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

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​URGA (the Russian form of the Mongol Orgo = palace of a high official), a city of Mongolia, and the administrative centre of the northern and eastern Kalka tribes, in 48° 20′ N., 107° 30′ E., on a tributary of the Tola river. It is the holy city of the Mongols and the residence of the “Living Buddha,” metropolitan of the Kalka tribes, who ranks third in degree of veneration among the dignitaries of the Lamaist Church. This “resplendently divine lama” resides in a sacred quarter on the western side of the town, and acts as the spiritual colleague of the Chinese amban, who controls all temporal matters, and who is specially charged with the control of the frontier town of Kiakhta and the trade conducted there with the Russians.
Hurae, as the Mongols call Urga (Chinese name, K'ulun), stands on the high road from Peking to Kiakhta (Kiachta), about 700 m. N.W. of Peking and 165 m. S. of Kiakhta. There are three distinct quarters: the Kuren or monastery, the residence of the “Living Buddha”; the Mongol city proper (in which live some 13,000 monks); and the Chinese town, two or three miles from the Mongol quarter. Besides the monks the inhabitants number about 25,000. The Chinese town is the great trading quarter. The houses in this part are more substantially built than in the Mongol town, and the streets have a well-to-do appearance. The law which prohibits Chinamen from bringing their wives and families into the place tends to check increase. There is considerable trade between the Russians, Mongols and Chinese, chiefly in cattle, camels, horses, sheep, piece-goods and milk. Until the second half of the 19th century bricks of tea formed the only circulating medium for the retail trade at Urga, but Chinese brass cash then began to pass current in the markets. The trade of Urga is valued at over £1,000,000 a year.
The temples in the Mongol quarter are numerous and imposing, and in one is a gilt image of Maitreya Bodhisattva, 33 ft. in height and weighing 125 tons. When in 1904, on the occasion of the British expedition to Tibet, the Dalai Lama withdrew from Lhassa he went to Urga, where he remained until 1908. During his residence there the Dalai Lama would have no communication with the Urga Lama—described as a drunken profligate (see The Chinese Empire, ed. M. Broomhall, London, 1907, p. 357). The Chinese contemplate building a railway from Peking to Urga. The first section, to Kalgan, was completed in 1909 (see China, § Communications).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Urotropin

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​UROTROPIN (hexamethylenetetramine), known also in the United States under the name Uritone, a medicinal preparation due to the action of ammonia on formaldehyde. It consists of colourless granular crystals freely soluble in water and having an alkaline reaction. Urotropin is among the most powerful of urinary antiseptics. It was formerly thought that its action was due to the setting free of formaldehyde in the urine, but it is now known by the researches of P. Cammidge that this is not so. It is used to render the uric acid in cases where it is alkaline, loaded with phosphates or purulent, and it is thus useful in cases of cystitis. It is slightly diuretic. Experimentally it has been shown to have a solvent acid on uric acid, but its action in this direction in the body requires confirmation. Urotropin is very valuable in sterilizing the urine of patients who have suffered from typhoid fever and thus preventing the spread of the disease by what are known as "typhoid carriers." Analogous preparations are cystamine, helmitol and hetraline. Chinotropin is urotropin quinate, and borovertin is urotropin triborate.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Urmia

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​URMIA (the name as written by the Persians is Urūmīeh and Urmieh; the inhabitants of the place say Urmi), a town in the province of Azerbaijan in Persia, situated at an elevation of 4400 ft., in an extremely fertile and highly cultivated plain, 78 m. S.W. of Tabriz (120 by road), 11 to 12 m. from the western shore of the lake of the same name, in 37° 34′N. and 45° 4′ E. It is surrounded by a wall and deep dry ditch that can be flooded, and is encircled by orchards and gardens which extend all round for miles and even penetrate the heart of the town. The streets are broader than is usual in Persian cities, and most of them have a stream of water running down the middle. There are a busy bazaar and some old mosques. The population is about 35,000, and there are post and telegraph offices. The only building of importance is the ark, or citadel, a walled building in the centre of the town containing an arsenal and barracks for a small garrison. Urmia has for many years been the headquarters of various missions to the Nestorians of the neighbourhood: an American mission (since 1835) representing the “Board of the Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian church of the United States of America”; the French Lazarists (since 1840); British, “The Anglican Mission” founded by Archbishop Benson (1884), and a Russian mission (Orthodox, since 1902). Urmia is the capital of a fertile district 50 m. long and about 20 m. broad, having the same name and containing more than 300 flourishing villages. It exports great quantities of dried fruit and excellent tutun, tobacco for chibuks, or Turkish pipes.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Marie Leszczynska

