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

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​LEDBURY, a market town in the Ross parliamentary division of Herefordshire, England, 141/2 m. E. of Hereford by the Great Western railway, pleasantly situated on the south-western slope of the Malvern Hills. Pop. of urban district (1901) 3259. Cider and agricultural produce are the chief articles of trade, and there are limestone quarries in the neighbouring hills. The town contains many picturesque examples of timbered houses, characteristic of the district, the principal being the Market House (1633) elevated on massive pillars of oak. The fine church of St Michael exhibits all the Gothic styles, the most noteworthy features being the Norman chancel and west door, and the remarkable series of ornate Decorated windows on the north side. Among several charities is the hospital of St Catherine, founded by Foliot, bishop of Hereford, in 1232. Hope End, 2 m. N.E. of Ledbury, was the residence of Elizabeth Barrett Browning during her early life. A clock-tower in the town commemorates her.
Wall Hills Camp, supposed to be of British origin, is the earliest evidence of a settlement near Ledbury (Liedeburge, Lidebury). The manor was given to the see of Hereford in the 11th century; but in 1561–1562 became crown property. As early as 1170–1171 an episcopal castle existed in Ledbury. The town was not incorporated, but was early called a borough; and in 1295 and 1304–1305 returned two members to parliament. A fair on the day of the decollation of John the Baptist was granted to the bishop in 1249. Of fairs which survived in 1792 those of the days of St Philip and St James and St Barnabas were granted in 1584–1585; those held on the Monday before Easter and St Thomas’s day were reputed ancient, but not those of the 12th of May, the 22nd of June, the 2nd of October and the 21st of December. Existing fairs are on the second Tuesday in every month and in October. A weekly market, granted to the bishop by Stephen, John and Henry III., was obsolete in 1584–1585, when the present market of Tuesday was authorized. The wool trade was considerable in the 14th century; later Ledbury was inhabited by glovers and clothiers. The town was deeply involved in the operations of the Civil Wars, being occupied both by the royalist leader Prince Rupert and by the Parliamentarian Colonel Birch.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lectoure

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​LECTOURE, a town of south-western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Gers, 21 m. N. of Auch on the Southern railway between that city and Agen. Pop. (1906), town, 2426; commune, 4310. It stands on the right bank of the Gers, overlooking the river from the summit of a steep plateau. The church of St Gervais and St Protais was once a cathedral. The massive tower which flanks it on the north belongs to the 15th century; the rest of the church dates from the 13th, 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. The hôtel de ville, the sous-préfecture and the museum occupy the palace of the former bishops, which was once the property of Marshal Jean Lannes, a native of the town. A recess in the wall of an old house contains the Fontaine de Houndélie, a spring sheltered by a double archway of the 13th century. At the bottom of the hill a church of the 16th century marks the site of the monastery of St Gény. Lectoure has a tribunal of first instance and a communal college. Its industries include distilling, the manufacture of wooden shoes and biscuits, and market gardening; it has trade in grain, cattle, wine and brandy.
Lectoure, capital of the Iberian tribe of the Lactorates and for a short time of Novempopulania, became the seat of a bishopric in the 4th century. In the 11th century the counts of Lomagne made it their capital, and on the union of Lomagne with Armagnac, in 1325, it became the capital of the counts of Armagnac. In 1473 Cardinal Jean de Jouffroy besieged the town on behalf of Louis XI. and after its fall put the whole population to the sword. In 1562 it again suffered severely at the hands of the Catholics under Blaise de Montluc.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lector

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​LECTOR, or Reader, a minor office-bearer in the Christian Church. From an early period men have been set apart, under the title of anagnostae, lectores, or readers, for the purpose of reading Holy Scripture in church. We do not know what the custom of the Church was in the first two centuries, the earliest reference to readers, as an order, occurring in the writings of Tertullian (De praescript. haeret. cap. 41); there are frequent allusions to them in the writings of St Cyprian and afterwards. Cornelius, bishop of Rome in A.D. 251–252, in a well-known letter mentions readers among the various church orders then existing at Rome. In the Apostolic Church Order (canon 19), mention is made of the qualifications and duties of a reader, but no reference is made to their method of ordination. In the Apostolic Didascalia there is recognition of three minor orders of men, subdeacons, readers and singers, in addition to two orders of women, deaconesses and widows. A century later, in the Apostolic Constitutions, we find not only a recognition of readers, but also a form of admission provided for them, consisting of the imposition of hands and prayer (lib. viii. cap. 22). In Africa the imposition of hands was not in use, but a Bible was handed to the newly appointed reader with words of commission to read it, followed by a prayer and a benediction (Fourth Council of Carthage, can. 8). This is the ritual of the Roman Church of to-day. With regard to age, the novels of Justinian (No. 123) forbade any one to be admitted to the office of reader under the age of eighteen.  (F. E. W.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ledger

