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

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​ALKMAAR, a town in the province of North Holland, kingdom of Holland, 241/2 m. by rail N.N.W. of Amsterdam, connected by steam-tramway with Haarlem and Amsterdam, and on the North Holland canal. Pop. (1900) 18,373. Alkmaar is a typical North Holland town, with tree-lined canals and brightly coloured 17th-century houses. The old city walls have been replaced by pleasant gardens and walks, and there is a park in which stands a fine monument (1876) by J. T. Stracké (1817–1891), symbolizing Alcmaria victrix, to commemorate the siege by the Spaniards in 1573. The Groote Kerk (1470–1498), dedicated to St Lawrence, is a handsome building and contains the tomb of Floris V., count of Holland (d. 1296), a brass of 1546, and some paintings (1507). In the town hall (1507) are the library and a small museum with two pictures by the 17th-century artist Caesar van Everdingen, who with his more celebrated brother Allart van Everdingen (q.v.) was a native of the town. The weigh-house (1582) is a picturesque building with quaint gable and tower. Just outside the town lies the Alkmaar wood, at the entrance to which stands the military cadet school which serves as a preparatory school for the royal military academy at Breda. Alkmaar derives its chief importance from being the centre of the flourishing butter and cheese trade of this region of Holland. It is also a considerable market for horses, cattle and grain, and there is a little boat-building and salt and sail-cloth manufacture. Tramways connect Alkmaar with Egmond and with the pretty summer resort of Bergen, which lies sheltered by woods and dunes.
The name of Alkmaar, which means “all sea,” first occurs in the 10th century, and recalls its former situation in the midst of marshlands and lakes. It was probably originally a fishing-village, but with the reclamation of the surrounding morasses, e.g. that of the Schermer in 1685, and their conversion into rich meadow land, Alkmaar gradually acquired an important trade. In 1254 it received a charter from William II., count of Holland, similar to that of Haarlem, but in the 15th century duke Philip the Good of Burgundy made the impoverishment of the town, due to ill-government, the excuse for establishing an oligarchical régime, by charters of 1436 and 1437. As the capital of the ancient district of Kennemerland between den Helder and Haarlem, Alkmaar frequently suffered in the early wars between the Hollanders and the Frisians, and in 1517 was captured by the united Gelderlanders and Frisians. In 1573 it successfully sustained a seven-weeks’ siege by 16,000 Spaniards under the duke of Alva. In 1799 Alkmaar gave its name to a convention signed by the duke of York and the French general Brune, in accordance with which the Russo-British army of 23,000 men, which was defeated at Bergen, evacuated Holland. A monument was erected in 1901 to commemorate the Russians who fell.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alkan, Charles Henri Valentin Morhange

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​ALKAN, CHARLES HENRI VALENTIN MORHANGE (1813–1888), French musical composer, was born and died in Paris. Alkan was his nom de guerre. Admitted to the Conservatoire of Paris in his sixth year, he had a distinguished career there until 1830. He visited London in 1833, after which he settled in Paris as a pianoforte teacher till his death. He is important as the composer of a large number of pianoforte études, embodying the most extravagant technical difficulties. His invention was not modern enough to secure for these works that attention which they deserve as representing a pianoforte technique and sense of effect in some respects more advanced even than that of Liszt, though lacking Liszt’s economy and tact.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alkaline Earths

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​ALKALINE EARTHS. The so-called alkaline earth-metals are the elements beryllium, magnesium, calcium, strontium and barium. By the early chemists, the term earth was used to denote those non-metallic substances which were insoluble in water and were unaffected by strong heating; and as some of these substances (e.g. lime) were found to be very similar in properties to those of the alkalis, they were called alkaline earths. The alkaline earths were assumed to be elements until 1807, when Sir H. Davy showed that they were oxides of various metals. The metals comprising this group are never found in] the uncombined condition, but occur most often in the form of carbonates and sulphates; they form oxides of the type RO, and in the case of calcium, strontium and barium, of the type RO$_2$. The oxides of type RO are soluble in water, the solution possessing a strongly alkaline reaction and rapidly absorbing carbon dioxide on exposure; they are basic in character and dissolve readily in acids with the formation of the corresponding salts. As the atomic weight of the element increases, it is found that the solubility of the sulphates in water decreases.
Beryllium to a certain extent stands alone in many of its chemical properties, resembling to some extent the metal aluminium. Beryllium and magnesium are permanent in dry air; calcium, strontium and barium, however, oxidize rapidly on exposure. The salts of all the metals of this group usually crystallize well, the chlorides and nitrates dissolve readily in water, whilst the carbonates, phosphates and sulphates are either very sparingly soluble or are insoluble in water.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/All Fours

