OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/O'Higgins, Bernardo

See also Bernardo O'Higgins on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​O’HIGGINS, BERNARDO (1778–1842), one of the foremost leaders in the Chilean struggle for independence and head of the first permanent national government, was a natural son of the Irishman Ambrosio O’Higgins, governor of Chile (1788–1796), and was born at Chilian on the 20th of August 1778. He was educated in England, and after a visit to Spain he lived quietly on his estate in Chile till the revolution broke out. Joining the nationalist party led by Martinez de Rozas, he distinguished himself in the early fighting against the royalist troops despatched from Peru, and was appointed in November 1813 to supersede J. M. Carrera in command of the patriot forces. The rivalry that ensued, in spite of O’Higgins’s generous offer to serve under Carrera, eventually resulted in O’Higgins being isolated and overwhelmed with the bulk of the Chilean forces at Rancagua in 1814. O’Higgins with most of the patriots fled across the Andes to Mendoza, where José de San Martin (q.v.) was preparing a force for the liberation of Chile. San Martin espoused O’Higgins’s part against Carrera, and O’Higgins, recognizing the superior ability and experience of San Martin, readily consented to serve as his subordinate. The loyalty and energy with which he acted under San Martin contributed not a little to the organization of the liberating army, to its transportation over the Andes, and to the defeat of the royalists at Chacabuco (1817) and Maipo (1818). After the battle of Chacabuco O’Higgins was entrusted with the administration of Chile, and he ruled the country firmly and well, maintaining the close connexion with the Argentine, co-operating loyally with San Martin in the preparation of the force for the invasion of Peru, and seeking, as far as the confusion and embarrassments of the time allowed, to improve the welfare of the people. After the overthrow of the Spanish supremacy in Peru had freed the Chileans from fear of attack, an agitation set in for constitutional government. O’Higgins at first tried to maintain his position by calling a congress and obtaining a constitution which invested him with dictatorial powers. But popular discontent grew in force; risings took place in Concepcion and Coquimbo, and on the 28th of January 1823 O’Higgins was finally patriotic enough to resign his post of director-general, without attempting to retain it by force. He retired to Peru, where he was granted an estate and lived quietly till his death on the 24th of October 1842.
See B. Vicuña Machenna, Vida de O’Higgins (Santiago, 1882), and M. L. Armunàtegni, La Dictadura de O’Higgins (Santiago, 1853); both containing good accounts of O’Higgins’s career. Also P. B. Figueroa, Diccionario biográfico de Chile, 1550–1887 (Santiago, 1888), and J. B. Suarez, Rasgos biográficos de hombres notables de Chile (Valparaiso, 1886).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/O'Neill, Eliza

See also Eliza O'Neill on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​O’NEILL, ELIZA (1791–1872), Irish actress, was the daughter of an actor and stage manager. Her first appearance on the stage was made at the Crow Street theatre in 1811 as the Widow Cheerly in The Soldier’s Daughter, and after several years in Ireland she came to London and made an immediate success as Juliet at Covent Garden in 1814. For five years she was the favourite of the town in comedy as well as tragedy, but in the latter she particularly excelled, being frequently compared, not to her disadvantage, with Mrs Siddons. In 1819 she married William Wrixon Becher, an Irish M.P. who was created a baronet in 1831. She never returned to the stage, and died on the 29th of October 1872.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/O'Shaughnessy, Arthur William Edgar

See also Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​O’SHAUGHNESSY, ARTHUR WILLIAM EDGAR (1844–1881), English poet, was born in London on the 14th of March 1844, and at the age of seventeen obtained through the first Lord Lytton, who took a peculiar interest in him, the post of transcriber in the library of the British Museum. Two years later he was appointed to be an assistant in the natural history department, where he specialized in ichthyology. But his natural bent was towards literature. He published his Epic of Women in 1870, Lays of France, a free version of the Lais of Marie de France, in 1872, and Music and Moonlight in 1874. In his thirtieth year he married a daughter of John Westland Marston, and during the last seven years of his life printed no volume of poetry. Songs of a Worker was published posthumously in 1881, O’Shaughnessy dying on the 30th of January in that year from the effects of a chill upon a delicate constitution. O’Shaughnessy was a true singer; but his poems lack importance in theme and dignity in thought. His melodies are often magnificent; and, as in The Fountain of Tears, the richness of his imagery conceals a certain vagueness and indecision of the creative faculty. He was very felicitous in bold uses of repetition and echo, by which he secured effects which for haunting melody are almost inimitable. His spirit is that of a mild melancholy, drifting helplessly through the realities of life and spending itself in song. By some critics he has been disparaged, but reparation was done to his memory by Francis Turner Palgrave, who, in the second series of the Golden Treasury, said with some exaggeration that his metrical gift was the finest, after Tennyson, of any of the later poets, and that he had “a haunting music all his own.”
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Great Circle