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​MARIE LESZCZYNSKA (1703–1768), queen consort of France, was born at Breslau on the 23rd of June 1703, being the daughter of Stanislas Leszczynski (who in 1704 became king of Poland) and of Catherine Opalinska. During a temporary flight from Warsaw the child was lost, and eventually discovered in a stable; on another occasion she was for safety’s sake hidden in an oven. In his exile Stanislas found his chief consolation in superintending the education of his daughter. Madame de Prie first suggested the Polish princess as a bride for Louis duke of Bourbon, but she was soon betrothed not to him but to Louis XV., a step which was the outcome of the jealousies of the houses of Condé and Orléans, and was everywhere regarded as a mésalliance for the French king. The marriage took place at Fontainebleau on the 5th of September 1725. Marie’s one attempt to interfere in politics, an effort to prevent the disgrace of the duke of Bourbon, was the beginning of her husband’s alienation from her; and after the birth of her seventh child Louise, Marie was practically deserted by Louis, who openly avowed his liaison with Louise de Nesle, comtesse de Mailly, who was replaced in turn by her sisters Pauline marquise de Vintimille, and Marie Anne, duchess de Châteauroux, and these by Madame de Pompadour. In the meantime the queen saw her father Stanislas established in Lorraine, and the affectionate intimacy which she maintained with him was the chief consolation of her harassed life. After a momentary reconciliation with Louis during his illness at Metz in 1744, Marie shut herself up more closely with her own circle of friends until her death at Versailles on the 24th of June 1768.
See V. des Diguières, Lettres inédites de le reine Marie Leczinska et de la duchesse de Luynes au Président Hénault (1886); Marquise des Réaux, Le Roi Stanislas et Marie Leczinska (1895); P. de Raynal, Le Mariage d’un roi (Paris, 1887); H. Gauthier Villars, Le Mariage de Louis XV. d’après des documents nouveaux (1900); P. de Nolhac, La Reine Marie Leczinska (1900) and Louis XV. et Marie Leczynska (1900); P. Boyé, Lettres du roi Stanislas à Marie Leszczynska 1754–1766 (Paris and Nancy, 1901); and C. Stryienski’s book on Marie Joséphs de Saxe (La Mère des trois derniers Bourbons, Paris, 1902). See also the memoirs of Président Hénault and of the duc de Luynes (ed. Dussieux and Soulié, 1860, &c.).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Marienberg

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​MARIENBERG, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Saxony 16 m. S.E. of Chemnitz on the Flöha-Reitzenhain railway. ​Pop. (1905), 7603. It has an Evangelical church, a Roman Catholic church, a non-commissioned officers’ school and a preparatory school; and the industries comprise wool-spinning, flax-dressing, the making of lace, toys and cigars, and silver-mining.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Marienburg

