Bournemouth is a coastal resort town on the south coast of England. At the 2011 census, the town had a population of 183,491, making it the largest in the administrative county of Dorset. With Poole to the west and Christchurch in the east, Bournemouth is part of the South East Dorset conurbation, which has a population of 465,000. Before it was founded in 1810 by Lewis Tregonwell, the area was a deserted heathland visited by fishermen and smugglers. Marketed as a health resort, the town received a boost when it appeared in Augustus Granville's 1841 book, The Spas of England. Bournemouth's growth accelerated with the arrival of the railway, it became a town in 1870. Part of Hampshire, it joined Dorset with the reorganisation of local government in 1974. Through local government changes in 1997, the town began to be administered by a unitary authority independent of Dorset County Council, although it remains part of that ceremonial county. Since April 2019 the unitary authority has been merged with that of Poole, as well as the non-metropolitan district of Christchurch to create the Bournemouth and Poole unitary authority.

The town centre has notable Victorian architecture and the 202-foot spire of St Peter's Church, one of three Grade I listed churches in the borough, is a local landmark. Bournemouth's location has made it a popular destination for tourists, attracting over five million visitors annually with its beaches and popular nightlife; the town is a regional centre of business, home of the Bournemouth International Centre or BIC, a financial sector, worth more than £1,000 million in gross value added. The first mention of Bournemouth comes in the Christchurch cartulary of 1406, where a monk describes how a large fish, 18 feet long, was washed up at "La Bournemothe" in October of that year and taken to the Manor of Wick. "La Bournemowthe", was purely a geographic reference to the uninhabited area around the mouth of the small river which, in turn, drained the heathland between the towns of Poole and Christchurch. The word bourne, meaning a small stream, is a derivative of burna, old English for a brook.

From the latter half of the 16th century "Bourne Mouth" seems to be preferred, being recorded as such in surveys and reports of the period, but this appears to have been shortened to "Bourne" after the area had started to develop. A travel guide published in 1831 calls the place "Bourne Cliffe" or "Tregonwell's Bourne" after its founder; the Spas of England, published ten years calls it "Bourne" as does an 1838 edition of the Hampshire Advertiser. In the late 19th century "Bournemouth" became predominant, although its two-word form appears to have remained in use up until at least the early 20th century, turning up on a 1909 ordnance map. In the 12th century the region around the mouth of the River Bourne was part of the Hundred of Holdenhurst; the hundred became the Liberty of Westover when it was extended to include the settlements of North Ashley, Muccleshell, Iford, Pokesdown and Wick, incorporated into the Manor of Christchurch. Although the Dorset and Hampshire region surrounding it had been the site of human settlement for thousands of years, Westover was a remote and barren heathland before 1800.

In 1574 the Earl of Southampton noted that the area was "Devoid of all habitation", as late as 1795 the Duke of Rutland recorded that "... on this barren and uncultivated heath there was not a human to direct us". In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the Borough of Bournemouth would grow to encompass a number of ancient settlements along the River Stour, including Longham where a skull thought to be 5,500 years old was found in 1932. Bronze Age burials near Moordown, the discovery of Iron Age pottery on the East Cliff in 1969, suggest there may have been settlements there during that period. Hengistbury Head, added to the borough in 1932, was the site of a much older Palaeolithic encampment. During the latter half of the 16th century James Blount, 6th Baron Mountjoy, began mining for alum in the area, at one time part of the heath was used for hunting, although by the late 18th century little evidence of either event remained. No-one lived at the mouth of the Bourne river and the only regular visitors to the area before the 19th century were a few fishermen, turf cutters and gangs of smugglers.

Prior to the Christchurch Inclosures Act 1802, more than 70% of the Westover area was common land. The act, together with the Inclosure Commissioners' Award of 1805, transferred 5000 acres into the hands of five private owners, including James Harris, 1st Earl of Malmesbury, Sir George Ivison Tapps. In 1809 the Tapps Arms public house appeared on the heath. A few years in 1812, the first official residents, retired army officer Lewis Tregonwell and his wife, moved into their new home built on land purchased from Tapps; the area was well known to Tregonwell who, during the Napoleonic wars, spent much of his time searching the heath and coastline for French invaders and smugglers. Anticipating that people would come to the area to indulge in the newly fashionable pastime of sea-bathing, an activity with perceived health benefits, Tregonwell built a series of villas on his land between 1816 and 1822, which he hoped to let out; the common belief that pine-scented air was good for lung conditions, in particular tuberculosis, prompted Tregonwell and Tapps to plant hundreds of pine trees.

These early attempts to promote the town as a health resort meant that by the time Tregonwell died in 1832, Bournemouth had grown into a small community with a scattering of houses, villa

Colonel Donald McBane was a noted Scottish swordsman, career soldier, fencing master, regarded as one of the most prolific duelists of all time. He was born in the Highland village of Inverness during the late seventeenth century. In 1687 McBane ran away from home; as a career soldier, he served throughout much of Europe, fighting in The War of the Spanish Succession, taking part in fifteen skirmishes and sixteen battles, including Blenheim and Malplaquet. McBane worked as a fencing master, claimed to have participated in nearly one hundred duels, he fought as a gladiator at the Bear Gardens in Hockley-in-the-Hole and Marybone Fields, where he fought thirty-seven prizes. Among his opponents were some of the most celebrated swordsmen and fencing masters of the century, such as James Miller, Timothy Buck, James Figg. McBane is best known for The Expert Sword-Man's Companion; the book includes McBane's memoirs as well as his extensive treatise on the art of fencing, is a major source for the study of Scottish swordsmanship.

McBane's life and writings are featured in a number of classic works on fencing, including Egerton Castle's Schools and Masters of Fence and Captain Alfred Hutton's The Sword and the Centuries. Hutton describes McBane as a "first class swordsman," and, Unlike the majority of his class, he was something of a scholar, for he left behind him a work, “The Expert Swordman’s Companion,” which contains a number of wise lessons for both the small and back sword. There is a rough quaintness in the style of his narrative that adds flavour to the curious anecdotes of fights in which he was engaged; the British historian J. D. Aylward called McBane's memoir "possibly, the most ingenuous autobiography in the English language."

The Bungku–Tolaki languages are a group of languages spoken in South East Sulawesi province, in neighboring parts of Central and South Sulawesi provinces. Mead presents the following tree-model classification for Bungku–Tolaki; this classification is based on the historical-comparative method in linguistics. Eastern Moronene East Coast: Bungku, Kulisusu, Mori Bawah Western Interior: Mori Atas, Tomadino West Coast: Tolaki, Kodeoha, WaruThis classification supersedes Mead, an earlier classification proposed by Mead in 1994. Based on a lexicostatistical comparison, his earlier classification proposed'Bungku,"Mori,' and'Tolaki' as primary subdivisions under Bungku–Tolaki. In view of more recent evidence from shared sound change and innovations in pronoun sets, the unity of the proposed Mori group could not be maintained. Additional information can be found at Mori language; the sound system of all Bungku–Tolaki is characterized by a simple five-vowel system and the complete lack of final consonants