See also Great Circle on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​GREAT CIRCLE. The circle in which a sphere is cut by a plane is called a “great circle,” when the cutting plane passes through the centre of sphere. Treating the earth as a sphere, the meridians of longitude are all great circles. Of the parallels of latitude, the equator only is a great circle. The shortest line joining any two points is an arc of a great circle. For “great circle sailing” see Navigation.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Grayling

See also Grayling (genus) on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​GRAYLING (Thymallus), fishes belonging to the family Salmonidae. The best known are the “poisson bleu” of the Canadian voyageurs, and the European species, Thymallus vulgaris (the Asch or Äsche of Germany, ombre of France, and temola of Upper Italy). This latter species is esteemed on account of its agreeable colours (especially of the dorsal fin), its well-flavoured flesh, and the sport it affords to anglers. The grayling differ from the genus Salmo in the smaller mouth with comparatively feeble dentition, in the larger scales, and especially in the much greater development of the dorsal fin, which contains 20 to 24 rays. These beautiful fishes, of which five or six species are known, inhabit the fresh waters of Europe, Siberia and the northern parts of North America. The European species, T. vulgaris or vexillifer, attains, though rarely, a length of 2 ft. The colours during life are remarkably changeable and iridescent; small dark spots are sometimes present on the body; the very high dorsal fin is beautifully marked with purplish bands and ocelli. In England and Scotland the grayling appears to have had originally a rather irregular distribution, but it has now been introduced into a great number of rivers; it is not found in Ireland. It is more generally distributed in Scandinavia and Russia, and the mountain streams of central Europe southwards to the Alpine water of Upper Italy. Specimens attaining to a weight of 4 ℔ are very scarce.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Grays Thurrock

See also Grays on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​GRAYS THURROCK, or Grays, an urban district in the south-eastern parliamentary division of Essex, England, on the Thames, 20 m. E. by S. from London by the London, Tilbury & Southend railway. Pop. (1901) 13,834. The church of St Peter and St Paul, wholly rebuilt, retains some Norman work. The town takes its name from a family of Gray who held the manor for three centuries from 1149. There are an endowed and two training ship schools. Roman remains have been found in the vicinity; and the geological formations exhibiting the process of silting up of a former river channel are exposed in the quarries, and contain large mammalian remains. The town has trade in bricks, lime and cement.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Grazzini, Antonio Francesco

See also Antonio Francesco Grazzini on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​GRAZZINI, ANTONIO FRANCESCO (1503–1583), Italian author, was born at Florence on the 22nd of March 1503, of good family both by his father’s and mother’s side. Of his youth and education all record appears to be lost, but he probably began early to practise as an apothecary. In 1540 he was one of the founders of the Academy of the Humid (degli Umidi) afterwards called “della Fiorentina,” and later took a prominent part in the establishment of the more famous Accademia della Crusca. In both societies he was known as Il Lasca or Leuciscus, and this pseudonym is still frequently substituted for his proper name. His temper was what the French happily call a difficult one, and his life was consequently enlivened or disturbed by various literary quarrels. His Humid brethren went so far as to expel him for a time from the society—the chief ground of offence being apparently his ruthless criticism of the “Arameans,” a party of the academicians who maintained that the Florentine or Tuscan tongue was derived from the Hebrew, the Chaldee, or some other branch of the Semitic. He was readmitted in 1566, when his friend Salviati was “consul” of the academy. His death took place on the 18th of February 1583. Il Lasca ranks as one of the great masters of Tuscan prose. His style is copious and flexible; abundantly idiomatic, but without any affectation of being so, it carries with it the force and freshness of popular speech, while it lacks not at the same time a flavour of academic culture. His principal works are Le Cene (1756), a collection of stories in the manner of Boccaccio, and a number of prose comedies, La Gelosia (1568), La Spiritata (1561), I Parentadi, La Arenga, La Sibilla, La Pinzochera, L’ Arzigogolo. The stories, though of no special merit as far as the plots are concerned, are told with verve and interest. A number of miscellaneous poems, a few letters and Four Orations to the Cross complete the list of Grazzini’s extant works.
He also edited the works of Berni, and collected Tutti i trionfi, larri, mascherate, e canti carnascialaschi, andati per Firenze dal tempo del magnifico Lorenzo de’ Medici fino all’ anno 1559. In 1868 Adamo Rossi published in his Ricerche per le biblioteche di Perugia three “novelle” by Grazzini, from a MS. of the 16th century in the “Comunale” of Perugia: and in 1870 a small collection of those poems which have been left unpublished by previous editors appeared at Poggibonsi, Alcune Poesie inedite. See Pietro Fanfani’s “Vita del Lasca,” prefixed to his edition of the Opere di A. Grazzini (Florence, 1857).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Great Barrington