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​MARIENBURG (Polish, Malborg), a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of West Prussia, 30 m. by rail to the S.E. of Danzig in a fertile plain on the right bank of the Nogat, a channel of the Vistula, here spanned by a handsome railway bridge and by a bridge of boats. Pop. (1905), 13,095. Marienburg contains large chemical wool-cleaning works and several other factories, carries on a considerable trade in grain, wood, linen, feathers and brushes, and is the seat of important cattle, horse and wool markets. Its educational institutions include a gymnasium and a Protestant normal school. In the old market-place, many of the houses in which are built with arcades, stands a Gothic town-hall, dating from the end of the 14th century. The town is also embellished with a fine statue of Frederick the Great, who added this district to Prussia, and a monument commemorating the war of 1870–71. Marienburg is chiefly interesting from its having been for a century and a half the residence of the grand masters of the Teutonic order. The large castle of the order here was originally founded in 1274 as the seat of a simple commandery against the pagan Prussians, but in 1309 the headquarters of the grand master were transferred hither from Venice, and the “Marienburger Schloss” soon became one of the largest and most strongly fortified buildings in Germany. On the decline of the order in the middle of the 15th century, the castle passed into the hands of the Poles, by whom it was allowed to fall into neglect and decay. It came into the possession of Prussia in 1772, and was carefully restored at the beginning of the 19th century. This interesting and curious building consists of three parts, the Alt- or Hochschloss, the Mittelschloss, and the Vorburg. It is built of brick, in a style of architecture peculiar to the Baltic provinces, and is undoubtedly one of the most important secular buildings of the middle ages in Germany.
Of the numerous monographs published in Germany on the castle of Marienburg, it will suffice to mention here Büsching’s Schloss der deutschen Ritter zu Marienburg (Berlin, 1828); Voigt’s Geschichte von Marienburg (Königsberg, 1824); Bergau’s Ordenshaupthaus Marienburg (Berlin, 1871); and Steinbrecht, Schloss Marienburg in Preussen (8th ed., Berlin, 1905).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Marietta (Georgia)

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​MARIETTA, a city and the county-seat of Cobb county, Georgia, U.S.A., in the N.W. of the state, about 17 m. N.W. of Atlanta. Pop. (1890), 3384; (1900), 4446, of whom 1928 were negroes; (1910), 5949. The city is served by the Louisville & Nashville, the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis, and the Western & Atlantic railways, and is connected with Atlanta by an electric line. Marietta is situated about 1118 ft. above the sea, has a good climate, and is both a summer and a winter resort. The principal industries are the manufacture of chairs and paper, and the preparation of marble for the markets; there are also locomotive works, planing mills, a canning factory, a knitting mill, &c. At Marietta there is a national cemetery, in which more than 10,000 Federal soldiers are buried, and at Kenesaw Mountain (1809 ft.), about 21/2 m. west of the city, one of the fiercest battles of the Civil War was fought. After the Confederate retreat from Dalton in May 1864, General William T. Sherman, the Federal commander, made Marietta his next intermediate point in his Atlanta campaign, and the Confederate commander, General Joseph E. Johnston, established a line of defence west of the town. After several preliminary engagements Sherman on the 26th and 27th of June made repeated unsuccessful attempts to drive the Confederates from their defences at Kenesaw Mountain; he then resorted to a flanking movement which forced the Confederate general to retire (July 2) toward Atlanta. Marietta was settled about 1840, and was chartered as a city in 1852.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Marie Thérèse

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​MARIE THÉRÈSE (1638–1683), queen consort of France, was born on the 10th of September 1638 at the Escurial, being the daughter of Philip IV. of Spain and Elizabeth of France. By pretending to seek a bride for his master in Margaret of Savoy, Mazarin had induced the king of Spain to make proposals for the marriage of his daughter with Louis XIV., and the treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 stipulated for her marriage with the French king, Marie renouncing any claim to the Spanish succession. As the treaty, however, hinged on the payment of her dowry, which was practically impossible for Spain, Mazarin could evade the other terms of the contract. Marie Thérèse was married in June 1660, when Philip IV. with his whole court accompanied the bride to the Isle of Pheasants in the Bidassoa, where she was met by Louis. The new queen’s amiability and her undoubted virtues failed to secure her husband’s regard and affection. She saw herself neglected in turn for Louise de la Vallière, Mme. de Montespan and others; but Marie Thérèse was too pious and too humble openly to resent the position in which she was placed by the king’s avowed infidelities. With the growing influence of Madame de Maintenon over his mind and affections he bestowed more attention on his wife, which she repaid by lavishing kindness on the mistress. She had no part in political affairs except in 1672, when she acted as regent during Louis XIV.’s campaign in Holland. She died on the 30th of July 1683 at Versailles, not without suspicion of foul play on the part of her doctors. Of her six children only one survived her, the dauphin Louis, who died in 1711.
See the funeral oration of Bossuet (Paris, 1684), E. Ducéré, Le Mariage de Louis XIV. d’après les contemporains et des documents inédits (Bayonne, 1905); Dr Cabanès, Les Morts mystérieuses de l’histoire (1900), and the literature dealing with her rivals Louise de la Vallière, Madame de Montespan and Madame de Maintenon.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Marienwerder

