OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alompra, Aloung P'houra

See also Alaungpaya on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​ALOMPRA, ALOUNG P’HOURA (1711–1760), founder of the last Burmese dynasty, was born in 1711 at Mōtshobo, a small village 50 m. north-west of Ava. Of humble origin, he had risen to be chief of his native village when the invasion of Burma by the king of Pegu in 1752 gave him the opportunity of attaining to the highest distinction. The whole country had tamely submitted to the invader, and the leading chiefs had taken the oaths of allegiance. Alompra, however, with a more independent spirit, not only contrived to regain possession of his village, but was able to defeat a body of Peguan troops that had been sent to punish him. Upon this the Burmese, to the number of a thousand, rallied to his standard and marched with him upon Ava, which was recovered from the invaders before the close of 1753. For several years he prosecuted the war with uniform success. In 1754 the Peguans, to avenge themselves for a severe defeat at Keoum-nuoum, slew the king of Burma, who was their prisoner. The son of the latter claimed the throne, and was supported by the tribe of Quois; but Alompra resisted, being determined to maintain his own supremacy. In 1755 Alompra founded the city of Rangoon. In 1757 he had established his position as one of the most powerful monarchs of the East by the invasion and conquest of Pegu. Before a year elapsed the Peguans revolted; but Alompra, with his usual promptitude, at once quelled the insurrection. The Europeans were suspected of having instigated the rising, and the massacre of the English at Negrais in October 1759 is supposed to have been approved by Alompra after the event, though there is no evidence that he ordered it. Against the Siamese, who were also suspected of having abetted the Peguan rebels, he proceeded more openly and severely. Entering their territory, he was just about to invest the capital when he was seized with an illness which proved fatal on the 15th of May 1760. Alompra is one of the most remarkable figures in modern Oriental history. To undoubted military genius he added considerable political sagacity, and he deserves particular credit for his efforts to improve the administration of justice. His cruelty and deceitfulness were faults common to all Eastern despots.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alone

See also Alone on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​ALONE. This adjective or adverb requires no definition for its meaning of “by oneself” or “solitary”; but its etymological history, as simply a combination of the words “all” and “one” is rather curious (compare the Ger. allein). “Lone” is merely a clipped form of the word, and so “lonely.” The New English Dictionary traces the English word back to the year 1300.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alost

See also Aalst, Belgium on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​ALOST (Flem. Aalst), a town of Belgium, in the province of East Flanders, situated on the left bank of the Dender; the ancient capital of what was called Imperial Flanders. Pop. (1897) 28,771; (1904) 31,655. Flanders in the feudal period was a fief of the king of France—the count of Flanders being the first of the twelve peers of France; but there was a small strip ​extending from Alost to the isles of Zeeland, designated Imperial Flanders, of which the count was the vassal of the Holy Roman emperor. Attached to the hôtel de ville is a fine belfry of the 15th century, but unfortunately it was seriously damaged by fire in 1879. In the church of St Martin, dating from 1498 but unfinished, is a fine Rubens. The subject is St Roch, the patron saint of lepers, and the colouring of the scaly skin of the leper in the forefront of the picture is generally regarded as one of the master’s most striking effects. The work was painted to the order of the Brewers’ Gild in (it is said) eight days. It was outside Alost that William Clito, grandson of William the Conqueror, who was then endeavouring to establish his claims as count of Flanders, was mortally wounded in 1128. Of all the claims Alost possesses to fame perhaps the most remarkable is that Thierry Maartens (c. 1474) set up there one of the first printing presses in Europe. Alost is famous to-day for its hop gardens and linen-bleaching establishments. The meadows south of Alost are often covered with the linen undergoing the process of bleaching, which makes them assume the aspect of a whitish-blue carpet.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Almshouse

See also Almshouse on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​ALMSHOUSE, a house built and endowed by private charity for the residence of poor and usually aged people. The greater portion were built after the Reformation. Two interesting examples are the Hospital of St Cross, near Winchester, founded in 1136, and Coningsby Hospital at Hereford, founded in 1614.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Belsham, Thomas

