OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Toussaint l'Ouverture, Pierre-Dominique

See also Toussaint Louverture on Wikipedia; Pierre-Dominique Toussaint Louverture in the 9th Edition; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE (or Louverture), PIERRE-DOMINIQUE (c. 1746-1803), one of the liberators of Haiti, claimed to be descended from an African chief, his father, a slave in Haiti, being the chief's second son. He was at first surnamed Breda, but this was afterwards changed to L'Ouverture in token of the results of his valour in causing a gap in the ranks of the enemy. From childhood he manifested unusual abilities and succeeded, by making the utmost use of every opportunity, in obtaining a remarkably good education. He obtained the special confidence of his master, and was made superintendent of the other negroes on the plantation. After the insurrection of 1791 he joined the insurgents, and, having acquired some knowledge of surgery and medicine, acted as physician to the forces. His rapid rise in influence aroused, however, the jealousy of Jean Francois, who caused his arrest on the ground of his partiality to the whites. He was liberated by the rival insurgent chief Baisson, and a partisan war ensued, but after the death of Baisson he placed himself under the orders of Jean Francois. Subsequently he joined the Spaniards, but, when the French government ratified the act declaring the freedom of the slaves, he came to the aid of the French. In 1796 he was named commander-in-chief of the armies of St Domingo, but, having raised and disciplined a powerful army of blacks, he made himself master of the whole country, renounced the authority of France, and announced himself " the Buonaparte of St Domingo." He was taken prisoner by treachery on the part of France, and died in the prison of Joux, near Besançon, on the 27th of April 1803.
See Toussaint 1'Ouverture's own Mémoires, with a life by Saint Remy; (Paris, 1850); Gragnon-Laconte, Toussaint Louverture (Paris, 1887); Scholcher, Vie de Toussaint Louverture (Paris, 1889); and J. R. Beard, Life of Toussaint Louverture (1853).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Towcester

See also Towcester on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​TOWCESTER, a market town in the southern parliamentary division of Northamptonshire, England, 8 m. S.S.W. of Northampton, on the East & West Junction and the Northampton & Banbury Junction railways. Pop. (1901), 2371. It is pleasantly situated on the small river Tove, a left-bank affluent of the Ouse. The church of St Lawrence is a good Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular building, with a fine western Perpendicular tower. There are a considerable agricultural trade and a manufacture of boots and shoes.
Here was a Roman town or village situated on Watling Street. The site has yielded a considerable number of relics. In the 10th century a fortress was maintained here against the invading Danes. The site of both this and the Roman station is marked by an artificial mound known as Burg Hill, not far from the church, above the river. Towcester, with the whole of this district, witnessed a large part of the operations during the Civil War of the 17th century.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Taper

See also Taper on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​TAPER (probably of Celtic origin, cf. Irish tapar, Welsh tampr, taper, torch), a small thin candle of tallow or wax (see Candle); from its early shape, in which the circumference of the top was smaller than that of the base, the word came to be used in the sense of “slender,” particularly of something diminishing in size at one end. In architecture the word is used of the gradual diminishing of a spire or column as it rises. The spire tapers almost to a point, where it is terminated by a finial or vane: the column tapers only to a less diameter at the top, and as a general rule the more ancient the column the greater its diminution or taper; thus in one of the early temples at Selinus in Sicily the upper diameter is about half the lower diameter, while in the Parthenon it is about one-fifth.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Tapti

See also Tapti River on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​TAPTI, a river of western India. It rises in Betul district of the Central Provinces, flows between two spurs of the Satpura Hills, across the plateau of Khandesh, and thence through the plain of Surat to the sea. It has a total length of 450 m. and drains an area of 30,000 sq. m. For the last 32 m. of its course it is a tidal river, but is only navigable by vessels of small tonnage; and the port of Swally at its mouth, famous in Anglo-Portuguese history, is now deserted, owing to silting at the outflow of the river. The waters of the Tapti are nowhere used for irrigation.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Tara, Viscounts and Barons

