OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ramsay, Robert

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​RAMSAY, ROBERT (1842–1882), Australian statesman, was a native of Hawick, Roxburghshire, but his parents emigrated to Victoria when he was a child of four, and he was educated at the Scottish college in Melbourne. He studied law at Melbourne University, and subsequently became a member of a well-known firm of solicitors in the city. He married in 1868 Isabella Catherine Urquhart, and in 1870 entered the assembly for East Bourke in the Conservative and free trade interest. He was a member of the government of James Goodall Francis in 1872–74. He was subsequently postmaster-general (1874–75) in the administration of George Biscoe Kerferd; he held the same office in conjunction with the ministry of education (1875–77) under Sir James M‘Culloch; and for a short term in 1880 he was chief secretary and minister of education in the first administration of James Service. He died on the 23rd of May 1882.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Rampur Boalia

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​RAMPUR BOALIA, or Beuleah, a town of British India, the administrative headquarters of Rajshahi district in Eastern Bengal and Assam; on the left bank of the Ganges. Pop. (1901) 21,589. It was originally chosen as a commercial factory for the silk trade, which is again being officially encouraged by the agricultural department. The town contains a government college, and an industrial school for sericulture. Most of the public buildings were severely damaged by the earthquake of the 12th of June 1897. There is a daily steamer service on the Ganges.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ramsay, David

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​RAMSAY, DAVID (1749–1815), American physician and historian, the son of an Irish emigrant, was born in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, on the 2nd of April 1749. He graduated at Princeton in 1765, and M.B. at the University of Pennsylvania in 1773, and then settled as a physician at Charleston, South Carolina, where he had a large practice. During the War of Independence he served as a field-surgeon (1780–1781), and from 1776 to 1783 he was a member of the South Carolina legislature. Having acted as one of the “council of safety” at Charleston, he was, on the capture of that city in 1786, seized by the British as a hostage, and for nearly a year was kept in confinement at St Augustine. From 1782 to 1786 he served in the Continental Congress, and from 1801 to 1815 in the state Senate, of which he was long president. In 1785 he published in two volumes History of the Revolution of South Carolina, in 1789 in two volumes History of the American Revolution, in 1807 a Life of Washington, and in 1809 in two volumes a History of South Carolina. He was also the author of several minor works. He died at Charleston on the 8th of May 1815 from a wound inflicted by a lunatic. His History of the United States in 3 vols. was published posthumously in 1816–1817, and forms the first three volumes of his Universal History Americanized, published in 12 vols. in 1819.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ramsay, Sir William

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RAMSAY, SIR WILLIAM (1852– ), British chemist, nephew of Sir A. C. Ramsay, was born at Glasgow on the 2nd of October 1852. From 1866 to 1870 he studied in his native city, and then went to work under R. Fittig at Tübingen. Returning to Glasgow in 1872 he became assistant in the Young laboratory of technical chemistry at Anderson's College, and from 1874 acted as tutorial assistant in chemistry at the university. In 1880 he was appointed to the chair of chemistry at University College, Bristol, becoming principal in the following year, and in 1887 he succeeded A. Williamson as professor of chemistry at University College, London. His earlier work was mainly concerned with organic chemistry, and he published researches on picoline and its derivatives in 1876–78 and on quinine and its decomposition products in 1878–79. Later his attention was taken up with questions of physical and inorganic chemistry. With Sydney Young and others he investigated the critical state and properties of liquids and the relationship between their vapour pressures and temperature, and with John Shields he applied measurements of the surface tension of liquids to the determination of their molecular complexity. In 1894 he was associated with Lord Rayleigh in the discovery of argon, announced at that year's meeting of the British Association in Oxford, and in the following year he found in certain rare minerals such as cleveite the gas helium which till that time had only been known on spectroscopic evidence as existing in the sun. In 1898 his work with Morris William Travers (b. 1872), who from 1894 had assisted him at University College, London, and in 1903 was appointed professor of chemistry at University College, Bristol, enabled him to announce the existence in the atmosphere of three new gases, neon, krypton and xenon. Turning to the study of radioactivity, he noticed its association with the minerals which yield helium, and in support of the hypothesis that that gas is a disintegration-product of radium he proved in 1903 that it is continuously formed by the latter substance in quantities sufficiently great to be directly recognizable in the spectroscope. Among the books written by Sir William Ramsay, who was created K.C.B. in 1902, are A System of Chemistry, 1891, The Gases of the Atmosphere, 1896, and Modern Chemistry, vol. i. Theoretical, vol. ii. Systematic, 1901, and he edited a series of "Textbooks of Physical Chemistry."
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Thomas of Celano