See also Thomas Belsham on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BELSHAM, THOMAS (1750–1829), English Unitarian minister, was born at Bedford on the 26th of April 1750. He was educated at the dissenting academy at Daventry, where for seven years he acted as assistant tutor. After three years spent in a charge at Worcester, he returned as head of the Daventry academy, a post which he continued to hold till 1789, when, having adopted Unitarian principles, he resigned. With Joseph Priestly for colleague, he superintended during its brief existence a new college at Hackney, and was, on Priestly’s departure in 1794, also called to the charge of the Gravel Pit congregation. In 1805 he accepted a call to the Essex Street chapel, where in gradually failing health he remained till his death in 1829. Belsham’s first work of importance, Review of Mr Wilberforce’s Treatise entitled Practical View (1798), was written after his conversion to Unitarianism. His most popular work was the Evidences of Christianity; the most important was his translation and exposition of the Epistles of St Paul (1822). He was also the author of a work on philosophy, Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind (1801), which is entirely based on Hartley’s psychology. Belsham is one of the most vigorous and able writers of his church, and the Quarterly Review and Gentleman’s Magazine of the early years of the 19th century abound in evidences that his abilities were recognized by his opponents.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Beltane

See also Beltane on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BELTANE, Beltene, Beltine, or Beal-Tene (Scottish Gaelic, bealltain), the Celtic name for May-day, on which also was held a festival called by the same name, originally common to all the Celtic peoples, of which traces still linger in Ireland, the Highlands of Scotland and Brittany. This festival, the most important ceremony of which in later centuries was the lighting of the bonfires known as “beltane fires,” is believed to represent the Druidical worship of the sun-god. The fuel was piled on a hill-top, and at the fire the beltane cake was cooked. This was divided into pieces corresponding to the number of those present, and one piece was blackened with charcoal. For these pieces lots were drawn, and he who had the misfortune to get the black bit became cailleach bealtine (the beltane carline)—a term of great reproach. He was pelted with egg-shells, and afterwards for some weeks was spoken of as dead. In the north-east of Scotland beltane fires were still kindled in the latter half of the 18th century. There were many superstitions connecting them with the belief in witchcraft. According to Cormac, archbishop of Cashel about the year 908, who furnishes in his glossary the earliest notice of beltane, it was customary to light two fires close together, and between these both men and cattle were driven, under the belief that health was thereby promoted and disease warded off. (See Transactions of the Irish Academy, xiv. pp. 100, 122, 123.) The Highlanders have a proverb, “he is between two beltane fires.” The Strathspey Highlanders used to make a hoop of rowan wood through which on beltane day they drove the sheep and lambs both at dawn and sunset.
As to the derivation of the word beltane there is considerable obscurity. Following Cormac, it has been usual to regard it as representing a combination of the name of the god Bel or Baal or Bil with the Celtic teine, fire. And on this etymology theories have been erected of the connexion of the Semitic Baal with Celtic mythology, and the identification of the beltane fires with the worship of this deity. This etymology is now repudiated by scientific philologists, and the New English Dictionary accepts Dr Whitley Stokes’s view that beltane in its Gaelic form can have no connexion with teine, fire. Beltane, as the 1st of May, was in ancient Scotland one of the four quarter days, the others being Hallowmas, Candlemas, and Lammas.
For a full description of the beltane celebration in the Highlands of Scotland during the 18th century, see John Ramsay, Scotland and Scotsmen in the 18th Century, from MSS. edited by A. Allardyce (1888); and see further J. Robertson in Sinclair’s Statistical Account of Scotland, xi. 620; Thomas Pennant, Tour in Scotland (1769–1770); W. Gregor, “Notes on Beltane Cakes,” Folklore, vi. (1895), p. 2; and “Notes on the Folklore of the North-East of Scotland,” p. 167 (Folklore Soc. vii. 1881); A. Bertrand, La Religion des Gaulois (1897); Jamieson, Scottish Dictionary (1808). Cormac’s Glossary has been edited by O’Donovan and Stokes (1862).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Belmont, August

