OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Triton

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​TRITON, in Greek mythology, son of Poseidon and Amphitrite, the personification of the roaring waters. According to Hesiod (Theog. 930), he dwelt with his parents in a golden palace in the depths of the sea. The story of the Argonauts places his home on the coast of Libya. When the Argo was driven ashore on the Lesser Syrtes the crew carried the vessel to Lake Tritonis, whence Triton, the local deity, guided them across to the Mediterranean (Apollonius Rhodius iv. 1552). He was represented as human down to the waist, with the tail of a fish. His special attribute was a twisted seashell, on which he blew to calm or raise the waves. Its sound was so terrible, when loudly blown, that it put the giants to flight, who imagined it to be the roar of a mighty wild beast (Hyginus, Poet. astronom. ii. 23). When Misenus, the trumpeter of Aeneas, challenged him to a contest of blowing, Triton in his jealousy flung him into the sea. In course of time Triton became the name for individuals of a class, like Pan and Silenus, and Tritons (male and female) are mentioned in the plural, usually as forming the escort of marine divinities. The beings called Centauro-Tritons or Ichthyocentaurs were of a triple nature, with the forefeet of a horse in addition to the human body and fish tail. Pausanias (ix. 21) gives a detailed description of the ordinary Triton. It is probable that the idea of Triton owes its origin to the Phoenician fish-deities.
See Preller, Griechische Mythologie (4th ed., 1894); F. R. Dressler, Triton und die Tritonen (Wurzen, 1892).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Slander

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​SLANDER, a false tale or report, defamation. The word is a doublet of "scandal" and comes through the O. Fr. esclandre, which, through the earlier forms scandele, escandele, escandre, is derived from Lat. scandalum (see further Scandal). In law, slander is the malicious defamation of a person in his reputation, profession or business, by words (see Libel and Slander).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Slater, Samuel

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​SLATER, SAMUEL (1768–1835), American textile manufacturer, was born in Belper, Derbyshire, England, on the 9th of June 1768. In 1783, the year after his father’s death, he was apprenticed to Jedediah Strutt, his neighbour and a partner of Richard Arkwright in spinning cotton, and served under him six and a half years. Learning that the Pennsylvania legislature had granted £100 in 1789 to the inventor of a power carding machine, he removed to the United States in that year, but was unable because of British laws to bring with him drawings of cotton-spinning machinery. He wrote to Moses Brown of Providence, R.I., who had made unsuccessful attempts to manufacture cotton cloth, and in January 1790 on Brown’s invitation went to Pawtucket, R.I., where he entered into a partnership with William Almy (Moses Brown’s son-in-law) and Smith Brown, a kinsman of Moses Brown, designed (from memory) machines for cotton-spinning, and turned out some yarn in December of the same year. In 1799 he established in his mills one of the first Sunday Schools in America. In 1801 he built a factory in Rehoboth, Mass., and with his brother John, who joined him in 1804, established in 1806 the manufacturing village of Slatersville, in Smithfield township, Rhode Island. He began the manufacture of woollen cloth in 1815–1816 at Oxford, now Webster, Mass., where he had built cotton mills in 1812. In his later years he was interested in other textile mills and in iron foundries in Rhode Island. He died at Webster, Mass., on the 21st of April 1835. He has been called the “father of American manufactures” and it is no exaggeration to call him the founder of American cotton manufacturing.
See G. S. White, Memoir of Samuel Slater (2nd ed., Philadelphia, 1846).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Slate Islands

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​SLATE ISLANDS, a group belonging to the parish of Kilbrandon and Kilchattan off the coast of Lome, Argyllshire, Scotland. They comprise Seil, Easdale, Torsay, Luing and Shuna, and owe their name to the fact that they are composed mainly of metamorphic rocks, Easdale, Torsay and Luing being entirely slate, Seil mostly slate with some porphyrite in the north, and Shuna gneissose. The quarries provide occupation for most of the inhabitants. The steamers to and from Oban usually call at Luing and Easdale. Seil (pop. 424), the most northerly, is connected with the mainland by means of Clachan bridge on its north-east side, near Rue. It measures 4 m. N. and S. by 2 m. E. and W. at its widest, and contains Kilbrandon church. Off a promontory on its west coast, divided only by a narrow strait, is the comparatively flat island of Easdale (pop. 284), measuring roughly ½ m. each way. The quarries have been worked since 1630 and yield some eight million slates every year. The experiment of leasing them to the workers on co-operative lines has been tried unsuccessfully. Luing (pop. 620) is situated S. of Seil, is 6 m. long and 1½ m. broad. Torsay (pop. 7), 1 m. long by ½ m. broad, lies off its north-east, and Shuna (pop. 8), 2½ m. long by 1⅕ m. broad, off its south-east, shore.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Slave Coast