See also Great Barrington on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​GREAT BARRINGTON, a township of Berkshire county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., on the Housatonic river, in the Berkshire hills, about 25 m. S.W. of Pittsfield. Pop. (1890) 4612; (1900) 5854, of whom 1187 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 5926. Its area is about 45 sq. m. The township is traversed by a branch of the New York, New Haven & Hartford railroad, and the Berkshire Street railway (controlled by the N.Y., N.H. & H.) has its southern terminus here. Within the township are three villages—Great Barrington (the most important), Housatonic and Van Deusenville; the first two are about 5 m. apart. The village of Great Barrington, among the hills, is well known as a summer resort. The Congregational church with its magnificent organ (3954 pipes) is worthy of mention. There is a public library in the village of Great Barrington and another in the village of Housatonic. Monument Mt. (1710 ft.), partly in Stockbridge, commands a fine view of the Berkshires and the Housatonic Valley. The Sedgwick School (for boys) was removed from Hartford, Connecticut, to Great Barrington in 1869. There are various manufactures, including cotton-goods (in the village of Housatonic), and electric meters, paper, knit goods and counterpanes (in the village of Great Barrington); and marble and blue stone are quarried here; but the township is primarily given over to farming. The fair of the Housatonic Agricultural Society is held here annually during September; and the district court of South Berkshire sits here. The township was incorporated in 1761, having been, since 1743, the “North Parish of Sheffield”; the township of Sheffield, earlier known as the “Lower Housatonic Plantation” was incorporated in 1733. Great Barrington was named in honour of John Shute (1678–1734), Viscount Barrington of Ardglass (the adjective “Great” being added to distinguish it from another township of the same name). In 1761–1787 it was the shire-town. Great Barrington was a centre of the disaffection during Shays’s rebellion, and on the 12th of September 1786 a riot here prevented the sitting of court. Samuel Hopkins, one of the most eminent of American theologians, was pastor here in 1743–1769; General Joseph Dwight (1703–1765), a merchant, lawyer and brigadier-general of Massachusetts militia, who took part in the Louisburg expedition in 1745 and later in the French and Indian War, lived here from 1758 until his death; and William Cullen Bryant lived here as a lawyer and town clerk in 1816–1825.
See C. J. Taylor, History of Great Barrington (Great Barrington, 1882).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Great Bear Lake

See also Great Bear Lake on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​GREAT BEAR LAKE, an extensive sheet of fresh water in the north-west of Canada, between 65° and 67° N., and 117° and 123° W. It is of very irregular shape, has an estimated area of 11,200 sq. m., a depth of 270 ft., and is upwards of 200 ft. above the sea. It is 175 m. in length, and from 25 to 45 in breadth, though the greatest distance between its northern and southern arms is about 180 m. The Great Bear river discharges its waters into the Mackenzie river. It is full of fish, and the neighbouring country, though barren and uncultivated, contains quantities of game.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Great Barrier Reef

See also Great Barrier Reef on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​GREAT BARRIER REEF, a vast coral reef extending for 1200 m. along the north-east coast of Australia (q.v.). The channel within it is protected from heavy seas by the reef, and is a valuable route of communication for coasting steamers. The reef itself is also traversed by a number of navigable passages.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pit

See also Pit on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​PIT (O. E. pytt, cognate with Du. put, Ger. Pfutze, &c., all ultimately adaptations of Lat. puteus, well, formed from root pu-, to cleanse, whence purus, clean, pure), a term of wide application for a hole, cavity or excavation in the earth or other surface, thus it is applied to the excavations made in the ground for the purpose of extracting minerals, e g. chalk, gravel or sand, or for carrying on some industry, e g tan-pit, saw-pit, or to the group of shafts which form a coal-mine Roots and other vegetables can be Stored in the winter in a pit, and the term is thus transformed to a heap of such vegetables covered with earth or straw. The word is also used of any hollow or depression in a surface, as in the body, the arm-pit, the pit of the stomach, or on the skin, as the scars left by small-pox or chicken-pox. As applied to a portion of a building or construction, the word first appears for an enclosure, often sunk in the ground, in which cock-fighting was carried on, a “ cock-pit.” It would seem a transference of this usage that gave the common name to that part of the auditorium of a theatre which is on the floor, the French parterre. In the United States a special usage is that of its application to that part of the floor space in an exchange where a particular branch of business is transacted, thus in the Chicago Board of Trade, transactions in the grain trade are carried on in what is known as the “ Wheat Pit.”
In Scottish legal history there was a baronial privilege which in Latin IS termed furca et fossa, “ fork (1 e. gallows) and pit "; here the term has usually been taken to refer to the drowning-pit, in which women criminals were put to death; others take it to refer to an ordeal pit. There is a parallel phrase in M. Dutch, putte ends galghen; here putte is the pit in which women were buried alive as a penalty.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Piston

