OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ménant, Joachim

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​MÉNANT, JOACHIM (1820–1899), French magistrate and orientalist, was born at Cherbourg on the 16th of April 1820. He was educated for the law, and became vice-president of the civil tribunal of Rouen in 1878, and a member of the cour d’appel three years later. But he became best known by his studies on the cuneiform inscriptions. Among his works on the subject of Assyriology are: Recueil d’alphabets des écritures cunéiformes (1860); Exposé des éléments de la grammaire assyrienne (1868); Le Syllabaire assyrien (2 vols., 1869–1873); Les Langues perdues de la Perse et de l’Assyrie (2 vols., 1885–1886); Les Pierres gravées de la Haute-Asie (2 vols., 1883–1886). He also collaborated with Julius Oppert. He was admitted to the Academy of Inscriptions in 1887, and died in Paris on the 30th of August 1899.
His daughter Delphine (b. 1850) received a prize from the Academy for her Les Parsis, histoire des communautés zoroastriennes de l’Inde (1898), and was sent in 1900–1901 to British India on a scientific mission, of which she published a report in 1903.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ménier, Emile Justin

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​MÉNIER, EMILE JUSTIN (1826–1881), French manufacturer and politician, was born at Paris in 1826. In 1853, on the death of his father, Antoine Brutus Ménier, he became proprietor of a large drug factory, founded in 1815 by the latter at Saint Denis, Paris, and in 1825 at Noisiel-sur-Marne. Antoine Brutus Ménier had also manufactured chocolate in a small way, but Emile Justin from the first devoted himself specially to chocolate. He purchased cocoa-growing estates in Nicaragua and beet-fields in France, erected a sugar-mill, and equipped himself in other ways for the production of chocolate on a large scale. In 1864 he sold his interest in the drug-manufacturing business, and thenceforth confined himself to chocolate, building up an immense trade. Ménier was a keen politician, and from 1876 till his death had a seat in the French Chamber, his general views being strongly Republican, while he consistently opposed protection. He was the author of several works on fiscal and economic questions, notably L’Impôt sur le capital (1872), La Réforme fiscale (1872), Économie rurale (1875), L’Avenir économique (1875–1878), Atlas de la production de la richesse (1878). He died at Noisiel-sur-Marne in 1881, his sons succeeding to the business.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mérida (Mexico)

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​MÉRIDA, a city of Mexico and capital of the state of Yucatan, 23 m. by rail S. of Progreso, its port on the Gulf of Mexico. Pop. (1900), 43,630, the Maya element being predominant. Mérida is the centre of an isolated railway system, connected with the ports of Progreso and Campeche, and having short lines radiating in all directions to Peto, Valladolid and Izamal. It stands on a broad, partly open plain near the northern border of the peninsula, where the thin loose soil covering a limestone foundation permits the rapid percolation and evaporation of the rainfall, and therefore supports a comparatively scanty vegetation. It is highly favourable to maguey cultivation, however, and Mérida is the centre of the henequén, or sisal fibre, industry. There is an imposing 16th-century cathedral facing upon the principal plaza, together with the government and episcopal palaces. There are also an old university, with schools of law, medicine and pharmacy, an episcopal seminary and other educational institutions. The most interesting building in the city is a Franciscan convent, dating from 1547, which covers an area of 6 acres and is surrounded by a wall 40 ft. high and 8 ft. thick. It once harboured no less than 2000 friars, but has been allowed to fall into complete decay since the expulsion of the order in 1820. The manufactures include straw hats, hammocks, cigars, soap, cotton fabrics, leather goods, artificial stone, and a peculiar distilled beverage called estabentun. The exports are henequén, or sisal fibre, hides, sugar, rum, chicle and indigo—all products of the vicinity. Mérida was founded in 1542 by the younger Francisco de Montejo on the site of a native city called Tihoo, or Thó, whose stone pyramids furnished building material in abundance for the invaders. It became an episcopal see in 1561.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ménard, Louis Nicolas