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​SLAVE COAST. The name given to that part of the coast of West Africa extending from the river Volta to the Niger delta; forming part of the Guinea coast (see Guinea). From the beginning of the 16th to the end of the 18th century this region was a principal resort of the Europeans engaged in the slave trade. Politically the Slave Coast is divided between Germany, France and Great Britain, the German section forming part of Togoland (q.v.), the French section the seaboard of Dahomey (q.v.), and the British section the Lagos province of Nigeria (see Lagos).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Slater, John Fox

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​SLATER, JOHN FOX (1815-1884), American philanthropist, son of John Slater (Samuel Slater's brother and partner), was born in Slatersville, Rhode Island, on the 4th of March 1815. He was educated in academies at Plainfield, Connecticut, and Wrentham and Wilbraham, Massachusetts. At seventeen he entered his father's woollen mill in Hopeville, Conn., of which he took charge in 1836. This and other mills he owned in partnership with his brother, William S. Slater, until 1873, when his brother took over the Slatersville Mills and he assumed sole ownership of the mills at Jewett City, Conn. In 1842 he removed from Jewett City to Norwich; there he helped to endow the Norwich Free Academy, to which his son presented the Slater Memorial Hall; and there he died on the 7th of May 1884. In 1882 he had made over to a board of ten trustees, incorporated in New York state, $1,000,000 for “the uplifting of the lately emancipated population of the Southern states, ​and their posterity, by conferring on them the benefits of Christian education.” Among the original trustees of the Slater Fund were Rutherford B. Hayes, Morrison R. Waite, William E. Dodge, Phillips Brooks, Daniel C. Oilman, Morris K. Jesup and the donor’s son, William A. Slater; and among members chosen later were Melville W. Fuller, William E. Dodge, Jr., Henry C. Potter, Cleveland H. Dodge and Seth Low. In 1909 by careful investment the fund had increased, in spite of expenditures, to more than $1,500,000. The fund has been of great value in aiding industrial schools in the South, its largest beneficiaries being the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute of Hampton, Virginia, the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute of Tuskegee, Alabama, Spelman Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia, Claflin University in Orangeburg, S.C., and Fisk University, in Nashville, Tennessee. At Winston-Salem, N.C., is the Slater State Normal and Industrial School, founded in 1892 and named after the founder of the fund. Other state normal schools for negroes have received assistance from the fund; and in some cases it has contributed directly to the school boards of Southern cities.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Signature

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​SIGNATURE (through Fr. from Lat. signatura, signare, to sign, signum, mark, token, sign), a distinguishing sign or mark, especially the name, or something representing the name, of a person used by him as affixed to a document or other writing to show that it has been written by him or made in accordance with his wishes Or directions (see Autograph, Monogram, &c.). In the early sense of something which “ signifies,” i.e. marks a condition, quality or meaning, the word was formerly also used widely, but now chiefly in technical applications. In old medical theory, plants and minerals were supposed to be marked by some natural sign or symbol which indicated the particular medicinal use to which they could be put; thus yellow flowers were to be used for jaundice, the “ scorpion-grass,” the old name of the forget-me-not, was efficacious for the bite of the scorpion; many superstitions were based on the human shape of the roots of the mandrake or mandragora; the bloodstone was taken to be a cure for hemorrhage; this theory was known as the “ doctrine of signatures.” (See T. J. Pettigrew, Superstitions connected with Medicine or Surgery, 1844.) In printing or book-binding ​the “ signature ” is a letter or figure placed at the bottom of the first page of a section of a book, as an assistance to the binder in folding and arranging the sections consecutively; hence it is used of a sheet ready folded. In music it is the term applied to the signs affixed at the beginning of the stave showing the key or tonality and the time or rhythm (see Musical Notation).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sign-Manual, Royal

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​SIGN-MANUAL, ROYAL, the autograph signature of the sovereign, by which he expresses his pleasure either by order, commission or warrant. A sign-manual warrant may be either an executive act, e.g. an appointment to an office, or an authority for affixing the Great Seal. It must be countersigned by a principal secretary of state or other responsible minister. A royal order under the sign-manual, as distinct from a sign-manual warrant, authorizes the expenditure of money, e.g. appropriations. There are certain offices to which appointment is made by commission under the great seal, e.g. the appointment of an officer in the army or that of a colonial governor. The sign-manual is also used to give power to make and ratify treaties. In certain cases the use of the sign-manual has been dispensed with, and a stamp affixed in lieu thereof, as in the case of George IV., whose bodily infirmity made the act of signing difficult and painful during the last weeks of his life. A special act was passed providing that a stamp might be affixed in lieu of the sign-manual (11 Geo. IV. c. 23), but the sovereign had to express his consent to each separate use of the stamp, the stamped document being attested by a confidential servant and several officers of state (Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, 1907, vol. ii. pt. i. p. 59).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sigmaringen