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​THOMAS OF CELANO, Franciscan friar and disciple and biographer of St Francis of Assisi. Born at Celano in the Abruzzi, he joined St Francis probably about 1214, and he appears to have been one of the first band of friars who went into Germany. He was commissioned by Gregory IX. to write the Life of St Francis, and in 1229 he completed the First Legend; in 1247 at the command of the minister general he composed the Second Legend, and a few years later the Tract on the Miracles of St Francis. He also composed in 1255 the Legend of St Clare; and he is one of those to whom the sequence Dies irae is attributed.
Thomas of Celano’s writings on St Francis have been critically edited by E. d’Alençon in 1906; the value of this work is enhanced by the fact that critical opinion is veering round to the view that Thomas of Celano is the best authority for the life of the saint (see “Note on the Sources,” appended to article Francis of Assisi).
An English translation (The Lives of S. Francis of Assisi by Brother Thomas of Celano) by A. G. Ferrers Howell appeared in 1908. All that is known of Thomas of Celano is brought together in Edouard d’Alençon’s Prolegomena; see also introduction to Ferrers Howell’s translation. (E. C. B.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Thomason, George

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​THOMASON, GEORGE (d. 1666), English book and tract collector, was a London bookseller, whose life contains few items of interest save the fact that he was concerned in a royalist plot in 1651. He is famous, however, as the man who brought together the great collection of books and tracts published during the time of the Civil War and the Commonwealth; this was formerly called the “King’s Pamphlets,” but is now known as the “Thomason Collection.” During the years just before the outbreak of war a great number of writings covering every phase of the questions in dispute between king and people were issued, and in 1641 Thomason began to collect these. Working diligently at his task for about twenty years, he possessed nearly 23,000 separate publications in 1662, and having arranged these in chronological order he had them bound in 1983 volumes. After many vicissitudes the collection was bought in 1761 from his descendants by George III., who presented it to the British Museum, where it now is (see Newspapers). Thomason died in London in April (1666).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Thomas, William

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​THOMAS, WILLIAM (d. 1554), English soldier and writer, was probably a native of Radnorshire and was educated at Oxford. In 1544 he went to Italy, where he spent the greater part of the next five years, and in April 1550, soon after his return to England, he was made one of the clerks of the privy council; he also taught the science of politics to the young king Edward VI., for whose instruction he wrote some treatises and some “commonplaces of state.” Being a strong Protestant he took part in the rising against Queen Mary led by Sir Thomas Wyat in 1554, being captured and thrown into the Tower of London. Having whilst in prison tried to commit suicide and been tortured on the rack in the hope of incriminating the princess Elizabeth, he was found guilty and was hanged at Tyburn on the 18th of May 1554.
During his residence at Bologna Thomas, who was a very learned man, wrote Il Pellegrino inglese, published in 1552. This is a valuable and interesting defence of Henry VIII. by a contemporary and it originated in a discussion between the author and some Italian gentlemen. He also prepared an English version of this work, but this was not published during his lifetime. As The Pilgrim: a dialogue of the life and actions of King Henry VIII., it was edited with notes by J. A. Froude and appeared in 1861. It had previously been edited by A. D'Aubant, who had added to it the six treatises written for Edward VI. and had called the whole The Works of William Thomas (1774). Of his other writings perhaps the most important is The Historie of Italie (1549), and his Principal Rules of the Italian Grammar with a Dictionarie for the better understanding of Boccace, Petrarcha and Dante (1550, 1560, 1562 and 1567) may also be mentioned. This was the first work of its kind in English. Thomas made an English translation of Josafat Barbaro’s account of his voyages, Barbaro being a Venetian traveller who died in 1494. With an introduction by Lord Stanley of Alderley this was published by the Hakluyt Society in a volume of Travels to Tana and Persia (London, 1873). See John Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials (Oxford, 1822).
Thomas has a namesake, William Thomas (1613–1689), bishop of St David’s from 1677 to 1683 and bishop of Worcester from 1683 to 1689. He was one of the bishops who refused to take the oaths of allegiance to William and Mary in 1689 and was suspended, but in the midst of the dispute he died on the 25th of June 1689 (see Nonjurors). The bishop’s grandson was William Thomas (1670–1738), the Worcestershire antiquary.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Thomas Magister

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​THOMAS, surnamed Magister (i.e. officiorum), also known as a monk by the name Theodulos Monachos, a native of Thessalonica, Byzantine scholar and grammarian and confidential adviser of Andronicus II. (1282–1328). His chief work, Ἐκλογὴ Ὀνομάτων καὶ Ῥημάτων Ἀττικῶν, is a collection of selected Attic words and phrases, partly arranged in alphabetical order, compiled as a help to Greek composition from the works of Phrynichus, Ammonius, Herodian and Moeris. He also wrote scholia on Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides (with life), and three of the comedies of Aristophanes; the scholia on Pindar, attributed to him in two MSS., are now assigned to Demetrius Triclinius. His speeches and letters consist partly of declamations on the usual sophistical themes, partly deal with contemporary historical events: an argument between the fathers of Cynegirus and Callimachus (two Athenians who fell at Marathon) as to which had the better claim to have the funeral oration pronounced over him first; a discussion on the duties of, a king and of his subjects; a defence of the Byzantine general Chandrenos addressed to the emperor; a letter on the cruelties of the Catalans and Turks in Thessaly and Macedonia; a congratulatory letter to Theodorus Metochita; a panegyric on the king of Cyprus.
Editions of the Ἐκλογὴ by F. Ritschl (1832), C. Jacobitz (1833) and C. D. Beck (1836); other works in J. P. Migne, Patrologia graeca, cxlv.; see also C. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (1897).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Thomas of Margā

