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

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​NIUÉ (Savage Island or Niué-Fekai, as the natives call it), an island in the South Pacific Ocean, 14 m. long by 10 m. wide, in 19° 10′ S., 169° 47, W. The entire island is an old coral reef upheaved 200 ft., honeycombed with caves and seamed with fissures. The soil, though thin, is, as in other limestone islands, very rich, and coco-nuts, tara, yams and bananas thrive. There is an abundant rainfall, but owing to the porous nature of the soil the water percolates into deep caves which have communication with the sea, and becomes brackish. The natives, a mixed Polynesian and Melanesian people of Samoan speech, are the most industrious in the Pacific, and many of the young men go as labourers to other islands. The consequent minority of men has been destructive of the sexual morality of the women, which formerly stood high. The natives are keen traders, and though uncouth in manners when compared with their nearest neighbours, the Tongans and Samoans, are friendly to Europeans. Their hostility to Captain Cook in 1774, which earned from him the name of Savage for the island, was due to their fear of foreign disease, a fear that has since been justified. The population (4079 in 1901) is slightly decreasing. The natives are all Christians, and the majority have learned to read and write, and to speak a little English, under the tuition of the London Missionary Society. They wear European clothes. The island became a British protectorate on the 20th of April 1900, and was made a dependency of New Zealand in October 1900, the native government, of an elected “king” and a council of headmen, being maintained. In 1900 there were thirteen Europeans on the island. The exports are copra, fungus and straw hats, which the women plait very cleverly.
See T. H. Hood, Notes of a Cruise in H.M.S. “Fawn” (Edinburgh, 1863); J. L. Brenchley, Jottings during the Cruise of the “Curaçao” (London, 1873); B. H. Thomson, Savage Island (London, 1902).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nitzsch, Gregor Wilhelm

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​NITZSCH, GREGOR WILHELM (1790–1861), German classical scholar, brother of Karl Immanuel Nitzsch, was born at Wittenberg on the 22nd of November 1790. In 1827 he was appointed professor of ancient literature at Kiel, but in 1852 was dismissed by the Danish government for his German sympathies. In the same year he accepted a similar post at Leipzig, which he held till his death on the 22nd of July 1861. Nitzsch is chiefly known for his writings on the Homeric epic. In opposition to Wolf and Lachmann, he maintained that the Iliad and Odyssey were not an aggregate of single short poems, but long complete poems, composed by one and the same author according to a uniform plan with a central dramatic idea.
His son, Karl Wilhelm Nitzsch (1818–1880), became professor of history at Königsberg in 1862, and at Berlin in 1872.
The most important of his works were: Erklärende Anmerkungen zu Homer's Odyssee, i.-xii. (1826–1840); Die Sagenpoesie der Griechen (1852); Beiträge zur Geschichte der epischen Poesie der Griechen (pub. 1862, ed. C. W. Nitzsch). See memoir by F. Lübker (1864); Bursian, Geschichte der klassischen Philologie in Deutschland (1883) and J. E. Sandys, Hist. of Class. Schol. iii. (1908), p. 105.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Marburg (Austria)

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​MARBURG, a town of Austria, in Styria, 41 m. S. of Graz by rail. Pop. (1900), 24,501. It is very picturesquely situated on the left bank of the river Drave, on a plain called the Pettauer-Feld, at the base of the well-wooded Bachergebirge. To the north of the town the train passes through the Leitersberg tunnel (725 yds. long), opened in 1846, while the Drave, which has here a width of 200 yds., is spanned by a magnificent iron bridge, built in 1845. The principal buildings are the cathedral, dating from the 16th century, the tower of which, erected in 1623, is 136 ft. high, and the old castle. Its situation in the midst of a fertile vine and fruit-growing district, connected by the navigable Drave with Hungary, and by railway with Vienna, Trieste, Tirol and Carinthia, makes it the centre of a considerable traffic in wine and grain. Its industrial products are leather, boots and shoes, iron and tin wares, liqueurs and sparkling wine, and it also contains the extensive workshops of the South Austrian railway. Marburg is the seat of the bishop of Lavant, and is the native town of the famous Austrian admiral, Baron Wilhelm of Tegetthoff (1827–1871). Near Marburg is the village of Mariarast, the church of which is a popular place of pilgrimage.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Rodez