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​LEDGER (from the English dialect forms liggen or leggen, to lie or lay; in sense adapted from the Dutch substantive legger), properly a book remaining regularly in one place, and so used of the copies of the Scriptures and service books kept in a church. The New English Dictionary quotes from Charles Wriothesley’s Chronicle, 1538 (ed. Camden Soc., 1875, by W. D. Hamilton), “the curates should provide a booke of the bible in Englishe, of the largest volume, to be a lidger in the same church for the parishioners to read on.” It is an application of this original meaning that is found in the commercial usage of the term for the principal book of account in a business house (see Book-Keeping). Apart from these applications to various forms of books, the word is used of the horizontal timbers in a scaffold (q.v.) lying parallel to the face of a building, which support the “put logs”; of a flat stone to cover a grave; and of a stationary form of tackle and bait in angling. In the form “lieger” the term was formerly frequently applied to a “resident,” as distinguished from an “extraordinary” ambassador.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ledyard, John

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​LEDYARD, JOHN (1751–1789), American traveller, was born in Groton, Connecticut, U.S.A. After vainly trying law and theology, Ledyard adopted a seaman’s life, and, coming to London, was engaged as corporal of marines by Captain Cook for his third voyage (1776). On his return (1778) Ledyard had to give up to the Admiralty his copious journals, but afterwards published, from memory, a meagre narrative of his experiences—herein giving the only account of Cook’s death by an eye-witness (Hartford, U.S.A., 1783). He continued in the British service till 1782, when he escaped, off Long Island. In 1784 he revisited Europe, to organize an expedition to the American North-West. Having failed in his attempts, he decided to reach his goal by travelling across Europe and Asia. Baffled in his hopes of crossing the Baltic on the ice (Stockholm to Abo), he walked right round from Stockholm to St Petersburg, where he arrived barefoot and penniless (March 1787). Here he made friends with Pallas and others, and accompanied Dr Brown, a Scotch physician in the Russian service, to Siberia. Ledyard left Dr Brown at Barnaul, went on to Tomsk and Irkutsk, visited Lake Baikal, and descended the Lena to Yakutsk (18th of September 1787). With Captain Joseph Billings, whom he had known on Cook’s “Resolution,” he returned to Irkutsk, where he was arrested, deported to the Polish frontier, and banished from Russia for ever. Reaching London, he was engaged by Sir Joseph Banks and the African Association to explore overland routes from Alexandria to the Niger, but in Cairo he succumbed to a dose of vitriol (17th of January 1789). Though a born explorer, little resulted from his immense but ill-directed activities.
See Memoirs of the Life and Travels of John Ledyard, by Jared Sparks (1828).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lee

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​LEE. (1) (In O. Eng. hléo; cf. the pronunciation lew-ward of “leeward”; the word appears in several Teutonic languages; cf. Dutch lij, Dan. lae), properly a shelter or protection, chiefly used as a nautical term for that side of a ship, land, &c., which is farthest from the wind, hence a “lee shore,” land under the lee of a ship, i.e. one on which the wind blows directly and which is unsheltered. A ship is said to make “leeway” when she drifts laterally away from her course. (2) A word now always used in the plural “lees,” meaning dregs, sediment, particularly of wine. It comes through the O. Fr. lie from a Gaulish Lat. lia, and is probably of Celtic origin.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Milford Haven

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​MILFORD HAVEN, a market town, seaport, urban district and contributory parliamentary borough of Pembrokeshire, Wales, situated on the north shore of the celebrated harbour of the same name. Pop. (1901), 5102, including the adjacent village of Hakin. Milford Haven is the terminus of a branch-line of the South Wales section of the Great Western railway. The town possesses a pier and important dock accommodation, including a graving-dock 600 ft. long, and is the centre of a valuable and increasing fishing industry. The promenade of Hamilton Terrace commands a fine view of the broad expanse of the Haven with its various towns and forts.
The present town of Milford Haven, originally a hamlet in the parish of Steynton, is of modern growth, and was first called into existence by the exertions of the Hon. R. F. Greville, nephew of Sir William Hamilton, who in 1790 laid out a town on this spot, the advantages of which as a convenient port for the Irish traffic he clearly recognized. In the opening years of the 19th century a royal dockyard was established here, but in 1814 dockyard and arsenal were removed to Paterchurch near Pembroke. The growth of the town was further checked twenty years later by the development of Neyland, or New Milford, further east on the Haven, whither the Irish packet service was transferred; but towards the close of the 19th century the town recovered much of its former prosperity. The importance of the place is wholly due to its excellent situation on the splendid land-locked harbour, which is here 2 m. broad.
Milford Haven itself, designated by the Welsh Aberdaugleddau, as the estuary of the united East and West Cleddy rivers, has played an important part on several occasions in the course of history. Throughout Plantagenet times it formed the chief point of embarcation for Ireland. It was from Milford Haven that Henry II. set sail for the conquest of Ireland in 1172, and to this harbour he made his return journey. In 1399 Richard II. landed at Milford Haven from Ireland, shortly before his surrender to Henry of Lancaster, afterwards Henry IV., in whose reign a French fleet with 12,000 men on board sailed to the Haven and disembarked with the object of assisting the rebellion of Owen Glendower. In 1485 Henry, earl of Richmond, disembarked here on his return from France, and was welcomed on landing by Sir Rhys ap Thomas and much of the chivalry of Wales. In 1588 the leading persons of Pembrokeshire, with Bishop Anthony Rudd of St David’s at their head, petitioned Queen Elizabeth to fortify the Haven against the projected Spanish invasion, upon which the block-houses of Dale and Nangle at either side of the mouth of the harbour were accordingly erected. During the 19th century numerous forts have been constructed for the protection of the Haven and of the royal dockyard at Pembroke Dock.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Milanesi, Gaetano