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​MÉNARD, LOUIS NICOLAS (1822–1901), French man of letters, was born in Paris on the 19th of October 1822. His versatile genius occupied itself in turn with chemistry, poetry, painting and history. In 1843 he published, under the pseudonym of L. de Senneville, a translation of Prométhée délivré. Turning to chemistry, he discovered collodion in 1846, but its value was not recognized at the time; and its application later to surgery and photography brought him no advantage. Louis Ménard was a socialist, always in advance of the reform movements of his time. After 1848 he was condemned to imprisonment for his Prologue d’une révolution. He escaped to London, returning to Paris only in 1852. Until 1860 he occupied himself with classical studies, the fruits of which are to be seen in his Poèmes (1855), Polythéisme hellénique (1863), and two academic theses, De sacra poesi graecorum and La Morale avant les philosophes (1860). The next ten years Ménard spent chiefly among the Barbizon artists, and he exhibited several pictures. He was in London at the time of the Commune, and defended it with his pen. In 1887 he became professor at the École des Arts décoratifs, and in 1895 professor of universal history at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris. His Rêveries d’un païen mystique (1876), which contained sonnets, philosophical dialogues and some stories, was followed in 1896 by Poëmes et rêveries d’un païen mystique. Ménard died in Paris on the 12th of February 1901.
His works include: Histoire des anciens peuples de l’Orient (1882); Histoire des Israélites d’après l’exégèse biblique (1883), and Histoire des Grecs (1884–1886). There is an appreciation of Ménard in the opening chapter of Maurice Barrès’s Voyage de Sparte.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mérida (Spain)

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​MÉRIDA (anc. Augusta Emerita, capital of Lusitania), a town of western Spain, in the province of Badajoz, on the right bank of the river Guadiana, 30 m. E. of Badajoz. Pop. (1900), 11,168. Mérida is an important railway junction, for here the Madrid-Badajoz railway meets the lines from Seville, Huelva and Cáceres. No Spanish town is richer in Roman antiquities. Most of these are beyond the limits of modern Mérida, which is greatly inferior in area to the ancient city. Chief among them is the Roman bridge, constructed of granite under Trajan, or, according to some authorities, under Augustus, and restored by the Visigoths in 686 and by Philip III. in 1610. It comprised 81 arches, 17 of which were destroyed during the siege of Badajoz (1812), and measured 2575 ft. in length. There are a few remnants of Roman temples and of the colossal wall which encircled the city, besides a Roman triumphal arch, commonly called the Arco de Santiago, and a second Roman bridge, by which the road to Salamanca was carried across the small river Albarregas (Alba Regia). The Moorish alcázar or citadel was originally the chief Roman fort. From the Lago de Proserpina, or Charca de la Albuera, a large Roman reservoir, 3 m. north, water was conveyed to Mérida by an aqueduct, of which 37 enormous piers remain standing, with ten arches in three tiers built of brick and granite. The massive Roman theatre is in good preservation; there are also a few vestiges of an amphitheatre and of a circus which measured 485 yds. by 120. Other Roman remains are exhibited in the archaeological museum, and much Roman masonry is incorporated in the 16th century Mudéjar palace of the dukes of La Roca, the palace of the counts of Los Corbos, and the convent of Santa Eulalia, which is said by tradition to mark the spot where St Eulalia was martyred (c. 300).
Augusta Emerita was founded in 25 B.C. As the capital of Lusitania it soon became one of the most splendid cities in Iberia, and was large enough to contain a garrison of 90,000 men. Under the Visigoths it continued to prosper, and was made an archbishopric. Its fortifications included five castles and eighty-four gateways; but after a stubborn resistance it was stormed by the Moors in 713. Its Moorish governors frequently, and sometimes successfully, asserted their independence, but Mérida was never the capital of any large Moorish state. In 1129 its archbishopric was formally transferred to Santiago de Compostela, and in 1228, when Alphonso IX. of Leon expelled the Moors, Mérida was entrusted to the order of Santiago, in whose keeping it soon sank into decadence.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mézeray, François Eudes de