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​RODEZ, a town of southern France, capital of the department of Aveyron, 51 m. N.N.E. of Albi by rail. Pop. (1906) town, 11,076; commune, 15,502. Rodez is situated on the southern border of the Causse of Rodez, on an isolated plateau bordered on the E. and S. by the river Aveyron. The cathedral was built between 1277 and 1535. A great Flamboyant rose window and a gallery in the same style are the chief features of the principal façade, which is flanked by two square towers and has no portal. Each transept has a fine Gothic doorway. On the north side of the building rises a tower (1510-1526) of imposing height (253 ft.). The three upper stages are richly decorated, and the whole is surmounted by a colossal statue of the Virgin. In the cathedral are a fine rood-loft, some good wood-carving and the tombs of several bishops. Other interesting buildings are the episcopal palace (17th and 19th centuries), flanked by a massive tower, relic of an older palace; the church of St Amans, of Romanesque architecture, restored in the 18th century; and, among other old houses, the hôtel d'Armagnac built in the Renaissance period on the site of the old palace of the counts. The ruins of a Roman amphitheatre still exist in Rodez, which is supplied with water by a Roman aqueduct. About 6 m. to the north of Rodez is the chasm of Tindoul de la Vayssière, leading to a subterranean river issuing in the springs of the picturesque village of Salles-la-Source.
The town is the seat of a bishop, a prefect and a court of assizes, and has tribunals of first instance and commerce, a chamber of commerce, a branch of the Bank of France, a lycée training college for both sexes and an ecclesiastical seminary. The industries include wool-spinning and the weaving of woollen goods.
Rodez, called Segodunum under the Gauls, and Ruthena under the Romans, was the capital of the Rutheni, a tribe allied to the Arverni, and was afterwards the principal town in the district of Rouergue. In the 4th century it adopted the Christian faith, and St Amans, its first bishop, was elected in 401. During the middle ages contests were rife between the bishops, who held the temporal power in the “cité,” and the counts in the “bourg.” The Albigenses were defeated near Rodez in 1210. The countship of Rodez, detached from that of Rouergue at the end of the 11th century, belonged first to the viscounts of Carlat, and from the beginning of the 14th century to the counts of Armagnac. From 1360 to 1368 the English held the town. After the confiscation of the estates of the Armagnacs in 1475 the count ship passed to the dukes of Alençon and then to the D’Albrets. Henry IV. finally annexed it to the crown of France.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Rodgers, John

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​RODGERS, JOHN (1771–1838), American sailor, was born in Harford county, Maryland, on the 11th of July 1771. He entered the United States navy when it was organized in 1798. He was second in command to Commodore James Barron (1769*I8SI) in the expedition against the Barbary pirates, and succeeded him in the command in 1805. In this year he brought both Tunis and Tripoli to terms, and then returned to America. In 1811 he was in command as Commodore of the U.S. frigate “President”'(44) oh" Annapolis when he heard that an American seaman had been “pressed” by a British frigate off Sandy Hook. Commodore Rodgers was ordered to sea “to protect American commerce,” but he may have had verbal instructions to retaliate for the impressment of real or supposed British subjects out of American vessels, which was causing much ill-feeling and was a main cause of the War of 1812. On the 16th of May 1811 he sighted and followed the British sloop “Little Belt” (22), and after some hailing and counter hailing, of which very different versions are given on either side, a gun was fired, each side accusing the other of the aggression, and an action ensued in which the “Little Belt” was cut to pieces. The incident, which was represented as an accident by the Americans, and believed to be a deliberate aggression by the British navy, had a share in bringing on war. When hostilities broke out Rodgers commanded a squadron on the coast of America, and was wounded by the bursting of one of his guns while pursuing the British frigate “Belvedere.” He was subsequently President of the Board of Navy Commissioners in 1815–1824 and in 1827–1837, and acting secretary of the navy in 1823 for two weeks. He died in Philadelphia on the 1st of August 1838.
His brother, George Washington Rodgers (1787–1832), a brother-in-law of Commodore Perry, served in the War of 1812 and in the war with Algiers (1815). Rear-Admiral John Rodgers (1812~1882), a son of Commodore John Rodgers, served in the Union navy and in 1877–1882 was superintendent of the Naval Observatory at Washington. G. W. Rodgers had two sons who were naval officers, Christopher Raymond Perry Rodgers (1819–1892) and George Washington Rodgers (1822–1863).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Rodomontade