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​ALL FOURS, a card game (known also in America as Seven Up, Old Sledge or High-Low-Jack) usually played by two players, though four may play. A full pack is used and each player receives seven counters. Four points can be scored, one each for high, the highest trump out, for low, the lowest trump dealt, for Jack, the knave of trumps, and for game, the majority of pips in the cards of the tricks that a player has won. Ace counts 4, King 3, Queen 2, Knave 1, and ten 10 points. Low is scored by the person to whom it is dealt; High of course wins a trick; Jack is scored by the player who finally has it among his tricks. If Jack is turned up the dealer scores the point. A player who plays a high or low trump is entitled to ask if they are High or Low. The game is 10 or 11 points. Six ​cards are dealt to each, the thirteenth being turned up for trumps. The non-dealer may propose or beg if he does not like his hand. If the dealer refuses the elder hand scores a point, if he consents he gives and takes three more cards, the seventh being turned up for trumps, which must be of a different suit from the original trump card; otherwise six more cards are dealt out, and so on till a fresh trump suit appears. The non-dealer then leads; the other must trump or follow suit, or forfeit a point. Jack may be played to any trick. Each pair of cards is a trick, and is collected by the winner. A fresh deal may be claimed if the dealer exposes one of his adversary’s cards, or if he gives himself or his adversary too few or too many. In that case the error must be discovered before a card is played (see also Auction Pitch).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Aeon

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​AEON, a term often used in Greek (αἰών) to denote an indefinite or infinite duration of time; and hence, by metonymy, a being that exists for ever. In the latter sense it was chiefly used by the Gnostic sects to denote those eternal beings or manifestations which emanated from the one incomprehensible and ineffable God. (See Gnosticism.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Aeolian Harp

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​AEOLIAN HARP (Fr. harpe éolienne; Ger. Äolsharfe, Windharfe; Ital. arpa d’ Eolo), a stringed musical instrument, whose name is derived from Aeolus, god of the wind. The aeolian harp consists of a sound-box about 3 ft. long, 5 in. wide, and 3 in. deep, made of thin deal, or preferably of pine, and having beech ends to hold the tuning-pins and hitch-pins. A dozen or less catgut strings of different thickness, but tuned in exact unison, and left rather slack, are attached to the pins, and stretched over two narrow bridges of hard wood, one at each end of the sound-board, which is generally provided with two rose sound-holes. To ensure a proper passage for the wind, another pine board is placed over the strings, resting on pegs at the ends of the sound-board, or on a continuation of the ends raised from 1 to 3 in. above the strings. Kaufmann of Dresden and Heinrich Christoph Koch, who improved the aeolian harp, introduced this contrivance, which was called by them Windfang and Windflügel; the upper board was prolonged beyond the sound-box in the shape of a funnel, in order to direct the current of air on to the strings. The aeolian harp is placed across a window so that the wind blows obliquely across the strings, causing them to vibrate in aliquot parts, i.e. (the fundamental note not being heard) the half or octave, the third or interval of the twelfth, the second Octave, and the third above it, in fact the upper partials of the strings in regular succession. With the increased pressure of the wind, the dissonances of the 11th and 13th overtones are heard in shrill discords, only to give place to beautiful harmonies as the force of the wind abates. The principle of the natural vibration of strings by the pressure of the wind was recognized in ancient times; King David, we hear from the Rabbinic records, used to hang his kinnor (kithara) over his bed at night, when it sounded in the midnight breeze. The same is related of St Dunstan of Canterbury, who was in consequence charged with sorcery. The Chinese at the present day fly kites of various sizes, having strings stretched across apertures in the paper, which produces the effect of an aerial chorus.
See Athanasius Kircher, Musurgia Universalis, where the aeolian harp is first described (1602–1608), p. 148; Mathew Young, Bishop of Clonfert, Enquiry into the Principal Phenomena of Sounds and Musical Strings pp. 170-182 (London, 1784); Göttingen Pocket Calendar (1792); Mendel’s Musikalisches Conversations-Lexikon, article “Aeolsharfe.”; An illustration is given in Rees’ Encyclopedia, plates, vol. ii. Misc. pl. xxv. (K. S.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Aeneas Tacticus