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​MÉZERAY, FRANÇOIS EUDES DE (1610–1683), French historian, was born at Rye near Argentan, where his father was a surgeon. He had two brothers, one of whom, Jean Eudes, was the founder of the order of the Eudists. François studied at the university of Caen, and completed his education at the college of Ste Barbe at Paris. His Histoire de France depuis Faramond jusqu’ à Louis le Juste (3 vols., 1643–1651), is a fairly accurate summary of French and Latin chronicles. Mézeray was appointed historiographer of France, and in 1649, on the death of Vincent Voiture, was admitted to the Académie Française. His Abrégé chronologique (3 vols., 1667–1668) went through fifteen editions between 1668 and 1717; but he did not hesitate in this work to attack the financiers, with the result that his salary as historiographer was diminished by Colbert. Mézeray succeeded Conrart as permanent secretary to the Académie Française (1675), and died at Paris on the 10th of July 1683. He translated Grotius’s Traité de la religion chrétienne (1640), and a Histoire des Turcs depuis 1612 jusqu’en 1649 (1650), which is an addition to a continuation of Chalcondyles.
See Daniel de Larroque, Vie de François Eudes de Mézeray (1720); vol. xiii. of Causeries du lundi by Sainte-Beuve, and Levavasseur’s Notice sur les trois frères: Jean Eudes, François Eudes, et Charles Eudes (1855).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mure, Sir William

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​MURE, SIR WILLIAM (1594–1657), Scottish writer, son of Sir William Mure of Rowallan, was born in 1594. His mother was Elizabeth, sister of the poet Alexander Montgomerie (q.v.). He was a member of the Scottish parliament in 1643, and took part in the English campaign of 1644. He was wounded at Marston Moor, but a month later was commanding a regiment at Newcastle. He died in 1657. He wrote Dido and Aeneas; a translation (1628) of Boyd of Trochrig’s Latin Hecatombe Christiana; The True Crucifixe for True Catholikes (1629); a paraphrase of the Psalms; the Historie and Descent of the House of Rowallane; A Counter-buff to Lysimachus Nicanor; The Cry of Blood and of a Broken Covenant (1650); besides much miscellaneous verse and many sonnets.
A complete edition of his works was edited by William Tough for the Scottish Text Society (2 vols., 1898). Mure’s Lute-Book, a musical document of considerable interest, is preserved in the Laing collection of MSS. in the library of the university of Edinburgh.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Murdock, William

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MURDOCK, WILLIAM (1754-1839), British inventor, was born near the village of Auchinleck in Ayrshire on the 21st of August 1754. His father, John Murdoch (as the name is spelt in Scotland), was a millwright and a miller, and William was brought up in the same occupation. In 1777 he entered the employment of Boulton & Watt in the Soho works at Birmingham, and about two years afterwards he was sent to Cornwall to superintend the fitting of Watt's engines. It is said that while staying at Redruth he carried a series of experiments in the distillation of coal so far that in 1792 he was able to light his cottage and offices with gas, but the evidence is not conclusive. However, after his return to Birmingham about 1799, he made such progress in the discovery of practical methods for making, storing and purifying gas that in 1802 a portion of the exterior of the Soho factory was lighted with in celebration of the peace of Amiens, and in the following year it was brought into use for the interior. Murdock was also the inventor of important improvements in the steam-engine. He was the first to devise an oscillating engine, of which he made a model about 1784; in 1786 he was busy—somewhat to the annoyance of both Boulton and Watt—with a steam carriage or road locomotive; and in 1799 he invented the long D slide valve. He is also believed have been the real deviser of the sun and planet motion patented by Watt in 1781. In addition his ingenuity was directed to the utilization of compressed air, and in 1803 he constructed a steam gun. He retired from business in 1830, and died at Soho on the 15th of November 1839.
At the celebration of the centenary of gas lighting in 1892, a bust of Murdock was unveiled by Lord Kelvin in the Wallace Monument, Stirling, and there is also a bust of him by Sir F. L. Chantrey at Handsworth Church, where he was buried. His "Account of the Application of Gas from Coal for Economic Purposes" appeared in the Phil.Trans. for 1808.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mure, William

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​MURE, WILLIAM (1799–1860), Scottish classical scholar, was born at Caldwell, Ayrshire, on the 9th of July 1799. He was educated at Westminster School and the universities of Edinburgh and Bonn. From 1846 to 1855 he represented the county of Renfrew in parliament in the Conservative interest, and was lord rector of Glasgow University in 1847–1848. For many years he devoted his leisure to Greek studies, and in 1850–1857 he published five volumes of a Critical History of the Language and Literature of Ancient Greece, which, though uncompleted and somewhat antiquated, is still useful. He died in London on the first of April 1860.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Murfreesboro

