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

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​AMBLYPODA, a suborder of primitive ungulate mammals, taking its name from the short and stumpy feet, which were furnished with five toes each, and supported massive pillar-like limbs. The brain-cavity was extremely small, and insignificant in comparison to the bodily bulk, which was equal to that of the largest rhinoceroses. These animals are, in fact, descendants of the small ancestral ungulates which have retained all the primitive characters of the latter accompanied by a huge increase in bodily size. They are confined to the Eocene period, and occur both in North America and Europe. The cheek teeth are short crowned (brachyodont), with the tubercles more or less completely fused into transverse ridges, or cross-crests (lophodont type); and the total number of teeth is in one case the typical 44, but in another is reduced below this. The vertebrae of the neck unite by nearly flat surfaces, the humerus has lost the foramen, or perforation, at the lower end, and the third trochanter to the femur may also be wanting. In the fore-limb the upper and lower series of carpal bones scarcely alternate, but in the hind-foot the astragalus overlaps the cuboid, while the fibula, which is quite distinct from the tibia (as is the radius from the ulna in the fore-limb), articulates with both astragalus and calcaneum.
* Restored skeleton of Uintatherium (Dinoceras) mirabile.
* (After O. C. Marsh.)
The most generalized type is Coryphodon, representing the family Coryphodontidae, from the lower Eocene of Europe and North America, in which there were 44 teeth, and no horn-like excrescences on the long skull, while the femur had a third trochanter. The canines are somewhat elongated, and were followed by a short gap in each jaw, and the cheek-teeth were adapted for succulent food. The length of the body reached about 6 ft. in some cases.
In the middle Eocene formations of North America occurs the more specialized Uintatherium (or Dinoceras), typifying the family Uintatheriidae, which also contains species sometimes ​separated as Tinoceras. Uintatheres were huge creatures, with long narrow skulls, of which the elongated facial portion carried three pairs of bony horn-cores, probably covered with short horns in life, the hind-pair being much the largest. The dental formula is i. 0/3, c. 1/1, p. 3/3-4, m. 3/3; the upper canines being long sabre-like weapons, protected by a descending flange on each side of the front of the lower jaw.
In the basal Eocene of North America the Amblypoda were represented by extremely primitive, five-toed, small ungulates such as Periptychus and Pantolambda, each of these typifying a family. The full typical series of 44 teeth was developed in each, but whereas in the Periptychidae the upper molars were bunodont and tritubercular, in the Pantolambdidae they have assumed a selenodont structure. Creodont characters (see Creodonta) are displayed in the skeleton.
See also H. F. Osborn, “Evolution of the Amblypoda”, Bull. Amer. Mus. vol. x. p. 169. (R. L.*)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ambriz

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​AMBRIZ, a West African seaport belonging to Portugal, at the mouth of the Loje River, in 7° 50′ S., 13° E., some 70 m. N. of Loanda. It forms a part of the province of Angola (q.v.). The town is within the free-trade area of the conventional basin of the Congo river. Its chief exports are rubber, gum, coffee and copper. Pop. about 2500. Ambriz was, previously to 1884, the northernmost point of Africa south of the equator acknowledged as Portuguese territory.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ambros, August Wilhelm

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​AMBROS, AUGUST WILHELM (1816–1876), Austrian composer and historian of music, was born at Mauth near Prague. His father was a cultured man, and his mother was the sister of R. G. Kiesewetter (1773–1850), the musical archaeologist and collector. Ambros was well educated in music and the arts, which were his abiding passion; but he was destined for the law and an official career in the Austrian civil service, and he occupied various important posts under the ministry of justice, music being the employment of his leisure. From 1850 onwards he became well known as a critic and essay-writer, and in 1860 he began working on his magnum opus, his History of Music, which was published at intervals from 1864 in five volumes, the last two (1878, 1882) being edited and completed by Otto Kade and Langhaus. Ambros became professor of the history of music at Prague in 1869. He was an excellent pianist, and the author of numerous compositions somewhat reminiscent of Mendelssohn. He died at Vienna on the 28th of June 1876.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ambracia