See also August Belmont, Perry Belmont and August Belmont, Jr. on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BELMONT, AUGUST (1816–1890), American banker and financier, was born at Alzei, Rhenish Prussia, on the 8th of December 1816. He entered the banking house of the Rothschilds at Frankfort at the age of fourteen, acted as their agent for a time at Naples, and in 1837 settled in New York as their American representative. He became an American citizen, and married a daughter of Commodore Matthew C. Perry. He was the consul-general of Austria at New York from 1844 to 1850, when he resigned in protest against Austria’s treatment of Hungary. In 1853–1855 he was chargé d’affaires for the United States at the Hague, and from 1855 to 1858 was the American minister resident there. In 1860 he was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention at Charleston, South Carolina, actively supporting Stephen A. Douglas for the presidential nomination, and afterwards joining those who withdrew to the convention at Baltimore, Maryland, where he was chosen chairman of the National Democratic Committee. He energetically supported the Union cause during the Civil War, and exerted a strong influence in favour of the North upon the merchants and financiers of England and France. He remained at the head of the Democratic organization until 1872. He died in New York on the 24th of November 1890.
His son, Perry Belmont (1851– ), was born in New York on the 28th of December 1851, graduated at Harvard in 1872 and at the Columbia Law School in 1876, and practised law in New York for five years. He was a Democratic member of Congress from 1881 to 1889, serving in 1885–1887 as chairman of the committee on foreign affairs. In 1889 he was United States minister to Spain.
Another son, August Belmont (1853– ), was born in New York on the 18th of February 1853 and graduated at Harvard in 1875. He succeeded his father as head of the banking house and was prominent in railway finance, and in financing and building the New York subway. In 1904 he was one of the principal supporters of Alton B. Parker for the Democratic presidential nomination, and served as chairman of the finance committee of the Democratic National Committee.
A volume entitled Letters, Speeches and Addresses of August Belmont (the elder) was published at New York in 1890.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Belper

See also Belper on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BELPER, a market-town in the mid-parliamentary division of Derbyshire, England, on the river Derwent, 7 m. N. of Derby on the Midland railway. Pop. of urban district (1901), 10,934. The chapel of St John is said to have been founded by Edmund Crouchback, second son of Henry III., about the middle of the 13th century. There is an Anglican convent of the Sisters of St Lawrence, with orphanage and school. For a considerable period one of the most flourishing towns in the county, Belper owed its prosperity to the establishment of cotton works in 1776 by Messrs Strutt, the title of Baron Belper (cr. 1856), in the Strutt family, being taken from the town. Belper also manufactures linen, hosiery, silk and earthenware; and after the decline of nail-making, once an important industry, engineering works and iron foundries were opened. The Derwent provides water-power for the cotton-mills. John of Gaunt is said to have been a great benefactor to Belper, and the foundations of a massive building have been believed to mark the site of his residence. A chapel which he founded is incorporated with a modern schoolhouse. The scenery in the neighbourhood of Belper, especially to the west, is beautiful; but there are collieries, lead-mines and quarries in the vicinity of the town.
Belper (Beaurepaire) until 1846 formed part of the parish of Duffield, granted by William I. to Henry de Ferrers, earl of Derby. There is no distinct mention of Belper till 1296, when the manor was held by Edmund Crouchback, earl of Lancaster, who is said to have enclosed a park and built a hunting seat, to which, from its situation, he gave the name Beaurepaire. The manor thus became parcel of the duchy of Lancaster and is said to have been the residence of John of Gaunt. It afterwards passed with Duffield to the Jodrell family. In a great storm in 1545, 40 houses were destroyed, and the place was scourged by the plague in 1609.
See C. Willott, Historical Records of Belper.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Belt, Thomas