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​THOMAS OF MARGĀ, a Nestorian bishop and author of an important monastic history in Syriac, who flourished in the 9th century A.D. He was born early in the century, probably of Persian parents, in the region of Salakh to the north-east of Mosul. As a young man he became in 832 a monk of the famous Nestorian monastery of Beth ʽĀbhē, which was situated at the confluence of the Great Zab with one of its tributaries, about 25 m. due east of Mosul. A few years later he was acting as secretary to Abraham, who had been abbot of Beth ʽĀbhē, and was catholicus (patriarch) of the Nestorians from 837 to 850. At some date during these 13 years Thomas was promoted by Abraham to be bishop of Margā, a diocese in the same district as Beth ʽĀbhē, and afterwards he was further advanced to be a metropolitan of Beth Garmai, a district farther to the south-east in the mountains which border the Tigris basin. It was during the period of his life at Beth ʽĀbhē and his bishopric that he composed The Book of Governors, which is in the main a history of his own monastery, but includes lives of holy men in other parts of Mesopotamia and the regions east of the Tigris. The work was probably planned in imitation of the famous Paradise of Palladius, the history of Egyptian monasticism which had become well known to Syriac-speaking Christians in the version of ʽĂnān-Īshōʽ (6th century).
The Book of Governors has been edited with an English translation and a copious introduction by E. W. Budge (2 vols., London, 1893), who claims that “it occupies a unique position in Syriac literature, and it fully deserves the veneration with which it has been and is still regarded by all classes of Nestorians to whom it is known.” It gives a detailed history of the great monastery of Beth ʽĀbhē during its three centuries of existence down to the author’s time. It is full of interesting narratives of saintly men told in a naïve and candid spirit, and it throws much light on the history of Christianity in the Persian dominions. There is a later edition by P. Bedjan (Paris, 1901). (N. M.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Thomas (archbishop)

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​THOMAS (d. 1100), archbishop of York, was a native of Bayeux, and is usually called Thomas of Bayeux. His father was a priest named Osbert, and Samson, bishop of Worcester from 1086 until his death in May 1112, was his brother. Owing largely to the generosity of Odo, bishop of Bayeux, Thomas studied in France, Germany and Spain and became known as a scholar; then he became one of Bishop Odo’s officials and after 1066 one of William the Conqueror’s chaplains, or secretaries. In 1070 he succeeded Aldred as archbishop of York, but declining to promise obedience to the archbishop of Canterbury, Lanfranc, the latter prelate refused to consecrate him. King William, however, induced him to submit and he was consecrated, but his profession of obedience was to Lanfranc personally and not to the archbishops of Canterbury. In 1071 both archbishops travelled to Rome for their palls and while there Thomas wished Pope Alexander II. to decree the equality of the sees of Canterbury and York. The pope, however, referred the dispute to a council of English prelates, and this met at Windsor at Whitsuntide 1072. It was then decided that the archbishop of Canterbury was the superior of the archbishop of York, who had no rights south of the Humber, but whose province included Scotland. But this decision did not put a period to the dispute. It broke out again, and in 1092 and again in 1093 Thomas protested against what he regarded as infringements of his archiepiscopal rights. The first of these occasions was over the dedication of the cathedral built by Remigius at Lincoln and the second was over the consecration of St Anselm to the archbishopric of Canterbury. In 1100, during Anselm’s exile, Thomas reached London too late to crown Henry I., the ceremony having been hurriedly performed by Maurice, bishop of London, but his anger at this slight was soon appeased. He died at York on the 18th of November 1100. Thomas rebuilt the minster at York, where he appears to have been an excellent archbishop; he knew something of church music and wrote hymns.
Thomas had a nephew, Thomas, the son of his brother Samson, who was also archbishop of York. The younger Thomas became archbishop in 1108 and like his uncle he refused to promise obedience to the archbishop of Canterbury; his consecration was then ​delayed and the dispute was still unsettled when St Anselm died in April 1109. Henry I. and his bishops then decided against Thomas, who was forced to make the necessary promise and was consecrated in London in June 1109. He died at Beverley on the 24th of February 1114.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Thomas of Erceldoune

