Balch is a surname that may apply to:

It may apply to

For the mildly intoxicating Mayan drink,see Balché.

Alton Towers is a theme park and resort located in Staffordshire, England. It attracts around 2.7 million visitors per year making it the most visited theme park in the United Kingdom. Alton Towers is also the 9th most visited theme park in Europe. It is based north of the village of Alton in Staffordshire (approximately 16 miles (26 km) east of Stoke-on-Trent, and not to be confused with the town of Alton in Hampshire), in the grounds of Alton Towers, a semi-ruined gothic revival country house. The estate was a former seat of the Earls of Shrewsbury.

The resort includes the theme park as well as Alton Towers Hotel, Splash Landings Hotel, Waterpark, Spa, Extraordinary Golf and Conference Centre. It is the flagship attraction of Merlin Entertainments in the United Kingdom. Major attractions at Alton Towers include Nemesis, Oblivion, Air, Rita and Th13teen.

The park's promotional music is In the Hall of the Mountain King by Edvard Grieg.

An Iron Age fort was built on Bunbury Hill (c.1st-century BC) which is now occupied by the Alton Towers estate. In about 700 AD, the Saxon king Ceolred of Mercia built a fortress on the hill. But King Ine of Wessex besieged the site in 716 AD. The ensuing battle, which ended in stalemate, caused such a loss of life the place was called Slain Hollow (which later became the estate's oriental water garden).

Dr. Fu Manchu is a fictional character introduced in a series of novels by British author Sax Rohmer during the first half of the 20th century. The character was also featured extensively in cinema, television, radio, comic strips and comic books for over 90 years, and has become an archetype of the evil criminal genius while lending the name to the Fu Manchu moustache.

"Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, ... one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present ... Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man."
–The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu

A master criminal, Fu Manchu's murderous plots are marked by the extensive use of arcane methods; he disdains guns or explosives, preferring dacoits, Thuggee, and members of other secret societies as his agents armed with knives, or using "pythons and cobras... fungi and my tiny allies, the bacilli... my black spiders" and other peculiar animals or natural chemical weapons.