See also Viscount Tara and Baron Tara on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​TARA, VISCOUNTS AND BARONS. The 1st Viscount Tara was Thomas Preston (1585-1655), a descendant of Sir Robert de Preston, who in 1363 purchased the lands of Gormanston, Co. Meath, and who was keeper of the Great Seal in Ireland some years later. Sir Robert's great-grandson, Robert Preston, was created Viscount Gormanston in 1478; and the latter's great-grandson was Christopher, 4th Viscount Gormanston (d. 1599), whose second son was Thomas Preston, Viscount Tara. The latter was in the same Irish regiment in the Spanish service as Owen Roe O'Neill, and distinguished himself in the defence of Louvain against the French and Dutch in 1635. Between him and Owen Roe O'Neill there was from the first intense jealousy. Preston, who was appointed general of Leinster, took a prominent and not unsuccessful part in the war of factions that raged intermittently in Ireland from 1642 to 1652. In 1650 Charles II. while in exile created him Viscount Tara; and after his departure from Ireland in 1652 he offered his services to Charles in Paris, where he died in October 1655. His wife was a Flemish lady of rank, by whom he had several children, one of his daughters being the second wife of Sir Phelim O'Neill. His son Anthony succeeded him as 2nd Viscount Tara, a title that became extinct on the death of Thomas, 3rd Viscount, in 1674.
In 1691 Meinhart de Schomberg, 3rd duke of Schomberg, second son of William III.'s famous general, was created Baron Tara, earl of Bangor, and duke of Leinster, in the peerage of Ireland, all of which titles became extinct at his death without sons in 1719. The title of Baron Tara was again revived in 1800 in favour of John Preston of Bellinter, Co. Meath, as a reward for his vote in favour of the Union in the Irish House of Commons, in which he sat as member for Navan. At his death without issue in 1821, the peerage became extinct.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Tapaculo

See also Tapaculo on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​TAPACULO, the name given in Chile to a bird of singular appearance—the Pteroptochus albicollis of ornithology, and applied in an extended sense to its allied forms, which constitute a small family, Pteroptochidae, belonging to the Clamatores division of Passeres, peculiar to South America. About 20 species, disposed by P. L. Sclater (Ibis, 1874, pp. 189–206) in 8 genera, are believed to belong to this group.
Tapaculo.
The species of the Family first made known is Scytalopus magellanicus, originally described in 1783 by J. Latham (Synopsis, iv. p. 464) as a Warbler. Even in 1836 J. Gould not unnaturally took it for a Wren, when establish in the genus to which it is now referred; but some ten years after Johannes Müller found that Scytalopus, together with the true Tapaculo, which was first described by Kittlitz in 1830, possessed anatomical characters that removed them far from any position previously assigned to them, and determined their true place as above given. In the meanwhile a kindred form, Hylactes, also first described in 1830, had been shown by T. C. Eyton to have some very exceptional osteological features, and these were found to be also common to Pteroptochus and Scytalopus. In 1860 J. Cabanis recognized the Pteroptochidae as a distinct Family, but made it also include Menura (see Lyre-bird), and in 1874 P. L. Sclater (ut supra) thought that Atrichia (see Scrub-bird) might belong here. It was A. Garrod in 1876 and 1877 who finally divested the Family of these aliens, but until examples of some of the other genera have been anatomically examined it may not be safe to say that they all belong to the Pteroptochidae.
The true Tapaculo (P. albicollis) has a general resemblance in plumage to the females of some of the smaller Shrikes (Lanius), and to a cursory observer its skin might pass for that of one; but its shortened wings and powerful feet would on closer inspection at once reveal the difference. In life, however, its appearance must be wholly unlike, for it rarely flies, hops actively on the ground or among bushes, with its tail erect or turned towards its head, and continually utters various and strange notes,—some, says Darwin, are “like the cooing of doves, others like the bubbling of water, and many defy all similes.” The “Turco,” Hylactes megapodius, is larger, with greatly developed feet and claws, but is very similar in colour and habits. Two more species of Hylactes are known, and ​one other of Pteroptochus, all of which are peculiar to Chile or Patagonia. The species of Scytalopus are as small as Wrens, mostly of a dark colour, and inhabit parts of Brazil and Colombia, one of them occurring so far northward as Bogota. (A. N.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Tapioca