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​AENEAS TACTICUS (4th century B.C.), one of the earliest Greek writers on the art of war. According to Aelianus Tacticus and Polybius, he wrote a number of treatises (Ὺπομνήματα) on the subject; the only one extant deals with the best methods of defending a fortified city. An epitome of the whole was made by Cineas, minister of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus. The work is chiefly valuable as containing a large number of historical illustrations. Aeneas was considered by Casaubon to have been a contemporary of Xenophon and identical with the Arcadian general Aeneas of Stymphalus, whom Xenophon (Hellenica, vii. 3) mentions as fighting at the battle of Mantinea (362 B.C.).
Editions in I. Casaubon’s (1619), Gronovius’ (1670) and Ernesti’s (1763) editions of Polybius; also, separately, with notes, by J. C. Orelli (Leipzig, 1818). Other texts are those of W. Rüstow and H. Köchly (Griechische Kriegsschriftsteller, vol. i. Leipzig, 1853) and A. Hug, Prolegomena Critica ad Aeneae . . . editionem (Zürich University, 1874). See also Count Beausobre, Commentaires sur la défense des places d’Aeneas (Amsterdam, 1757); A. Hug, Aeneas von Stymphalos (Zürich, 1877); C. C. Lange, De Aeneae commentario poliorcetico (Berlin, 1879); M. H. Meyer, Observationes in Aeneam Tacticum (Halle, 1835); Haase, in Jahns Jahrbuch, 1835, xiv. 1; Max Jähns, Gesch. der Kriegswissenschaften, i. pp. 26-28 (Munich, 1889); Ad. Bauer, in Zeitschrift für allg. Geschichte, &c., 1886, i; T. H. Williams in American Journal of Philology, xxv. 4; E. Schwartz in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie (Stuttgart, 1894).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Aeolis

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​AEOLIS (Aeolia), an ancient district of Asia Minor, colonized at a very early date by Aeolian Greeks. The name was applied to the coast from the river Hermus to the promontory of Lectum, i.e. between Ionia to S. and Troas to N. The Aeolians founded twelve cities on the mainland, including Cyme, and numerous towns in Mytilene: they were said also to have settled in the Troad and even within the Hellespont.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Aeolus

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​AEOLUS, in Greek mythology, according to Homer the son of Hippotes, god and father of the winds, and ruler of the island of Aeolia. In the Odyssey (x. 1) he entertains Odysseus, gives him a favourable wind to help him on his journey, and a bag in which the unfavourable winds have been confined. Out of curiosity. or with the idea that it contains valuable treasures, Odysseus’ companions open the bag; the winds escape and drive them back to the island, whence Aeolus dismisses them with bitter reproaches. According to Virgil, Aeolus dwells on one of the Aeolian islands to the north of Sicily, Lipara or Strongyle (Stromboli), where he keeps the winds imprisoned in a vast cavern (Virgil, Aen. i. 52). Another genealogy makes him the son of Poseidon and Arne, granddaughter of Hippotes, and a descendant of Aeolus, king of Magnesia in Thessaly, the mythical ancestor of the tribe of the Aeolians (Diodorus iv. 67).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Aepinus, Franz Ulrich Theodor