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​AMBRACIA (more correctly Ampracia), an ancient Corinthian colony, situated about 7 m. from the Ambracian Gulf, on a bend of the navigable river Aracthus (or Aratthus), in the midst of a fertile wooded plain. It was founded between 650 and 625 B.C. by Gorgus, son of the Corinthian tyrant Cypselus. After the expulsion of Gorgus’s son Periander its government developed into a strong democracy. The early policy of Ambracia was determined by its loyalty to Corinth (for which it probably served as an entrepôt in the Epirus trade), its consequent aversion to Corcyra, and its frontier disputes with the Amphilochians and Acarnanians. Hence it took a prominent part in the Peloponnesian War until the crushing defeat at Idomene (426) crippled its resources. In the 4th century it continued its traditional policy, but in 338 surrendered to Philip II. of Macedon. After forty-three years of autonomy under Macedonian suzerainty it became the capital of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, who adorned it with palace, temples and theatres. In the wars of Philip V. of Macedon and the Epirotes against the Aetolian league (220–205) Ambracia passed from one alliance to the other, but ultimately joined the latter confederacy. During the struggle of the Aetolians against Rome it stood a stubborn siege. After its capture and plunder by M. Fulvius Nobilior in 189, it fell into insignificance. The foundation by Augustus of Nicopolis (q.v.), into which the remaining inhabitants were drafted, left the site desolate. In Byzantine times a new settlement took its place ​the name of Arta (q.v.). Some fragmentary walls of large, well-dressed blocks near this latter town indicate the early prosperity of Ambracia.
Authorities.—Thucydides ii. 68–iii. 114; Aristotle, Politics, 1303a sqq.; Strabo p. 325; Polybius xxii. 9-13; Livy xxxviii. 3-9; G. Wolfe, Journal of Geographical Society (London), iii. (1833) pp. 77-94; E. Oberhummer, Akarnanien, Ambrakien, &c. im Altertum (Munich, 1887). (M. O. B. C.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ambrose, Isaac

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​AMBROSE, ISAAC (1604–1663/4), English Puritan divine, was the son of Richard Ambrose, vicar of Ormskirk, and was probably descended from the Ambroses of Lowick in Furness, a well-known Catholic family. He entered Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1621, in his seventeenth year. Having graduated B.A. in 1624 and been ordained, he received in 1627 the little cure of Castleton in Derbyshire. By the influence of William Russell, earl of Bedford, he was appointed one of the king’s itinerant preachers in Lancashire, and after living for a time in Garstang, he was selected by the Lady Margaret Hoghton as vicar of Preston. He associated himself with Presbyterianism, and was on the celebrated committee for the ejection of “scandalous and ignorant ministers and schoolmasters” during the Commonwealth. So long as Ambrose continued at Preston he was favoured with the warm friendship of the Hoghton family, their ancestral woods and the tower near Blackburn affording him sequestered places for those devout meditations and “experiences” that give such a charm to his diary, portions of which are quoted in his Prima Media and Ultima (1650, 1659). The immense auditory of his sermon (Redeeming the Time) at the funeral of Lady Hoghton was long a living tradition all over the county. On account of the feeling engendered by the civil war Ambrose left his great church of Preston in 1654, and became minister of Garstang, whence, however, in 1662 he was ejected with the two thousand ministers who refused to conform. His after years were passed among old friends and in quiet meditation at Preston. He died of apoplexy about the 20th of January 1663/4. As a religious writer Ambrose has a vividness and freshness of imagination possessed by scarcely any of the Puritan Nonconformists. Many who have no love for Puritan doctrine, nor sympathy with Puritan experience, have appreciated the pathos and beauty of his writings, and his Looking to Jesus long held its own in popular appreciation with the writings of John Bunyan.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Amboise