See also Tapioca on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​TAPIOCA (a native Brazilian word), a farinaceous food substance prepared from cassava starch, the product of the large tuberous roots of the cassava or manioc plant (see Cassava). Cassava starch, separated from the fibrous and nitrogenous constituents of the roots, is spread, while in a moist condition, upon iron plates, and with constant stirring exposed to such heat as causes a partial rupture of the starch granules, which agglomerate into irregular pellets, becoming hard and translucent when cooled. In this condition the starch forms the tapioca of commerce, a light, pleasant and digestible food, much used in puddings and as a thickener for soups.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Tara

See also Hill of Tara on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​TARA, a village of Co. Meath, Ireland. It is celebrated for the Hill of Tara, well known through Thomas Moore's ballad, and for many centuries a royal residence and the scene of great meetings of the people. The hill, upon which five highroads converged from different parts of Ireland, is about 510 ft. in height, and stands isolated. On its summit or flanks are six raths or circular earthworks, the largest of which, called the king's rath (rath-na-riogh) encloses other works, among which is the forradh or meeting-place, a flat-topped mound. On this (but not in its original position) stands a pillar stone, which has been held to be the stone of destiny on which the Irish kings were crowned. An oblong enclosure, 759 ft. in length by 46 ft. in breadth, formed of earthworks, with entrances at intervals on each side, represents the banqueting hall. In the middle of the 3rd century A.D. King Cormac Mac Art, about whom there are many records in connexion with Tara, is said to have founded here schools of military science, law and literature. In the time of St Patrick Tara is indicated as the chief seat of druidism and idolatry, and in or about 560 it was abandoned as a royal residence, having fallen under the curse of St Ruadan. In 980 the Danish power of Meath was overthrown in battle here; in 1798 a severe defeat of the insurgents took place here (26th of May); and in 1843 the hill of Tara, as a site sacred to Irish traditions, was the scene of one of Daniel O'Connell's mass meetings in support of the repeal of the legislative union (15th of August).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wainscot

See also Panelling on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​WAINSCOT, properly a superior quality of oak, used for fine panel work, hence such panel-work as used for the lining or covering of the interior walls of an apartment. The word appears to be Dutch and came into use in English in the 16th century, and occurs in lists of imported timber. The Dutch word wagenschot, adapted in English as waynskott, weynskott (Hakluyt, Voyages, i. 173, has “boords called waghenscot”), was applied to the best kind of oak, well-grained, not liable to warp and free from knots. The form shows that it was, in popular etymology, formed from wagen (i.e. wain, wagon) and schoi, a term which has a large number of meanings, such as shot, cast, partition, an enclosure of boards, cf. “sheet,” and was applied to the fine wood panelling used in coach-building. This is, however, doubted, and relations have been suggested with Dutch weeg, wall, cognate with O. Eng. wah, wall, or with M. Dutch waeghe, Ger. Wage, wave, the reference being to the grain of the wood when cut. The term “wainscot” is sometimes wrongly applied to a “dado,” the lining, whether of paper, paint or wooden panelling, of the lower portion of the walls of a room. A “dado” (Ital. dado, die, cube; Lat. datum, something given, a die for casting lots; cf. O. Fr. det, mod. dé, Eng. “die”) meant originally the plane-faced cube on the base of a pedestal between the mouldings of the base and the cornice, hence the flat surface between the plinth and the capping of the wooden lining of the lower part of a wall, representing a continuous pedestal.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Waist