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​AEPINUS, FRANZ ULRICH THEODOR (1724–1802), German natural philosopher, was born at Rostock in Saxony on the 13th of December 1724. He was descended from John Aepinus (1499–1553), the first to adopt the Greek form (αἰπεινός) of the family name Hugk or Huck, and a leading theologian and controversialist at the time of the Reformation. After studying medicine for a time, Franz Aepinus devoted himself to the physical and mathematical sciences, in which he soon gained such distinction that he was admitted a member of the Berlin academy of sciences. In 1757 he settled in St Petersburg as member of the imperial academy of sciences and professor of physics, and remained there till his retirement in 1798. The rest of his life was spent at Dorpat, where he died on the 10th of August 1802. He enjoyed the special favour of the empress Catherine II., who appointed him tutor to her son Paul, and endeavoured, without success, to establish normal schools throughout the empire under his direction. Aepinus is best known by his researches, theoretical and experimental, in electricity and magnetism, and his principal work, Tentamen Theoriae Electricitatis et Magnetismi, published at St Petersburg in 1759, was the first systematic and successful attempt to apply mathematical reasoning to these subjects. He also published a treatise, in 1761, De distributione caloris per tellurem, and he was the author of memoirs on different subjects in astronomy, mechanics, optics and pure mathematics, contained in the journals of the learned societies of St Petersburg and Berlin. His discussion of the effects of parallax in the transit of a planet over the sun’s disc excited great interest, having appeared (in 1764) between the dates of the two transits of Venus that took place in the 18th century.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Aerarii

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​AERARII (from Lat. aes, in its subsidiary sense of “poll-tax”), originally a class of Roman citizens not included in the thirty tribes of Servius Tullius, and subject to a poll-tax arbitrarily fixed by the censor. They were (1) the inhabitants of conquered towns which had been deprived of local self-government, who possessed the jus conubii and jus commercii, but no political rights; Caere is said to have been the first example of this (353 B.C.); hence the expression “in tabulas Caeritum referre” came to mean “to degrade to the status of an aerarius”: (2) full citizens subjected to civil degradation (infamia) as the result of following certain professions (e.g. acting), of dishonourable acts in private life (e.g. bigamy) or of conviction for certain crimes; (3) persons branded by the censor. Those who were thus excluded from the tribes and centuries had no vote, were incapable of filling Roman magistracies and could not serve in the army. According to Mommsen, the aerarii were originally the non-assidui (non-holders of land), excluded from the tribes, the comitia and the army. By a reform of the censor Appius Claudius in 312 B.C. these non-assidui were admitted into the tribes, and the aerarii as such disappeared. But in 304, Fabius Rullianus limited them to the four city tribes, and from that time the term meant a man degraded from a higher (country) to a lower (city) tribe, but not deprived of the right of voting or of serving in the army. The expressions “tribu movere” and “aerarium facere,” regarded by Mommsen as identical in meaning (“to degrade from a higher tribe to a lower”), are explained by A. H. J. Greenidge—the first as relegation from a higher to a lower tribe or total exclusion from the tribes, the second as exclusion from the centuries. Other views of the original aerarii are that they were:—artisans and freedmen (Niebuhr); inhabitants of towns united with Rome by a hospitium publicum, who had become domiciled on Roman territory (Lange); only a class of degraded citizens, including neither the cives sine suffragio nor the artisans (Madvig); identical with the capite censi of the Servian constitution (Belot, Greenidge).
See A. H. J. Greenidge, Infamia in Roman Law (1894), where Mommsen’s theory is criticized; E. Belot, Histoire des chevaliers romains, i. p. 200 (Paris, 1866); L. Pardon, De Aerariis (Berlin, 1853); P. Willems, Le Droit public romain (1883); A. S. Wilkins in Smith’s Dict. of Greek and Roman Antiquities (3rd ed., 1891); and the usual handbooks of antiquities.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Astylar

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​ASTYLAR (from Gr. ἀ-, privative, and στῦλος, a column), an architectural term given to a class of design in which neither columns nor pilasters are used for decorative purposes; thus the Ricardi and Strozzi palaces in Florence are astylar in their design, in contradistinction to Palladio’s palaces at Vicenza, which are columnar.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Asvins

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​ASVINS, in Hindu mythology, twin deities of light. After Indra, Agni and Soma, they are the most prominent divinities in the Rig-Veda, and have more than fifty entire hymns addressed to them. Their exact attributes are obscure. They appear to be the spirits of dawn, the earliest bringers of light in the morning sky; they hasten on in the clouds before Dawn and prepare the way for her. In some hymns they are called sons of the sun; in others, children of the sky; in others, offspring of the ocean. They are youngest of the gods, bright lords of lustre, honey-hued. They are inseparable. The sole purpose of one hymn is to compare them with different twin objects, such as eyes, hands, feet and wings. They have a common wife, Surya. They are physicians, protectors of the weak and old, especially of elderly unmarried women. They are the friends of lovers, and bless marriages and make them fruitful.
See A. A. Macdonell, Vedic Mythology (Strassburg, 1897).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Asylum