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​MILANESI, GAETANO (1813–1895), Italian scholar and writer on the history of art, was born at Siena, where he studied law, and in 1838 he obtained an appointment in the public library. In 1856 he was elected member of the Accademia della Crusca, in which capacity he took part in the compilation of its famous but still unfinished dictionary, and two years later was appointed assistant keeper of the Tuscan archives, in Florence; then he took charge of the famous Medici archives, whence he collected a vast body of material on the history of Italian art, not all of which is yet published. In 1889 he became director of the archives, but retired in 1892, and died three years later. His most important publication is his edition of Vasari’s works in nine volumes, with copious and valuable notes (Florence, 1878–1885). Of his other writings the following may be mentioned: Il diario inedito di Alessandro Sozzini (in the Archivio storico Italiano, 1842); Documenti per la storia dell’ arte senese, 3 vols. (Siena, 1854–1856) and Discorsi sulla storia civile ed artistica di Siena (Siena, 1862). He also edited a number of Italian classics.
See E. Ridolli’s article in the Nuova antologia (May 15, 1895); and A. Virgili’s article in the Atti della regia Accademia della Crusca (Florence, 1898).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mildew

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​MILDEW (O. Eng. meledéaw or mildeaw, explained as “mealdew,” cf. Ger. Mehlthau, with more probability, as “honeydew,” Goth. melith, honey, cf. Lat. mel, Gr. μέλι), a popular name given to various minute fungi from their appearance, and from the sudden, dew-like manner of their occurrence. Like many other popular names of plants, it is used to denote different species which possess very small botanical affinity. The term is applied, not only to species belonging to various systematic groups, but also to such as follow different modes of life. The corn-mildew, the hop-mildew and the vine-mildew are, for example, parasitic upon living plants, and the mildews of damp linen and of paper are saprophytes (Gr. σαπρός, rotten), that is, they subsist on matter which is already dead. As regards mildews in general, the conditions of life and growth are mainly suitable nutrition and dampness accompanied by a high temperature. The life history of the same species of mildew frequently covers two or more generations, and these are often passed on hosts of different kinds. In some cases again the same generation confines its attack to the same kind of host, while in others the same generation grows on various hosts (see Fungi; Hop; and Wheat).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Milford (Connecticut)

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​MILFORD, a township of New Haven county, Connecticut, U.S.A., on Long Island Sound, separated from the township of Stratford on the W. by the Housatonic river, and about 10 m. S.W. of New Haven. Pop. (1890), 3811; (1900), 3783, including 541 foreign-born and 173 negroes; (1910), 4366. Area, about 16 sq. m. Milford is served by the New York, New Haven & Hartford railroad, and by an electric line connecting with Bridgeport and New Haven. Within its borders are various popular beaches, including Woodmont (incorporated as a borough in 1903), Pond Point, Bay View, Fort Trumbull Beach (where a fortification, named Fort Trumbull, was erected in 1776), Myrtle Beach, Meadow’s End, Walnut Beach and Milford Point. The township is traversed by the Wepowaug river, which here empties into the Sound. Milford is a typical old New England town, and many of the permanent inhabitants are descendants from the first settlers. The burying-ground includes the tomb of Robert Treat (1622–1710), commander of the Connecticut troops in King Philip’s War, leader of the company that founded Newark, New Jersey, governor of Connecticut (from 1683 to 1698) at the time its charter was demanded by Governor Andros in 1686–1687, and deputy-governor in 1676–1683 and 1698–1708; and also that of Jonathan Law (1674–1751), governor of Connecticut from 1742 to 1751. Spanning the Wepowaug river near a gorge and not far from its mouth is a granite bridge and tower, built, as a memorial to the first settlers, in 1889, in connexion with the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the town. Milford has a beautiful green of about four acres, containing a soldiers' monument. It has also the Taylor Library (founded in 1894), and along the Sound are many summer residences. Named after Milford, England, it was founded in 1639 by Rev. Peter Prudden and his followers from New Haven and Wethersfield. The land was purchased from the Indians for 6 coats, 10 blankets, 1 kettle, 12 hatchets, 12 hoes, ​24 knives and 12 small mirrors. A “church-state” was immediately organized after the model of that of New Haven, but two or three years later the town bestowed suffrage on six of its inhabitants who were not church members. These citizens were an obstacle to the town’s admission to the New Haven Jurisdiction, which was formed in 1643, but in the following year a compromise was effected and Milford was admitted on condition that, in the future, suffrage should be granted only to church members and that none of the objectionable six should be elected to any office of the Jurisdiction. In 1664 Milford, with the other members of the jurisdiction, was absorbed by Connecticut; this caused considerable dissatisfaction and some of the inhabitants under the lead of Robert Treat removed to New Jersey and assisted in the founding of Newark. The regicides Whalley and Goffe were concealed in Milford from 1661 to 1664.
See M. Louise Greene, “Early Milford,” in the Connecticut Magazine, vol. v. (Hartford, 1899).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Milazzo