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​MARIENWERDER, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of West Prussia, 3 m. E. of the Vistula, 23 m. S. of Marienburg by rail. Pop. (1905), 10,258. The town was founded in the year 1233 by the Teutonic order. It has a cathedral of the same century, a triple Gothic edifice, restored in 1874 and containing the tombs of several grand masters of the Teutonic order; a (Gothic) town-hall (1880); a Roman Catholic basilica (1858); a non-commissioned officers’ school; a monument of the war of 1870–71 (1897); an archaeological collection; and a seminary for female teachers. The industries include iron-foundries, saw-mills, sugar-refineries, breweries and printing-works.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Medlar

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​MEDLAR, Mespilus germanica, a tree of the tribe Pomeae of the order Rosaceae, closely allied to the genus Pyrus, in which it is sometimes included; it is a native of European woods, &c., from Holland southwards, and of western Asia. It occurs in hedges, &c., in middle and south England, as a small, much-branched, deciduous, spinous tree, but is not indigenous. The medlar was well known to the ancients. Pickering (Chron. Hist. Pl. p. 201) identifies it with a tree mentioned in a Siao-ya ode (She-King, ii. 1, 2), 827 B.C. It is the μεσπίλη of Theophrastus and Mespilus of Pliny. The Latin mespilus or mespilum became in Old French mesle or medle, “the fruit,” meslier, medlier, “the tree.” The modern French nèfle is from a corruption nespilum of the Latin. The German Mispel preserves the original more closely. The well-known fruit is globular, but depressed above, with leafy persistent sepals, and contains stones of a hemispherical shape. It is not fit to eat until it begins to decay and becomes “bletted,” when it has an agreeable acid and somewhat astringent flavour. Several varieties are known in cultivation. The large Dutch medlar, which is very widely cultivated, has a naturally crooked growth; the large, much-flattened fruit is inferior in quality to the Nottingham, which is a tree of upright habit with fruits of about 1 in. diameter, superior to any other variety. There is also a stoneless variety with still smaller fruits, but the quality is not so good.
The medlar is propagated by budding or grafting upon the white-thorn, which is most suitable if the soil is dry and sandy, or on the quince if the soil is moist; the pear stock also succeeds ​well on ordinary soils. It produces the best fruit in rich, loamy, somewhat moist ground. The tree may be grown as a standard, and chiefly requires pruning to prevent the branches from rubbing each other. The fruit should be gathered in November, on a dry day, and laid out upon shelves. It becomes “bletted” and fit for use in two or three weeks. The Japanese medlar is Eriobotrya japonica (see Loquat), a genus of the same tribe of Rosaceae.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Meeanee

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​MEEANEE, or Miani, a village in Sind, India, on the Indus 6 m. N. of Hyderabad. Pop. (1901), 962. It is famous as the scene of the battle in which Sir Charles Napier, with only 2800 men, broke the power of the mirs of Sind on the 17th of February 1843. The result of this victory was the conquest and annexation of Sind.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Meek, Fielding Bradford