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​ASYLUM (from Gr. ἀ-, privative, and σύλη, right of seizure), a place of refuge. In ancient Greece, an asylum was an “inviolable” refuge for persons fleeing from pursuit and in search of protection. In a general sense, all Greek temples and altars were inviolable, that is, it was a religious crime to remove by force any person or thing once under the protection of a deity. But it was only in the case of a small number of temples that this protecting right of a deity was recognized with common consent. Such were the sanctuaries of Zeus Lycaeus in Arcadia, of Poseidon in the island of Calauria, and of Apollo at Delos, they were, however, numerous in Asia Minor. They guaranteed absolute security to the suppliant within their limits. The right of sanctuary, originally possessed by all temples, appears to have become limited to a few in consequence of abuses of it. Asylums in this sense were peculiar to the Greeks. The asylum of Romulus (Livy i. 8), which was probably the altar of Veiovis, cannot be considered as such. Under Roman dominion, the rights of existing Greek sanctuaries were at first confirmed, but their number was considerably reduced by Tiberius. Under the Empire, the statues of the emperors and the eagles of the legions were made refuges against acts of violence. Generally speaking, the classes of persons who claimed the rights of asylum were slaves who had been maltreated by their masters, soldiers defeated and pursued by the enemy, and criminals who feared a trial or who had escaped before sentence was passed. (See treatises De Asylis Graecis, by Förster, 1847; Jaenisch, 1868; Barth, 1888.)
With the establishment of Christianity, the custom of asylum or sanctuary (q.v.) became attached to the church or churchyard. In modern times the word asylum has come to mean an institution providing shelter or refuge for any class of afflicted or destitute persons, such as the blind, deaf and dumb, &c., but more particularly the insane. (See Insanity.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Astyages

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​ASTYAGES, the last king of the Median empire. In the inscriptions of Nabonidus the name is written Ishtuvegu (cylinder from Abu Habba V R 64, col. 1, 32; Annals, published by Pinches, Tr. Soc. Bibl. Arch. vii. col. 2, 2). According to Herodotus, he was the son of Cyaxares and reigned thirty-five years (584–550 B.C.); his wife was Aryenis, the daughter of Alyattes of Lydia (Herod, i. 74). About his reign we know little, as the narrative of Herodotus, which makes Cyrus the grandson of Astyages by his daughter Mandane, is merely a legend; the figure of Harpagus, who as general of the Median army betrays the king to Cyrus, alone seems to contain an historical element, as Harpagus and his family afterwards obtained a high position in the Persian empire. From the inscriptions of Nabonidus we learn that Cyrus, king of Anshan (Susiana), began war against him in 553 B.C.; in 550, when Astyages marched against Cyrus, his troops rebelled, and he was taken prisoner. Then Cyrus occupied and plundered Ecbatana. The captive king was treated fairly by Cyrus (Herod, i. 130), and according to Ctesias (Pers. 5, cf. Justin i. 6) made satrap of Hyrcania, where he was afterwards slain by Oebares against the will of Cyrus, who gave him a splendid funeral. Alexander Polyhistor and Abydenus in their excerpts from Berossus, which Eusebius (Chron. i. pp. 29 and 37) and Syncellus (p. 396) have preserved, give the name Astyages to the Median king who reigned in the time of the fall of Nineveh (606 B.C.), and became father-in-law of Nebuchadrezzar. This is evidently a mistake; the name ought to be Cyaxares (in the fragments of the Jewish history of Alexander Polyhistor, in Euseb. Praep. Ev. ix. 39, the name is converted into Astibaras, who, according to the unhistorical list of Ctesias, was the father of Astyages), and there is no reason to invent an earlier king Astyages I., as some modern authors have done. The Armenian historians render the name Astyages by Ashdahak, i.e. Azhi Dahaka (Zohak), the mythical king of the Iranian epics, who has nothing whatever to do with the historical king of the Medes. (Ed. M.)