See also Thomas Belt on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BELT, THOMAS (1832–1878), English geologist and naturalist, was born at Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1832, and educated in that city. As a youth he became actively interested in natural history through the Tyneside Naturalists’ Field Club. In 1852 he went to Australia and for about eight years worked at the gold-diggings, where he acquired a practical knowledge of ore-deposits. In 1860 he proceeded to Nova Scotia to take charge of some gold-mines, and there met with a serious injury, which led to his return to England. In 1861 he issued a separate work entitled Mineral Veins: an Enquiry into their Origin, founded on a Study of the Auriferous Quartz Veins of Australia. Later on he was engaged for about three years at Dolgelly, another though small gold-mining region, and here he carefully investigated the rocks and fossils of the Lingula Flags, his observations being published in an important and now classic memoir in the Geological Magazine for 1867. In the following year he was appointed to take charge of some mines in Nicaragua, where he passed four active and adventurous years—the results being given in his Naturalist in Nicaragua (1874), a work of high merit. In this volume the author expressed his views on the former presence of glaciers in that country. In subsequent papers he dealt boldly and suggestively with the phenomena of the Glacial period in Britain and in various parts of the world. After many further expeditions to Russia, Siberia and Colorado, he died at Denver on the 21st of September 1878.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Beloit

See also Beloit, Wisconsin on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BELOIT, a city of Rock county, Wisconsin, U.S.A., situated on the S. boundary of the state, on Rock river, about 91 m. N.W. of Chicago and about 85 m. S.W. of Milwaukee. Pop. (1890) 6315; (1900) 10,436, of whom 1468 were foreign-born; (1910) 15,125. It is served by the Chicago & North-Western, and the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul railways, and by an inter-urban electric railway to Janesville, Wisconsin and Rockford, Illinois. Beloit is attractively situated on high bluffs on both sides of the river. The city is the seat of Beloit College, a co-educational, non-sectarian institution, founded under the auspices of the Congregational and Presbyterian churches in 1847, and having, in 1907–1908, 36 instructors and 430 students. It has classical, philosophical (1874) and scientific (1892) courses; ​women were first admitted in 1895. The Greek department of the college has supervised since 1895 the public presentation nearly every year of an English version of a Greek play. The river furnishes good water-power, and among the manufactures are wood-working machinery, ploughs, steam pumps, windmills, gas engines, paper-mill machinery, cutlery, flour, ladies’ shoes, cyclometers and paper; the total value of the factory product in 1905 was $4,485,224, 60·2% more than in 1900. Beloit, founded by New Englanders in 1838, was chartered as a city in 1856.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Belomancy

See also Belomancy on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BELOMANCY (from βέλος, a dart, and μαντεία, prophecy or divination), a form of divination (q.v.) by means of arrows, practised by the Babylonians, Scythians and other ancient peoples. Nebuchadrezzar (Ezek. xxi. 21) resorted to this practice “when he stood in the parting of the way . . . to use divination: he made his arrows bright.”
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Belon, Pierre

See also Pierre Belon on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BELON, PIERRE (1517–1564), French naturalist, was born about 1517 near Le Mans (Sarthe). He studied medicine at Paris, where he took the degree of doctor, and then became a pupil of the botanist Valerius Cordus (1515–1544) at Wittenberg, with whom he travelled in Germany. On his return to France he was taken under the patronage of Cardinal de Tournon, who furnished him with means for undertaking an extensive scientific journey. Starting in 1546, he travelled through Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, Arabia and Palestine, and returned in 1549. A full account of his travels, with illustrations, was published in 1553. Belon, who was highly favoured both by Henry II. and by Charles IX., was assassinated at Paris one evening in April 1564, when coming through the Bois de Boulogne. Besides the narrative of his travels he wrote several scientific works of considerable value, particularly the Histoire naturelle des estranges poissons (1551), De aquatilibus (1553), and L’Histoire de la nature des oyseaux (1555), which entitle him to be regarded as one of the first workers in the science of comparative anatomy.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Belt