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​MURFREESBORO, a city and the county-seat of Rutherford county, Tennessee, U.S.A., near the Stone River, 32 m. S.E. of Nashville. Pop. (1890), 3739; (1900), 3999 (2248 negroes); (1910), 4679. It is served by the Nashville Chattanooga & St Louis railway. It is in an agricultural region where cotton is an important crop, and has a considerable trade in red cedar, hardwood, cotton, livestock and grain; it has also various manufactures. At Murfreesboro are Soule College for girls (Methodist Episcopal South; 1852), Tennessee College for girls (Baptist, 1906), Mooney School for boys (1901), and Bradley Academy for negroes. Murfreesboro was settled in 1811; was incorporated in 1817, and from 1819 to 1825 was the capital of the state. It was named in honour of Colonel Hardy Murfree (1752–1809), a native of North Carolina, who served as an officer of North Carolina troops in the War of Independence, and after 1807 lived in Tennessee. About 2 m. west of the city the battle of Murfreesboro, or Stone River (q.v.), was fought on the 31st of December 1862 and the 2nd of January 1863.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Murder

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​MURDER, in law, the unlawful killing of a person with malice aforethought (see Homicide). The O. Eng. morðor comes ultimately from the Indo-European root mar–, to die, which has also given Lat. mors, death, and all its derivatives in English, French and other Rom. languages; cf. Gr. βροτός, for μορτός, mortal. The O. Eng. form, Latinized as murdrum, murtrum, whence Fr. meurtre, is represented in other Teutonic languages by a cognate form, e.g. Ger. Mord, Du. moord.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Murena

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​MURENA, the name of a Roman plebeian family from Lanuvium, belonging to the Licinian gens, said to be derived from the fondness of one of the family for lampreys (murenae). The principal members of the family were Lucius Licinius Murena, who was defeated by Mithradates in Asia in 81 B.C., and his son Lucius Licinius Murena, who was defended by Cicero in 62 B.C. against a charge of bribery (Cic. Pro Murena). The son was for several years legate of Lucius Licinius Lucullus in the third Mithradatic War. In 65 he was praetor and made himself popular by the magnificence of the games provided by him. As administrator of Transalpine Gaul after his praetorship he gained the goodwill of both provincials and Romans by his impartiality. In 62 he was elected consul, but before entering upon office he was accused of bribery by Servius Sulpicius, an unsuccessful competitor, supported by Marcus Porcius Cato the younger and Servius Sulpicius Rufus, a famous jurist and son of the accuser. Murena was defended by Marcus Licinius Crassus (afterwards triumvir), Quintus Hortensius and Cicero, and acquitted, although it seems probable that he was guilty. During his consulship he passed a law (lex Junia Licinia) which enforced more strictly the provision of the lex Caecilia Didia—that laws should be promulgated three nundinae before they were proposed to the comitia, and further enacted that, in order to prevent forgery, a copy of every proposed statute should be deposited before witnesses in the aerarium.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Muretus

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​MURETUS, the Latinized name of Marc Antoine Muret (1526–1585), French humanist, who was born at Muret near Limoges on the 12th of April 1526. At the age of eighteen he attracted the notice of the elder Scaliger, and was invited to lecture in the archiepiscopal college at Auch. He afterwards taught Latin at Villeneuve, and then at Bordeaux. Some time before 1552 he delivered a course of lectures in the college of Cardinal Lemoine at Paris, which was largely attended, Henry II. and his queen being among his hearers. His success made him many enemies, and he was thrown into prison on a disgraceful charge, but released by the intervention of powerful friends. The same accusation was brought against him at Toulouse, and he only saved his life by timely flight. The records of the town show that he was burned in effigy as a Huguenot and as shamefully immoral (1554). After a wandering and insecure life of some years in Italy, he received and accepted the invitation of the Cardinal Ippolyte d’Este to settle in Rome in 1559. In 1561 he revisited France as a member of the cardinal’s suite at the conference between Roman Catholics and Protestants held at Poissy. He returned to Rome in 1563. His lectures gained him a European reputation, and in 1578 he received a tempting offer from the king of Poland to become teacher of jurisprudence in his new college at Cracow. Muretus, however, who about 1576 had taken holy orders, was induced by the liberality of Gregory XIII. to remain in Rome, where he died on the 4th of June 1585.
Complete editions of his works: editio princeps, Verona (1727–1730); by D. Ruhnken (1789), by C. H. Frotscher (1834–1841); two volumes of Scripta selecta, by J. Frey (1871); Variae lectiones, by F. A. Wolf and J. H. Fäsi (1791–1828). Muretus edited a number of classical authors with learned and scholarly notes. His other works include Juvenilia et poemata varia, orationes and epistolae.
See monograph by C. Dejob (Paris, 1881); E. Sandys, Hist. Class. Schol., (2nd ed., 1908), ii. 148–152.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Murexide