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​MEEK, FIELDING BRADFORD (1817–1876), American geologist and palaeontologist, the son of a lawyer, was born at Madison, Indiana, on the 10th of December 1817. In early life he was in business as a merchant, but his leisure hours were devoted to collecting fossils and studying the rocks of the neighbourhood of Madison. Being unsuccessful in business he turned his whole attention to science, and in 1848 he gained employment on the U.S. Geological Survey in Iowa, and subsequently in Wisconsin and Minnesota. In 1852 he became assistant to Professor James Hall at Albany, and worked at palaeontology with him until 1858. Meanwhile in 1853 he accompanied Dr F. V. Hayden in an exploration of the “Bad Lands” of Dakota and brought back valuable collections of fossils. In 1858 he went to Washington, where he devoted his time to the palaeontological work of the United States geological and geographical surveys, his work bearing “the stamp of the most faithful and conscientious research,” and raising him to the highest rank as a palaeontologist. Besides many separate contributions to science, he prepared with W. M. Gabb (1839–1878), two volumes on the palaeontology of California (1864–1869); and also a Report on the Invertebrate Cretaceous and Tertiary Fossils of the Upper Missouri Country (1876). He died at Washington, on the 22nd of December 1876.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Medjidie

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​MEDJIDIE, or Mejidie, the name of a military and knightly order of the Turkish Empire, and also of a silver Turkish coin, worth twenty piastres. The coin was first struck in 1844, and the order was instituted in 1852 by the sultan Abd-ul-Mejid, whose name was therefore given to them. (See Knighthood and Chivalry: § Orders of Knighthood.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Medway

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​MEDWAY, a river in the south-east of England. It rises in the Forest Ridges, S.W. of East Grinstead in Sussex, and, increased by many feeders from these picturesque hills, has an easterly course to the county boundary, which it forms, turning northward for a short distance. Entering Kent near Ashurst, its course becomes north-easterly, and this direction is generally maintained to the mouth. The river passes Tonbridge, receiving the Eden from the west, and later the Teise and Beult from the south and east, all these streams watering the rich Weald (q.v.) to the south of the North Downs. These hills are breached by the Medway in a, beautiful valley, in which lies Maidstone, generally much narrower than the upper. valley. The characteristic structure of this part of the valley is considered under the heading Downs. Below Maidstone the valley forms a perfect basin, the hills descending upon it closely above Rochester. Below this city the river enters a broad, winding estuary, passing Chatham, and at Sheerness joining that of the Thames, so that the Medway may be considered a tributary, and its drainage area of 680 sq. m. reckoned as part of that of the greater river. The length of the Medway is about 60 m., excluding its many lesser windings. The estuary is navigable for sea-going vessels drawing 24 ft. up to Rochester Bridge. A considerable traffic is carried on by small vessels up to Maidstone, and by barges up to Tonbridge, the total length of the navigation being 43 m. The marshy lowlands along the course of the river have yielded extensive remains of Roman pottery, a plain ware of dark slate-colour.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Bertrand-de-Comminges

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​ST BERTRAND-DE-COMMINGES, a village of south-western France at the foot of the Pyrenees in the department of Haute-Garonne, about 70 m. S.W. of Toulouse by rail and road. St Bertrand stands about 1 m. from the left bank of the Garonne on the slopes of an isolated hill crowned by its celebrated cathedral of Notre Dame. The façade of the church with its square tower and the first bay with its aisles are Romanesque, and belong to a church begun about the end of the 11th century by Bishop Bertrand (1075–1123), afterwards canonized. The nave with its side chapels and the choir, in the Gothic style, date from the first half of the 14th century and were chiefly the work of Bertrand de Goth, bishop from 1295 to 1299 and afterwards Pope Clement V. The choir screen, rood-loft and altar, which form an enclosure within the church, are masterpieces of Renaissance wood-carving, as are also the choir stalls. The church contains several tombs, the most interesting of which are the ine white marble tomb of Bishop Hugh of Châtillon (d. 1352), and the mausoleum of St Bertrand (both of the 15th century), whose relics are preserved in the treasury. On the south side of the church there is a ruined cloister of Romanesque architecture.
St Bertrand-de-Comminges (Lugdunum Convenarum) was founded in 72 B.C., and before the end of the 5th century became the seat of a bishopric suppressed at the Revolution. The town was destroyed towards the end of the 6th century by Guntrum, king of Burgundy, after it had served as a refuge to Gondowald, pretender to the crown of Aquitaine.