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​RODOMONTADE, or Rhodomontade, a term for boastful, extravagant language or any inflated bragging speech. The word refers to the brave but boastful Saracen leader Rodomonte in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. The name (in the form Rodamante) appears earlier in Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato. It is supposed to represent a compound of rodare, to roll, and monte, mountain.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Rod

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​ ROD (O.E. rodd, probably related to Norw. rudda, stick, rodda, stake), a twig or shoot of a tree or bush, especially a straight slender stick or wand used as an instrument of punishment, as a symbol of office, or as an implement, usually composed of several joints, for angling or fishing. The term is thus applied to a metal bar, slender in proportion to its length, used as a tie, brace or connecting shaft between different parts of a machine. It is familiar in the titles, showing the colour of their wands of office, of the gentlemen ushers of the three principal British orders of knighthood, the ushers of the Garter and St Patrick being “Ushers of the Black Rod,” and of the Thistle “Green Rod.” The use of a rod as a measuring implement has given rise to the use of the word for a measure of length = 5½ yds. or 162½ ft.; this length is also named a pole or perch, the origin of the application being the same as in “rod”; as a measure of area, a rod = a square pole or perch, 30¼ square yds.= 272¼ square ft., 160 rods = 1 acre.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Rod, Édouard

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​ROD, ÉDOUARD (1857-1910), French-Swiss novelist, was born at Nyon, in Switzerland, on the 31st of March 1857. He studied at Lausanne and Berlin, and in 1878 found his way to Paris. In 1881 he dedicated his novel, Palmyre Veulard, to Zola, of whom he was at this period of his career a faithful disciple. A series of novels of similar tendency followed. In 1884 he became editor of the Revue contemporaine, and in 1887 succeeded Marc Monnier as professor of comparative literature at Geneva, where he remained till 1893. La Course à la mort (1885) marks a turning-point in his career; in it he ​forsook the so-called naturalistic novel for the analysis of moral motives. He is at his best in presenting cases of conscience, the struggle between passion and duty, and the virtues of renunciation. Le Sens de la vie (1889), one of his most famous books, is in the nature of a complement to La Course à la mort. It was followed by Les Trois cœurs (1890), La Sacrifiée (1892), La Vie privée de Michel Teissier (1893), translated as The Private Life of an Eminent Politician (1893); La Seconde Vie de Michel Teissier (1894), Le Silence (1894), Les Roches blanches (1895), Le Dernier Refuge (1896), Le Ménage du pasteur Naudié (1898), a study of Protestant France; L'Eau courante (1902), L'Inutile Effort (1903), Un Vainqueur (1904), L'Indocile (1905), and L'Incendie (1906). M. Rod's books of literary criticism include Les Idées morales du temps present (1897), an admirable Essai sur Goethe (1898), Stendhal (1892), and some columns of collected essays. He published L'Affaire J. J. Rousseau in 1906, and in the same year he drew from an episode in the life of the philosopher a play in three acts, Le Réformateur, which was produced at the Nouveau Théâtre. He died in January 1910.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Roderick