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​MUREXIDE (NH$_4$·C$_8$H$_4$N$_5$O$_6$,H$_2$O), the ammonium salt of purpuric acid. It may be prepared by heating alloxantin in ammonia gas to 100° C., or by boiling uramil with mercuric oxide (J. v. Liebig, F. Wöhler, Ann., 1838, 26, 319), 2C$_4$H$_5$N$_3$O$_3$+O＝NH$_4$·C$_8$H$_4$N$_5$O$_6$+H$_2$O. W. N. Hartley (Jour. Chem. Soc., 1905, 87, 1791) found considerable difficulty in obtaining specimens of murexide sufficiently pure to give concordant results when examined by means of their absorption spectra, and consequently devised a new method of preparation for murexide. In this process alloxantin is dissolved in a large excess of boiling absolute alcohol, and dry ammonia gas is passed into the solution for about three hours. The solution is then filtered from the precipitated murexide, which is washed with absolute alcohol and dried. The salt obtained in this way is in the anhydrous state. It may also be prepared by digesting alloxan with alcoholic ammonia at about 78° C.; the purple solid so formed is easily soluble in water, and the solution produced is indistinguishable from one of murexide,
On the constitution of murexide see also O. Piloty (Ann., 1904, 333, 30); R. Mohlau (Ber., 1904, 37, 2686); and M. Slimmer and J. Stieglitz (Amer. Chem. Jour., 1904, 31, 661).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Herbelot de Molainville, Barthélemy d'

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​HERBELOT DE MOLAINVILLE, BARTHÉLEMY D’ (1625–1695), French orientalist, was born on the 14th of December 1625 at Paris. He was educated at the university of Paris, and devoted himself to the study of oriental languages, going to Italy to perfect himself in them by converse with the orientals who frequented its sea-ports. There he also made the acquaintance of Holstenius, the Dutch humanist (1596–1661), and Leo Allatius, the Greek scholar (1586–1669). On his return to France after a year and a half, he was received into the house of Fouquet, superintendent of finance, who gave him a pension of 1500 livres. Losing this on the disgrace of Fouquet in 1661, he was appointed secretary and interpreter of Eastern languages to the king. A few years later he again visited Italy, when the grand-duke Ferdinand II. of Tuscany presented him with a large number of valuable Oriental MSS., and tried to attach him to his court. Herbelot, however, was recalled to France by Colbert, and received from the king a pension equal to the one he had lost. In 1692 he succeeded D’Auvergne in the chair of Syriac, in the Collège de France. He died in Paris on the 8th of December 1695. His great work is the Bibliothèque orientale, ou dictionnaire universel contenant tout ce qui regarde la connaissance des peuples de l’Orient, which occupied him nearly all his life, and was completed in 1697 by A. Galland. It is based on the immense Arabic dictionary of Hadji Khalfa, of which indeed it is largely an abridged translation, but it also contains the substance of a vast number of other Arabic and Turkish compilations and manuscripts.
The Bibliothèque was reprinted at Maestricht (fol. 1776), and at the Hague (4 vols. 4to, 1777–1799). The latter edition is enriched with the contributions of the Dutch orientalist Schultens, Johann Jakob Reiske (1716–1774), and by a supplement provided by Visdelow and Galland. Herbelot’s other works, none of which have been published, comprise an Oriental Anthology, and an Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Latin Dictionary.