See also Waist on Wikipedia; waist on Wiktionary; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​WAIST, the middle part of the human body, the portion lying between the ribs and the hip-bones, comprising the compressible parts of the trunk. The word is also applied to the central portion of other objects, particularly to the narrowest portion of musical instruments of the violin type and to the centre of a ship. The word appears in the M. Eng. as waste, “waste of a mannys’ myddel” (Prompt. parv. c. 1440), and is developed from the O. Eng. wæstm, growth, the “waist” being the part where the growth of a man is shown and developed; cf. Icel. vōxtr, stature, shape; Dan. vaext, size, growth, &c. It is thus to be derived from the O. Eng. weaxan, to grow, wax.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Waithman, Robert

See also Robert Waithman on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​WAITHMAN, ROBERT (1764–1833), Lord Mayor of London, was born at Wrexham in 1764. After being employed for some time in a London linen draper’s, he opened, about 1786, a draper’s shop of his own, and made a considerable fortune. In 1818 he was returned to parliament, as a liberal, for the city of London. He lost his seat at the election of 1820, but regained it in 1826, and retained it till his death, taking part vigorously in the parliamentary debates, and strenuously supporting reform. In 1823 he was Lord Mayor of London. Waithman died in London on the 6th of February 1833. An obelisk erected by his friends in Ludgate Circus, London, adjoining the site of his first shop, commemorates his memory.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Waits

See also Wait (musician) on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​WAITS (A.S. wacan, to “wake” or “watch,”), the carol-singers and itinerant musicians who parade the streets at night at Christmas time. The earliest waits (those of the 14th and 15th centuries) were simply watchmen who sounded horns or even played a tune on a flute or flageolet to mark the hours. This appears to have been known as “piping the watch.” The black book of the royal household expenses of Edward IV., under date 1478, provides for “a wayte, that nyghtely from Mychelmas to Shreve Thorsdaye pipe the watch within this courte fowere tymes; in the somere nightes three tymes and maketh bon gayte at every chambre doare and offyce, as well as for feare of pyckeres and pilfers.” Elaborate orders as to his housing occur. Thus he was to eat in the hall with the minstrels and was to sup off half a loaf and half a gallon of ale. During his actual attendance at court he was to receive fourpence halfpenny a day or less in the discretion of the steward of the ​household. He had a livery given him and during illness an extra allowance of food. Besides “piping the watch” and guarding the palace against thieves and fire, this wait had to attend at the installation of knights of the Bath. London and all the chief boroughs had their corporation waits certainly from the early 16th century, for in the privy purse accounts of Henry VIII. occurs (1532) the entry “Item, the XI daye (of October) paied to the waytes of Canterbery in rewarde . . . vijs. vjd.” In 1582 Dudley, earl of Leicester, writes to the corporation of London asking that a servant of his should be admitted to the city waits. These borough waits appear, however, to have been more nearly akin to the medieval troubadours or minstrels who played to kings and nobles at and after the evening meal. The duties of the London waits, which included playing before the mayor during his annual progress through the streets and at city dinners, seem to have been typical of all 16th- and 17th-century city waits. The London waits had a special uniform of blue gowns with red sleeves and caps, and wore a silver collar or chain round the neck. In the 18th and early 19th century the ordinary street watchmen appear to have arrogated to themselves the right to serenade householders at Christmas time, calling round on Boxing Day to receive a gratuity for their tunefulness as well as their watchfulness. When in 1829 their place as guardians of the city's safety was taken by police, it was left for private individuals to keep up the custom.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wailly, Noël François de