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​SIGMARINGEN, a town of Germany, chief town of the Prussian principality of Hohenzollern, on the right bank of the Danube, 55 m. S. of Tübingen, on the railway to Ulm. Pop. (1905) 4621. The castle of the Hohenzollerns crowns a high rock above the river, and contains a collection of pictures, an exceptionally interesting museum (textiles, enamels, metal-work, &c.), an armoury and a library. On the opposite bank of the Danube there is a war monument to the Hohenzollern men who fell in 1866 and 1870–1871.
The division of Sigmaringen is composed of the two formerly sovereign principalities of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen and Hohenzollern-Hechingen (see Hohenzollern), and has an area of 440 sq. m. and a population (1905) of 68,282. The Sigmaringen part of the Hohenzollern lands was the larger of the two (297 sq. m.) and lay mainly to the south of Hechingen, though the district of Haigerloch on the Neckar also belonged to it. The name of Hohenzollern is used much more frequently than the official Sigmaringen to designate the combined principalities.
See Woerl, Führer durch Sigmaringen (Würzburg, 1886).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Vexillum

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​VEXILLUM (Lat. dim. of velum, piece of cloth, sail, awning, or from vehere, vectum, to carry), the name for a small ensign consisting of a square cloth suspended from a cross-piece fixed to a spear. The vexillum was strictly the ensign of the maniple, as signum was of the cohort, but the term came to be used for all standards or ensigns other than the eagle (aquila) of the legion (see Flag). Caesar (B.G. ii. 20) uses the phrase vexillum proponere of the red flag hoisted over the general's tent as a signal for the march or battle. The standard-bearer of the maniple was styled vexillarius, but by the time of the Empire vexillum and vexillarius had gained a new significance. Tacitus uses these terms frequently both of a body of soldiers serving apart from the legion under a separate standard, and also with the addition of some word implying connexion with a legion of those soldiers who, after serving sixteen years with the legion, continued their service, under their own vexillum, with the legion. The term is also used for the scarf wrapped round a bishop's pastoral staff (q.v.). Modern science has adopted the word for the web or vein of a feather of a bird and of the large upper petal of flowers, such as the pea, whose corolla is shaped like a butterfly.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Vianden

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​VIANDEN, an ancient town in the grand duchy of Luxemburg, on the banks of the Our, close to the Prussian frontier. Pop. (1905) 2350. It possesses one of the oldest charters in Europe, granted early in the 14th century by Philip, count of Vianden, from whom the family of Nassau-Vianden sprang, and who was consequently the ancestor of William of Orange and Queen Wilhelmina of Holland. The semi-mythical foundress of this family was Bertha, “the White Lady” who figures in many German legends. The original name of Vianden was Viennensis or Vienna, and its probable derivation is from the Celtic Vien (rock). The extensive ruins of the ancient castle stand on an eminence of the little town, but the chapel which forms part of it was restored in 1849 by Prince Henry of the Netherlands. The size and importance of this castle in its prime may be gauged from the fact that the Knights' Hall could accommodate five hundred men-at-arms. A remarkable feature of the chapel is an hexagonal hole in the centre of the floor, opening upon a bare subterranean dungeon. This has been regarded as an instance of the “double chapel,” but it seems to have been constructed by order of the crusader Count Frederick II. on the model of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In the neighbourhood of Vianden are other ruined castles, notably those of Stolzemburg and Falkenstein. The ​little town and its pleasant surroundings have been praised by many, among others by Victor Hugo, who resided here on several occasions. During his last visit he wrote his fine work L'Année terrible. In the time of the Romans the Vianden valley was covered with vineyards, but at the present day its chief source of wealth is derived from the rearing of pigs.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Vianna do Castello

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​VIANNA DO CASTELLO, a seaport and the capital of the district of Vianna do Castello, Portugal; at the mouth of the river Lima, which is here crossed by the iron bridge of the Oporto-Valença do Minho railway. Pop. (1900) 10,000. Vianna do Castello has manufactures of lace and dairy produce. Its fisheries are important. Salmon and lampreys are exported, both fresh and preserved. The administrative district of Vianna do Castello coincides with the northern part of the ancient province of Entre Minho e Douro (q.v.). Pop. (1900) 215,267; area, 857 sq. m.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Viareggio