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​AMBOISE, a town of central France in the department of Indre-et-Loire, on the left bank of the Loire, 12 m. E. of Tours by the Orléans railway. Pop. (1906) 4632. Amboise owes its celebrity to the imposing château which overlooks the Loire from the rocky eminence above the town. The Logis du Roi, the most important portion, was the work of Charles VIII.; the other wing was built under Louis XII. and Francis I. The ramparts are strengthened by two massive towers containing an inclined plane on which horses and carriages may ascend. The chapel of St Hubert, said to contain the remains of Leonardo da Vinci, who was summoned to Amboise by Francis I., king of France, and died there in 1519, is in the late Gothic style; a delicately carved relief over the doorway represents the conversion of St Hubert. The hôtel de ville is established in a mansion of Renaissance architecture; a town gateway of the 15th century, surmounted by a belfry, is also of architectural interest. Iron-founding, wool-weaving, and the manufacture of boots and farm implements are among the industries.
Amboise at the end of the 11th century was a lordship under the counts of Anjou, one of whom, Hugues I., rebuilt the ancient castle. Its territory was united to the domain of the crown of France by Charles VII. about the middle of the 15th century, and thenceforth the château became a favourite residence of the French kings. The discovery in 1560 of the “conspiracy of Amboise,” a plot of the Huguenots to remove Francis II. from the influence of the house of Guise, was avenged by the death of 1200 members of that party. In 1563 Amboise gave its name to a royal edict allowing freedom of worship to the Huguenot nobility and gentry. After that period the château was frequently used as a state prison, and Abd-el-Kader was a captive there from 1848 to 1852. In 1872 it was restored by the National Assembly to the house of Orleans, to which it had come by inheritance from the duke of Penthièvre in the latter half of the 18th century.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ambrose, Autpert

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​AMBROSE (Ambroise), AUTPERT (d. 778), French Benedictine monk. He became abbé of St Vincent on the Volturno “in the time of Desiderius, king of the Lombards.” He wrote a considerable number of works on the Bible and religious subjects generally. Among these are commentaries on the Apocalypse (see Bibl. Patrum, xiii. 403), on the Psalms, on the Song of Solomon; Lives of SS. Paldo, Tuto and Vaso (according to Mabillon); Assumption of the Virgin; Combat between the Virtues and the Vices.
See Mabillon, Acta sanct. Bolland. III. ii. 259, 266; Georg Lommel, Der ostfränkische Reformator Ambrosius (Giessen, 1847); Bollandist Bibl. hag. lat. (1898), 61.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Chocolate

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​CHOCOLATE, a paste of the ground kernels of the cocoa bean, mixed with sugar, vanilla or other flavouring, made into a cake, which is used for the manufacture of various forms of sweetmeat, or in making the beverage, also known as “chocolate,” obtained by dissolving cakes of chocolate in boiling water or milk (see Cocoa). The word came into Eng. through the Fr. chocolat or Span. chocolate from the Mex. chocolatl. According to the New English Dictionary (quoting R. Siméon, Dict. de la langue Nahuatl), this was “an article of food made of ... the seeds of cacao and of the tree pochotl (Bombax ceiba),” and was etymologically distinct from the Mexican cacauatl, cacao, or cocoa.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Choctaws

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​CHOCTAWS, Chahtas, or Chacatos (apparently a corruption of Span. chato, flattened), a tribe of North American Indians of Muskhogean stock. They are now settled in Oklahoma, but when first known to Europeans they occupied the district now forming the southern part of Mississippi and the western part of Alabama. On the settlement of Louisiana they formed an alliance with the French, and assisted them against the Natchez and Chickasaws; but by degrees they entered into friendly relations with the English, and at last, in 1786, recognized the supremacy of the United States by the treaty of Hopewell. Their emigration westward began about 1800, and the last remains of their original territory were ceded in 1830. In their new settlements the Choctaws continued to advance in prosperity till the outbreak of the Civil War, which considerably diminished the population and ruined a large part of their property. They sided with the Confederates, and their territory was occupied by Confederate troops; and accordingly at the close of the war they were regarded as having lost their rights. Part of their land they were forced to surrender to the government; their slaves were emancipated; and provision was claimed for them in the shape of either land or money. Since then they have considerably recovered their position. They long constituted a quasi-independent people under the title of the Choctaw nation, and were governed by a chief and a national council of forty members, according to a written constitution, dating in the main from 1838; they possessed a regular judicial system and employed trial by jury. Tribal government virtually ceased in 1906. The Choctaws number some 18,000. A few groups still linger in Mississippi and Louisiana. The Choctaw language has been reduced to writing, and brought to some degree of literary precision.
See Indians, North American; Handbook of American Indians, ed. F. W. Hodge (Washington, 1907).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Choeroboscus, Georgius