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​THOMAS OF ERCELDOUNE, called also The Rhymer, and sometimes given the surname of Learmont (fl.? 1220–? 1297), poet and prophet in the legendary literature of Scotland. The historical person of that name figures in two charters of the 13th century, and from these it appears that he owned lands in Erceldoune (now Earlstoun), in Berwickshire, which were made over by his son and heir on the 2nd of November 1294 to the foundation of the Holy Trinity at Soltra (or Soutra) on the borders of the same county. This would seem to imply that Thomas the Rhymer was already dead, but J. A. H. Murray, who edited The Romance and Prophecies (E.E.T.S., 1875), thinks that he was living three years later in a Cluniac priory in Ayrshire. He figures in the works of Barbour and Harry the Minstrel as the sympathizing contemporary of their heroes, and Walter Bower, who continued the Scotichronicon of Fordun, tells how he prophesied the death of Alexander III. in 1285. Barbour makes the bishop of St Andrews in 1306 express a hope that a prophecy of Thomas referring to Bruce will come true; and Wyntoun says that he foretold the battle of Kilblane. In the folk-lore of Scotland his name is associated with numerous fragments of verse of a gnomic and prophetic character. The romance of Thomas and the elf-queen was attributed to Erceldoune by Robert Mannyng de Brunne, but the earliest text, in the Auchinleck MS. in the Advocates’ library, Edinburgh, is in a dialect showing southern forms, and dates from the beginning of the 14th century. It may be based on a genuine work of Thomas, a version by him of the widely diffused Tristan Saga. This text was published in 1804 by Sir Walter Scott, and was by him assigned to the Rhymer. The most widely accepted opinion is that it is a translation of a French original. The Rhymer’s lands at Earlstoun are still identified. In 1840 died the last of a family named Learmont, which claimed descent from the poet. It may be noted that the Russian poet Michael Lermontov claimed Thomas of Erceldoune as his ancestor.
See J. A. H. Murray’s edition of The Romance and Prophecies (E.E.T.S., 1875); Brandl’s Thomas of Erceldoune (Berlin, 1880), and Kölbing’s Die nordische und die englische Version der Tristransage (Heilbronn, 1882); also McNeill’s Sir Tristrem (S.T.S., 1886); Lumby’s Early Scottish Prophecies (E.E.T.S., 1870), and the reprint of the Whole Prophesie of Scotland (1603) by the Bannatyne Club (1833).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Thomasville

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​THOMASVILLE, a city and the county-seat of Thomas county, Georgia, U.S.A., about 200 m. S.W. of Savannah. Pop. (1900), 5322, of whom 3296 were negroes; (1910), 6727. Thomasville is served by the Atlanta, Birmingham & Atlantic, the Atlantic Coast Line and the Florida Central railways. The city is attractively situated (about 250 ft. above the sea) on a high plateau, is surrounded by pine forests, and is a well-known winter resort. There are fine drives in the vicinity. Thomasville has a city hospital, a public library (1876) and a good public school system, and is the seat of Young’s College (for girls), which was founded by E. Reiner Young, a wealthy planter of Thomas county, was incorporated in 1869 and was opened in 1871, and of the Vashti industrial school (1903) for girls, maintained by the Women’s home mission society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The city has a large trade in lumber, especially yellow pine; other products of the region are cotton, sugar-cane tobacco, melons, fruits and vegetables. The municipality own: and operates the water-works and electric-lighting plant; the water supply is obtained in part from artesian wells 1900 ft ​deep. Thomasville was settled about 1825, was incorporated as atown in 1831, and was chartered as a city in 1889.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Romé de l'Isle, Jean Baptiste Louis

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​ROMÉ DE L’ISLE, JEAN BAPTISTE LOUIS (1736–1790), French mineralogist, was born on the 26th of August 1736 at Gray, in Haute-Saône. As secretary of a company of artillery he visited the East Indies, and was taken prisoner by the English in 1761 and held in captivity for three years. Subsequently he became distinguished for his researches on mineralogy and crystallography. He was the author of Essai de Cristallographie (1772), the second edition of which, regarded as his principal work, was published as Cristallographie (3 vols. and atlas, 1783). He died at Paris on the 7th of March 1790.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ronsdorf

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​RONSDORF, a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine province, situated on the Morsbach, a small affluent of the Rhine, 18 m. E. of Dusseldorf and 5 m. S. of Elberfeld-Barmen by rail. Pop. (1905) 14,005. It is the seat of iron, steel and copper industries, besides carrying on extensive manufactures of ribbons, trimmings and silk goods generally. It has also breweries, distilleries and electrical works.
Founded in 1737 by the followers of Elias Eller, a religious enthusiast, Ronsdorf received civic rights in 1745. The Ronsdorf sect, the members of which called themselves Zionites, is now extinct.