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​MILAZZO, a seaport on the north coast of Sicily, in the province of Messina, 22 m. W. of Messina by rail. Pop. (1901), 16,422. It is mainly built on the low isthmus of a peninsula, which stretches some 3 m. farther north and forms a good harbour: but the old town, which contains a castle, mainly the work of Charles V., lies on a hill above. Milazzo is the ancient Mylae, an outpost of Zancle, occupied before 648 B.C., perhaps as early as 716 B.C. (E. A. Freeman, History of Sicily, I., pp. 395, 587). It was taken by the Athenians in 426 B.C. The people of Rhegium planted here the exiles from Naxos and Catana in 395 B.C. as a counterpoise to Dionysius’ foundation of Tyndaris; but Dionysius soon took it. In the bay Duilius won the first Roman naval victory over the Carthaginians (260 B.C.).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mildenhall

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​MILDENHALL, a market town in the Stowmarket parliamentary division of Suffolk, England, 761/2 m.. N.N.E. from London by a branch of the Great Eastern railway from Cambridge. Pop. (1901), 3567. It lies on the edge of Mildenhall Fen, the great Fen district stretching northward and westward from here. The church of St Andrew has an Early English chancel with fine east window and chancel arch. The remainder is principally Perpendicular with a magnificent carved oak roof, ornate north porch and lofty tower with fan tracery within. There is a wooden market cross of the 15th century; the manor house is a picturesque gabled building of the 17th century, and there is a modern public hall. Flour milling is an industry. The discovery of Roman remains indicates a small settlement.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Miles, Nelson Appleton

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​MILES, NELSON APPLETON (1839–), American soldier, was born in Westminster, Massachusetts, on the 8th of August 1839. He was engaged in mercantile pursuits in Boston when the Civil War began, and he entered the army in September 1861 as a lieutenant in the 22nd Massachusetts volunteer infantry. He served with distinction in the Peninsular campaign, and at Antietam, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, where he received a wound which incapacitated him up to the opening of Grant’s Virginia campaign of 1864. He had been commissioned in September 1862 colonel of the 61st New York volunteers, commanded a brigade at the Wilderness and Spottsylvania, and in May 1864 was rewarded for his gallant leadership by the grade of brigadier-general of volunteers. He fought in the Cold Harbor and Petersburg operations in 186465, was brevetted major-general of volunteers for his conduct at Reams Station, and at the close of the war was in temporary command of an army corps. In July 1866 he was made colonel of a regular infantry regiment, and in 1867 he was brevetted brigadier-general in the regular army for his services at Chancellorsville and major-general for his services at Spottsylvania. He was promoted to be brigadier-general U.S.A. (Dec. 1880), and to be– ​major-general (April 1890), and in 1895 succeeded General John McA. Schofield as commanding general of the United States army. He was conspicuously successful (1869–1886) in dealing with Indian outbreaks, fighting the Cheyenne, Kiowa and Comanche on Llano Estacado (1875) and the Sioux in Montana (1876), capturing the Nez Perces under Chief Joseph (1877), and defeating the Chiricahua Apaches under Geronimo (1886), and he commanded the United States troops sent to Chicago during the railway riots in 1894. He was in nominal direction of military operations during the war with Spain in 1898, though his personal share of the operations was confined to directing the almost unopposed Porto Rico expedition. He was raised to the rank of lieutenant-general in June 1900, and retired from active service in August 1903. In 1905–1906 he was adjutant-general and chief-of-staff under Governor William L. Douglas in Massachusetts. He wrote Personal Recollections (1896), Military Europe (1898) and Observations Abroad (1899).