See also Noël François de Wailly on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​WAILLY, NOEL FRANÇOIS DE (1724-1801), French grammarian and lexicographer, was born at Amiens on the 31st of July 1724. His life was spent in Paris, where for many years he carried on a school which was extensively patronized by foreigners who wished to learn French. In 1754 he published Principes généraux de la langue française, which revolutionized the teaching of grammar in France. The book was adopted as a textbook by the university of Paris and generally used throughout France, an abstract of it being prepared for primary educational purposes. ​In 1771 de Wailly published Moyens simples et raisonnés de diminuer les imperfections de notre orthographe, in which he advocated phonetic spelling. He was a member of the Institute from its foundation (1795), and took an active part in the preparation of the Dictionnaire de l’Académie. His works, in addition to those cited, include L'Orthographe des dames (1782) and Le Nouveau Vocabulaire français, ou abrégé du dictionnaire de l’Académie (1801). He died in Paris on the 7th of April 1801.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wainganga

See also Wainganga River on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​WAINGANGA, a river of India, flowing through the Central Provinces in a very winding course of about 360 m. After joining the Wardha the united stream, known as the Pranhita, ultimately falls into the Godavari.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Waiblingen

See also Waiblingen on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​WAIBLINGEN, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Württemberg, in the centre of a fruitful vine-growing district on the Rems, 10 m. N.E. from Stuttgart by the main line of railway to Nuremberg via Nördlingen and at the junction of a branch to Hessenthal. Pop. (1905) 5997. It has two Evangelical churches, one of which is a fine Gothic structure of the 15th century, restored in 1866, a Roman Catholic church and a modern town hall. Its industries, which include the making of pottery and silk and the cultivation of fruit and vines, are considerable. Waiblingen is mentioned in the 9th century, when it had a palace of the Carolingian sovereigns. Subsequently it belonged to the dukes of Franconia, and gave a surname to the emperor Conrad II. It was in this way that the Hohenstaufen family, which was descended in the female line from Conrad, received the name of Waiblingen, corrupted by the Italians into Ghibelline.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wainewright, Thomas Griffiths

See also Thomas Griffiths Wainewright on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​WAINEWRIGHT, THOMAS GRIFFITHS (1794–1852), English journalist and subject-painter, was born at Chiswick in October 1794. He was educated by his distant relative Dr Charles Burney, and served as an orderly officer in the guards, and as cornet in a yeomanry regiment. In 1819 he entered on a literary life, and began to write for The Literary Pocket-Book, Blackwood’s Magazine and The Foreign Quarterly Review. He is, however, most definitely identified with The London Magazine, to which, from 1820 to 1823, he contributed some smart but flippant art and other criticisms, under the signatures of “Janus Weathercock,” “Egomet Bonmot” and “Herr Vinkbooms.” He was a friend of Charles Lamb—who thought well of his literary productions, and in a letter to Bernard Barton, styles him the “kind, light-hearted Wainewright”—and of the other brilliant contributors to the journal. He also practised as an artist, designing illustrations to Chamberlayne’s poems, and from 1821 to 1825 exhibiting in the Royal Academy figure pictures, including a “Romance from Undine,” “Paris in the Chamber of Helen” and the “Milkmaid’s Song.” Owing to his extravagant habits, Wainewright’s affairs became deeply involved. In 1830 he insured the life of his sister-in-law in various offices for a sum of £18,000, and when she died, in the December of the same year, payment was refused by the companies on the ground of misrepresentation. Wainewright retired to France, was seized by the authorities as a suspected person, and imprisoned for six months. He had in his possession a quantity of strychnine, and it was afterwards found that he had destroyed, not only his sister-in-law, but also his uncle, his mother-in-law and a Norfolkshire friend, by this poison. He returned to London in 1837, but was at once arrested on a charge of forging, thirteen years before, a transfer of stock, and was sentenced to transportation for life. He died of apoplexy in Hobart Town hospital in 1852.
The Essays and Criticisms of Wainewright were published in 1880, with an account of his life, by W. Carew Hazlitt; and the history of his crimes suggested to Dickens his story of Hunted Down and to Bulwer Lytton his novel of Lucretia. His personality, as artist and poisoner, has interested latter-day writers, notably Oscar Wilde in “Pen, Pencil and Poison” (Fortnightly Review, Jan. 1889), and A. G. Allen, in T. Seccombe’s Twelve Bad Men (1894).