See also Belt (clothing) on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​BELT (a word common to Teutonic languages, the Old Ger. form being balz, from which the Lat. balteus probably derived), a flat strap of leather or other material used as a girdle (q.v.), especially the cinctura gladii or sword-belt, the chief “ornament of investiture” of an earl or knight; in machinery, a flexible strap passing round from one drum, pulley or wheel to another, for the purpose of power-transmission (q.v.). The word is applied to any broad stripe, to the belts of the planet Jupiter, to the armour-belt at the water-line of a warship, or to a tract of country, narrow in proportion to its length, with special distinguishing characteristics, such as the earthquake-belt across a continent.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Crickhowell

See also Crickhowell on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​CRICKHOWELL, a market town of Brecknockshire, Wales, 14 m. E. of Brecon, beautifully situated on the left bank of the Usk, which divides it from Llangattock. Pop. (1901) 1150. The nearest railway stations are Govilon (5 m.) and Gilwern (4 m.) on the London & North-Western railway, but a mail and passenger motor service running between Abergavenny and Brecon passes through the town. It is also served by the Brecon & Newport Canal, which passes through Llangattock about a mile distant. Agriculture is almost the sole industry of the district. The town derives its name from a British fortress, Crûg Hywel, commonly called Table Mountain, about 2 m. N.N.E. of the town. Crickhowell Castle, of which only a tower remains, probably dated from the Norman conquest of the country. The manor of Crickhowell used to be regarded as a borough by prescription, but there is no record of its ever having possessed any municipal institutions. The church is in transitional Decorated style.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cricklade

See also Cricklade on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​CRICKLADE, a market town in the Cricklade parliamentary division of Wiltshire, England, 9 m. N.W. of Swindon, on the Midland & South-Western Junction railway. Pop. (1901) 1517. It is pleasantly situated in the plain which borders the south bank of the Thames, not far from the Thames & Severn Canal. The cruciform church of St Sampson is mainly Perpendicular, with a fine ornate tower, and an old rood-stone in its churchyard. The small church of St Mary has an Early English tower, Perpendicular aisles and a Norman chancel-arch. There is some agricultural trade.
Legend makes Cricklade the abode of a school of Greek philosophers before the Roman conquest, and the name is given as “Greeklade” in Drayton’s Polyolbion. It owed its importance in Saxon times to its position at the passage of the Thames. During the revolt of Æthelwald the Ætheling in 905 he and his army “harried all the Mercian’s land until they came to Cricklade and there they went over the Thames” (Anglo-Sax. Chron. sub anno), and in 1016 Canute came with his army over the Thames into Mercia at Cricklade (ibid.). There was a mint at Cricklade in the time of Edward the Confessor and William I., and William of Dover fortified a castle here in the reign of Stephen. In the reign of Henry III. a hospital dedicated to St John the Baptist was founded at Cricklade, and placed under the government of a warden or prior. Cricklade was a borough by prescription at least as early as the Domesday Survey, and returned two members to parliament from 1295 until disfranchised by the Redistribution Act of 1885. The borough was never incorporated, but certain liberties, including exemption from toll and passage, were granted to the townsmen by Henry III. and confirmed by successive sovereigns. In 1257 Baldwin de Insula obtained a grant of a Thursday market, and an annual three days’ fair at the feast of St Peter ad Vincula. The market was subsequently changed to Saturday, and was much frequented by dealers in corn and cattle, but is now inconsiderable. During the 14th century Cricklade formed part of the dowry of the queens of England. In the reign of Henry VI. the lordship was acquired by the Hungerford family, and in 1427 Sir Walter Hungerford granted the reversion of the manor to the dean and chapter of Salisbury cathedral to aid towards the repair of their belfry.