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​RODERICK, or Ruadri (d. 1198), king of Connaught and high king of Ireland, was the son of Turlough (Tordelbach) O'Connor, king of Connaught, who had obtained the overkingship in 1151, but had lost it again in 1154 through the rise of Muirchertach O'Lochlainn in Ulster. Roderick succeeded to Connaught in 1156, and after ten years' fighting won back the title of high king. His ill-advised persecution of Dermot (Diarmait MacMurchada), king of Leinster, furnished the pretext for the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland. Roderick endeavoured to expel the invaders, but was driven behind the Shannon. He delayed his submission to Henry II. until 1175, when a treaty was concluded at Windsor. Roderick, under this agreement, held Connaught as the vassal of England, and exercised lordship over all the native kings and chiefs of Ireland; in return he undertook to pay an annual tribute. The treaty did not put an end to the wars of the Norman adventurers against Connaught and Roderick's dependants. He held out till 1191; but then, weary of strife, retired to the cloister. He died in 1198, the last of the high kings of Ireland.
See Giraldus Cambrensis, Opera, vol. v. (Rolls Series); G. Orpen's Song of Dermot and the Earl (1892); W. Stubbs's edition of Benedictus Abbas (Rolls Series); Miss K. Norgate's England under the Angevin Kings, vol. ii. (1887).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Shirley, William

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SHIRLEY, WILLIAM (1694-1771), colonial governor of Massachusetts, was born at Preston in Sussex, England, on the 2nd of December 1694. He studied law, entered the Middle Temple, emigrated to Massachusetts in 1731, was appointed “the King's only advocate-general in America” (i.e. of all New England except Connecticut) in 1734, and in 1741, while representing Massachusetts in a boundary dispute with Rhode Island, was appointed governor. His efforts to secure a permanent fixed salary for himself (of £1000) were unsuccessful; and his attempt to prevent the further issue of paper money also involved him in a controversy with the General Court; but their relations were not unfriendly after 1743. The most important event of his administration was the conquest of Louisburg in 1745. The expedition was undertaken on his suggestion and its success was largely due to his energy and enthusiasm; in September 1749 £183,650 (English) in coin was brought to Boston to cover the outlay of Massachusetts, and largely through Shirley's influence this was used for the redemption of outstanding paper money, thus re-establishing the finances of the province, a subject to
which Shirley had given much attention. Both in the colonies and in England, whither he returned in 1749 on leave of absence, Shirley kept up an active agitation for the expulsion of the French from the whole of Canada. He went back to Massachusetts as governor in 1753; led an unsuccessful expedition against Fort Niagara in 1755, and after the death of General Edward Braddock (1755) until June 1756 was commander-in-chief of all the British forces in America. In September 1756 he was recalled to England and was succeeded as governor by Spencer Phips. He was governor of the Bahamas until 1770, then again returned to Massachusetts and died at Roxbury on the 24th of March 1771. He published a Journal of the Siege of Louisbourg (1745), and The Conduct of General William Shirley Briefly Stated (1758).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Shiré

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​SHIRÉ, a river of East Central Africa, the only tributary of the Zambezi navigable from the sea. The Shiré (length about 370 m.) issues from the southernmost point of Lake Nyasa and almost immediately enters a shallow sheet of water called Malombe or (Pa-Malombe), 18 m. broad and 12 or 13 m. long. A shifting bar of sand obstructs the end of Malombe nearest Nyasa, but does not prevent navigation. Below Malombe the bed of the Shiré deepens. The river flows through a mountainous country, and in its descent to the Zambezi valley forms rapids and cataracts, rendering its middle course for a distance of 60 m. unnavigable. The most southern and the finest of these cataracts is called the Murchison Cataract or Falls, after Sir Roderick Murchison, the geologist, who identified himself during the mid-Victorian epoch with geographical exploration in Africa. In passing the cataracts the Shiré falls 1200 ft. From the station called Katunga, a short distance below the cataracts, shallow draught steamers can navigate the river when in flood (January–March) to its junction with the Zambezi, and thence proceed to the Chinde mouth of the main stream. About 130 m. above its confluence with the Zambezi the Shiré is joined from the east by a smaller stream, the Ruo river, whose headwaters rise in Mount Mlanje. At the junction of the Ruo and Shiré is the town of Chiromo, and here is an extensive swampy region and game reserve known as the Elephant Marsh. The scenery of the lower Shiré is very picturesque, the spurs of the plateau forming bold, rocky crags overhanging the water. The river is studded with small islands usually covered by thick grass. A little before the Zambezi is reached the country becomes flat. The Shiré joins the main river in about 35° 25′ E., 17° 50′ S., at a point where the Zambezi is of great width and presents in the dry season many narrow winding channels, not more than 3 ft. deep, with intervening sandbanks.
The lower part of the Shiré is in Portuguese territory; the upper part is in the British Nyasaland Protectorate, to which it ​is the natural highway. At the lowest point in British territory, on the West bank of the river, is Port Herald, whence a. railway runs past Chiromo to Blantyre. Below Port Herald the Shiré is navigable all the year round.
See Zambezi and British Central Africa.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Shire