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​VIAREGGIO, a maritime town and sea-bathing resort of Tuscany, Italy, in the province of Lucca, on the Mediterranean, 13 m. N.W. of Pisa by rail, 7 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1906) 14,863 (town); 21,557 (commune). Being sheltered by dense pine-woods on the north, and its malaria having been banished by drainage, it is frequented as a winter resort, and in summer by some thousands for its sea-bathing. In 1740 the population was only 300, and in 1841, 6549. The body of Shelley was burned on the shore near Viareggio after his death by drowning in 1822. The town possesses a school of navigation and a technical school, and carries on some shipbuilding.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Vexiö

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​VEXIÖ, or Wexiö, a town and bishop's see of Sweden, capital of the district (län) of Kronoberg, 124 m. N.E. of Malmö by rail. Pop. (1900) 7365. It is pleasantly situated among low wooded hills at the north end of Lake Vexiö, and near the south end of Lake Helga. Its appearance is modern, for it was burnt in 1843. The cathedral of St Siegfrid dates from about 1300, but has been restored, the last time in 1898. The Småland Museum has antiquarian and numismatic collections, a library and a bust of Linnaeus. There are iron foundries, a match factory, &c. At Östrabo, the episcopal residence without the town, the poet Esaias Tegnér died in 1846, and he is buried in the town cemetery. On the shore of Lake Helga is the royal estate of Kronoberg, and on an island in the lake the ruins of a former castle of the same name.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Viaticum

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​VIATICUM (a Latin word meaning “provision for a journey”; Gr. τὰ ἐφόδια), is often used by early Christian writers to denote the sacrament of the Eucharist, and is sometimes also applied to baptism. Ultimately it came to be employed in a restricted sense to denote the last communion given to the dying. The 13th canon of the council of Nicaea is to the effect that “none, even of the lapsed, shall be deprived of the last and most necessary viaticum (ἐφοδίον),” and that the bishop, on examination, is to give the oblation to all who desire to partake of the Eucharist on the point of death. The same principle still rules the canon law, it being of course understood that penitential discipline, which in ordinary circumstances would have been due for their offence, is to be undergone by lapsed persons who have thus received the viaticum, in the event of recovery. In extreme cases it is lawful to administer the viaticum to persons not fasting, and the same person may receive it frequently if his illness be prolonged. The ritual to be observed in its administration does not differ from that laid down in the office for the communion of the sick, except in the words of the formula, which is “accipe, carissime frater (carissima soror), viaticum corporis nostri Jesu Christi, quod te custodial ab hoste maligno, protegat te, et perducat te ad vitam aeternam. Amen.” Afterwards the priest rinses his fingers in a little water, which the communicant drinks. The viaticum is given before extreme unction, a reversal of the medieval practice due to the importance of receiving the Eucharist while the mind is still clear. In the early centuries the sick, like those in health, generally received both kinds, though there are instances of the viaticum being given under one form only, sometimes the bread and sometimes, where swallowing was difficult, the wine. In times of persecution laymen occasionally carried the viaticum to the sick, a practice that persisted into the 9th century, and deacons continued to do so even after the Council of Ansa (near Lyons) in 990 restricted the function to priests.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Viburnum

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​VIBURNUM, in medicine, the dried bark of the black haw or Viburnum prunifolium, grown in India and North America. The black haw contains viburnin and valerianic, tannic, gallic, citric and malic acids. The British Pharmacopoeial preparation is the Extractum Viburni Prunifolii liquidum; the United States preparation is the fluid extract prepared from the Viburnum opulus. The physiological action of viburnum is to lower the blood pressure. In overdose it depresses the motor functions of the spinal cord and so produces loss of reflex and paralysis. Therapeutically the drug is used as an antispasmodic in dysmenorrhoea and in menorrhagia.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Viborg (Denmark)

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​VIBORG, a town of Denmark, capital of the amt (county) of its name, lying in the bleak midland district of Jutland, though the immediate situation, on the small Viborg lake, is picturesque. Pop. (1901) 8623. It has a station on the railway running east and west between Langaa and Vemb. The most notable building is the cathedral (1130–1169, restored 1864–1876). The Black Friars' church is of the 13th century, and the museum possesses specimens of the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages, also medieval antiquities. The Borgevold Park borders the lake on the site of a former castle. The industries embrace distilleries, iron foundries and manufactures of cloth. The country to the south attains to a certain degree of beauty near Lake Hald, where the ground is slightly elevated.