See also Piston on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​PISTON (through Fr from Ital. pistone or pestone, a great pestle, from Late Lat. pistare, to pound, a frequentative form of classical Lat. pinsere), in the steam engine, a disk or partition placed inside the cylinder, from end to end of which it moves alternately under the pressure of the steam. By means of the “ piston-rod ” attached to it this forward and backward motion is communicated to the machinery which the engine is employed to drive, and is in most cases converted into rotary motion by a “ connecting-rod, ” one end of which is jointed to the “ cross-head " Carried at the Cnd of the piston-rod, While the other turns the crank on the crank-shaft. The piston in gas, oil and air engines has a similar function, but in a pump, instead of imparting motion, it has motion imparted to it by some prime-mover. In every case the piston must fit the cylinder so accurately that as little as possible of the working fluid, whether it be steam, gas or Water, can escape past it, packing of various forms being commonly placed round its periphery in order to secure this fit. In music, the valves which in certain wind instruments, such as the cornet, enable the player to increase the length of the air-column and thus lower the note produced, are known as pistons. (See VALVES.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pitch

See also Pitch on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​PITCH. (1) (O. Eng. pic, an adaptation of Lat. pix, picis, Gr. πίσσα, πίττα, allied with Gr. πίτυς, pine-tree, Lat. pinus), the name of various substances of dark colour and of extremely viscid and tenacious consistency when subjected to heat. Strictly the term is applied to the resinous substance obtained as a solid residuum by the distillation of wood-tar (see Tar), or the non-resinous substance similarly produced from Coal-tar (q.v.). The name is also applied to the natural mineral substances, i.e. asphalt or bitumen (qq.v.). (2) A noun of various meanings which are somewhat difficult to connect with the verb from which they apparently must be derived. “ To pitch ” means primarily to thrust in or fix a stake or other pointed object into the ground, hence to place in a fixed position, set in order, cast or throw, hence to incline or slope. The etymology is obscure, but it appears in Northern dialects as “pick,” of which it may be a variant; there is some difficulty in connecting this form with “pick,” variant of “pike” (q. v.).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pitcher

See also Pitcher on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​PITCHER. (1) A large vessel for holding liquids, derived through Fr. from Med. Lat. picarium; the Lat. variant bicarium, Gr. βῖκος, has given the Ger. Becher, Eng. beaker (q.v.). (2) One who “pitches,” i.e. throws, casts, fixes; the name of the player in the game of base-ball who pitches or delivers the ball to the striker.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Schottische

See also Schottische on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​SCHOTTISCHE, the German for “ Scottish,” a name given to a dance, der schottische Tanz, introduced into England about 1850. It was a form of polka, with two figures. The “ Highland Schottische ” is a lively dance resembling a fling. What is known as the “ barn dance ” was first known in America as the “ Military Schottische.”
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe

See also Henry Rowe Schoolcraft on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​SCHOOLCRAFT, HENRY ROWE (1793–1864), American traveller, ethnologist and author, was born on the 28th of March 1793 at what is now Guilderland, New York, and died at Washington on the 10th of December 1864. After studying chemistry and mineralogy in Union College he had several years’ experience of their application, especially at a glass-factory of which his father was manager, and in 1817 published his Vitreology. In the following year he collected geological and mineralogical specimens in Missouri and Arkansas, and in 1819 he published his View of the Lead Mines of Missouri. In 1820 he accompanied General Lewis Cass as geologist in his expedition to the Upper Mississippi and the Lake Superior copper region, and in 1823 he was appointed Indian agent for the Lake Superior country. More than sixteen millions of acres were ceded by the Indians to the United States in treaties which he negotiated. He married the granddaughter of an Indian chief; and during several years’ official work near Lake Superior, and later under authorisation of an Act of Congress of 1847, he acquired much information as to institutions, &c., of the American natives. From 1828 to 1831 Schoolcraft was an active member of the Michigan legislature. In 1832, when on an embassy to some Indians, he ascertained the real source of the Mississippi to be Lake Itasca.
In 1825 he published Travels in the Central Portions of the Mississippi Valley, and in 1839 appeared his Algic Researches, containing Indian legends, notably, “The Myth of Hiawatha and other Oral Legends.” He composed a considerable quantity of poetry and several minor prose works, especially Notes on the Iroquois (1846); Scenes and Adventures in the Ozark Mountains (1853). His principal book, Historical and Statistical Information respecting the Indian Tribes of the United States, illustrated with 336 plates from original drawings, in part a compilation, was issued under the patronage of Congress in six quarto volumes, from 1851 to 1857.