See also Shire on Wikipedia; Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies, 1884, page 40, line 32; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​SHIRE, one of the larger administrative divisions, in Great Britain, now generally synonymous with “county ” (q.v.), but the word is still used of smaller districts, such as Richmondshire and Hallamshire in Yorkshire, Norhamshire and Hexhamshire in Northumberland. The Anglo-Saxon shire (O. Eng. scir) was an administrative division next above the hundred and was presided over by the ealdorman and the sheriff (the shire-reeve). The word scir, according to Skeat (Etym. Dict., 1910), meant originally office, charge, administration; thus in a vocabulary of the 8th century (Wright-Wülcker, Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies, 1884, 40-32) is found procuratio, sciir. Skeat compares O. Eng. scirian, to distribute, appoint, Ger. Schirrmeister, steward. The usual derivation of the word connects it with “shear” and “share,” and makes the original meaning to have been a part cut off.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Shirreff, Emily Anne Eliza

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​SHIRREFF, EMILY ANNE ELIZA (1814–1897), English pioneer in the higher education for women, was born on the 3rd of November 1814, the daughter of a rear-admiral. Both she and her sister Maria (Mrs William Grey) took a keen interest in bettering women's equipment for educational work, and, in 1858, she published Intellectual Education and its Influence on the Character and Happiness of Women. Before that the sisters had written in collaboration a novel, Passion and Principle (1841), marked with that serious sense of the deficiencies in women's education, to remedy which they did so much, and Thoughts on Self-Culture addressed to Women (1850). In 1869 Emily Shirreff was for a short time honorary mistress of Girton College, and she served for many years on the council of that institution and of the Girls' Public Day School Company. She took a leading part in establishing and developing the Maria Grey Training College for teachers and in the work of the Froebel Society, of which she was the president. She was a firm believer in Froebel's system and wrote a short memoir of him, and several books on kindergarten methods. She died in London on the 20th of March 1897.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Shirt

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​SHIRT, an undergarment of linen, silk, cotton and flannel for the upper part of the body, usually only applied to such a. garment when worn by men, 'though the term is becoming common as used of a plain form of blouse worn by women, the American “ shirt-waist.” The word is apparently Scandinavian in origin and is an adaptation of the Icel. skyrte, Dan. skiorte, properly a short garment, and is derived from the root skar—to cut off; it is cognate with Ger. Schurz, apron, and the same root is seen in “short,” “shear” and “skirt”; the last word is now used of that part of a woman's garment which reaches from the waist to the feet, but properly means the lower part of the shirt, hence, edge, border of anything.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Shirvan

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​SHIRVAN, a small district of the great province of Khorasan in Persia, N.W. of Meshed and W. of Kuchan. It is under the jurisdiction of Kuchan and comprises the town of the same name and twelve villages with a population of 12,000. It produces cotton, wheat and a little silk. Shirvan, the capital, is situated on the river Atrek, in 37° 24′ N., 57° 56′ E. at an elevation of 3500 ft. Its inhabitants are of the Turkish Garai'i tribe and number about 7000. There are post and telegraph offices.