidian language; migrated from Mysore around 1600; long counted among the Nilgiri tribes but not listed as a Scheduled Tribe.
Baduy people
Baduy people (Orang Kanekes): a Sundanese indigenous community in Kanekes Village, Lebak, Banten, Indonesia, divided into stricter Inner and looser Outer Baduy, following Sunda Wiwitan and pikukuh customary law.
Baggara Arabs
Baggara Arabs (also Shuwa Arabs) are Arabic-speaking semi-nomadic cattle herders of the Sahel's Baggara Belt, stretching over 2,500 km from Nigeria to Sudan; former camel nomads from Arabia who shifted to cattle by 1800, they speak West Sudanic Arabic and feature in the RSF's Sudan war recruitment.
Bakhtiari people
Bakhtiari (بختیاری) people: southwestern Iranian Lur-speaking Zagros group in Khuzestan, Chahar-Mahal and Bakhtiari, and Isfahan; Chahar Lang and Haft Lang divisions; 19th-century Bakhtiari tribal confederacy under the ilkhan.
Bakongo migrations between Angola and Zaire
The Bakongo migrations between Angola and Zaire are the repeated movements of Kikongo-speaking peoples across the border, including a massive refugee exodus during the Angolan war of independence.
Bakwena
The Bakwena, known in academic writing as the Kwena, are a Tswana people of Botswana and South Africa named for their crocodile totem, first settled in Botswana around 1720.
Baldassare Reina
Baldassare Reina (born 1970) is an Italian cardinal, Vicar General of the Diocese of Rome, Archpriest of Saint John Lateran, and Apostolic Administrator of Ostia, made cardinal by Pope Francis on 7 December 2024.
Balija
Balija: Telugu trading caste of southern India, also called Naidu, Vadugan, or Kavarai; historically merchant-warriors who became Vijayanagara Nayaka rulers of Madura and Tanjore.
Balinese people
The Balinese are Bali's dominant ethnic group, about 1% of Indonesia's population, mostly Hindu (83.5% of Bali, 2010 census), shaped by Majapahit Javanese influence, caste-stratified village institutions, and the modern construction of agama Hindu.
Balloonfest '86
Balloonfest '86: United Way of Greater Cleveland's September 27, 1986 release of about 1.5 million helium balloons from Public Square, a Guinness record, undone when a storm dropped the still-inflated balloons over the city and Lake Erie.
Baloch people
The Baloch, also spelled Baluch and called Baluchis or Balochis, are an Iranian-speaking people of Balochistan, a homeland spanning Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan, where most live.
Baltic Germans
Baltic Germans (Deutschbalten) were the German-speaking elite minority of Estonia and Latvia from the 12th century to 1939, ruling as nobles, merchants, and academics before 1918 and resettling under the Hitler-Stalin Pact.
Balts
Balts (baltai, balti): Indo-European peoples of the south-eastern Baltic coast speaking Baltic languages; today only Lithuanians and Latvians survive, Old Prussians and other tribes extinct after the 13th-century Teutonic conquest.
Bamar people
Bamar (Burmans), the largest ethnic group of Myanmar at about 68% of the population, Buddhist, centered in the central plains and delta, and politically dominant since 1948 independence.
Band society
Band society: small kin-based hunter-gatherer group, also called a band, of roughly 20–50 people; egalitarian, nomadic, no formal leadership; smallest type in Service's band-tribe-chiefdom-state scheme.
Bangladeshis
Bangladeshis (বাংলাদেশি) are the citizens of Bangladesh, formed from East Pakistan in 1971. Mostly Bengali Muslims, their identity alternated constitutionally between 'Bangalee' ethnic nationalism and territorial 'Bangladeshi' nationalism; large diaspora remittances sustain the economy.
Bangwato
The Bangwato, also called the Ngwato or Bamangwato, are a Tswana people of east-central Botswana who built the largest Tswana state, centered on Shoshong and later Serowe.
Bania (बनिया) (caste)
Bania (बनिया, also Baniya, Vania) is a north and west Indian cluster of Hindu and Jain Vaishya trading castes, including Agarwals, Oswals, and Marwaris, traditionally bankers, moneylenders, and shopkeepers, classified as a forward caste.
Banjara (बंजारा)
Banjara (बंजारा), also Lambadi, Lambani, Labana or Gor, is a historically nomadic Indian trader-transporter community, once Mughal army suppliers, later a Criminal Tribe under the 1871 Act, now ST in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Odisha and SC in Karnataka.
Bantu peoples
Bantu peoples are African populations speaking over 500 Bantu languages of the Niger-Congo family, about 350 million people. They descend from an expansion from the Nigeria-Cameroon border region 6,000-4,000 years ago, supported by genetic demic-diffusion evidence.
Banu Ifran
Banu Ifran (بنو إفرن), also Beni Ifren, were a Zenata Berber tribe prominent in North Africa and al-Andalus from the Islamic conquest to the eleventh century.