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​CHOEROBOSCUS, GEORGIUS (c. A.D. 600), deacon and professor at the oecumenical school at Constantinople. He is also called chartophylax either as the holder of some ecclesiastical office or as superintendent of the university library. It is not known whether “Choeroboscus” (Gr. for “swineherd”) is an allusion to his earlier occupation or an inherited family name. During his tenure of office he delivered a course of lectures on grammar, which has come down to us in the shape of notes taken by his pupils. He drew from the best authorities—Apollonius Dyscolus, Herodian, Orion, Theodosius of Alexandria. The lectures are written in simple style, but suffer from diffuseness. They were much used by Constantine Lascaris in his Greek grammar and by Urban of Belluno (end of 15th cent.). The chief work of Choeroboscus, which we have in its complete form, is the commentary on the canons of Theodosius on Declension and Conjugation. Mention may also be made of a treatise on orthography, of which a fragment (on Quantity) has been preserved; a tract on prosody; commentaries on Hephaestion and Dionysius Thrax; and grammatical notes on the Psalms.
See C. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (1897); A. Hilgard, Grammatici Graeci, iv. (1889–1894), containing the text of the commentary on Theodosius, and a full account of the life and writings of Choeroboscus; L. Kohn in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie, iii. 2 (1889); Reitzenstein, Etymologika, 190, n. 4.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Choate, Joseph Hodges

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​CHOATE, JOSEPH HODGES (1832– ), American lawyer and diplomat, was born at Salem, Massachusetts, on the 24th of January 1832. He was the son of Dr George Choate, a physician of considerable note, and was a nephew of Rufus Choate. After graduating at Harvard College in 1852 and at the law school of Harvard University in 1854, he was admitted first to the Massachusetts (1855) and then (1856) to the New York bar, and entered the law office of Scudder & Carter in New York City. His success in his profession was immediate, and in 1860 he became junior partner in the firm of Evarts, Southmayd & Choate, the senior partner in which was William M. Evarts. This firm and its successor, that of Evarts, Choate & Beaman, remained for many years among the leading law firms of New York and of the country, the activities of both being national rather than local. During these busy years Mr Choate was associated with many of the most famous litigations in American legal history, including the Tilden, A. T. Stewart, and Stanford will cases, the Kansas prohibition cases, the Chinese exclusion cases, the Maynard election returns case, and the Income Tax Suit. In 1871 he became a member of the “Committee of Seventy” in New York City, which was instrumental in breaking up the “Tweed Ring,” and later assisted in the prosecution of the indicted officials. In the retrial of the General Fitz John Porter case he obtained a reversal of the decision of the original court-martial. His greatest reputation was won perhaps in cross-examination. In politics he allied himself with the Republican party on its organization, being a frequent speaker in presidential campaigns, beginning with that of 1856. He never held political office, although he was a candidate for the Republican senatorial nomination against Senator Thomas C. Platt in 1897. In 1894 he was president of the New York state constitutional convention. He was appointed, by President McKinley, ambassador to Great Britain to succeed John Hay in 1899, and remained in this position until the spring of 1905. In England he won great personal popularity, and accomplished much in fostering the good relations of the two great English-speaking powers. He was one of the representatives of the United States at the second Peace Congress at the Hague in 1907.
Several of his notable public addresses have been published. The Choate Story Book (New York, 1903) contains a few of his addresses and after-dinner speeches, and is prefaced by a brief biographical sketch.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Chobe

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​CHOBE, a large western affluent of the middle Zambezi (q.v.). The river was discovered by David Livingstone in 1851, and to him was known as the Chobe. It is also called the Linyante and the Kwando, the last name being that commonly used.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Chodowiecki, Daniel Nicolas

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​CHODOWIECKI, DANIEL NICOLAS (1726–1801), German painter and engraver of Polish descent, was born at Danzig. Left an orphan at an early age, he devoted himself to the practice of miniature painting, the elements of which his father had taught him, as a means of support for himself and his mother. In 1743 he went to Berlin, where for some time he worked as clerk in an uncle’s office, practising art, however, in his leisure moments, and gaining a sort of reputation as a painter of miniatures for snuff-boxes. The Berlin Academy, attracted by a small engraving of his, entrusted to him the illustration of its yearly almanac. After designing and engraving several subjects from the story of the Seven Years’ War, Chodowiecki produced the famous “History of the Life of Jesus Christ,” a set of admirably painted miniatures, which made him at once so popular that he laid aside all occupations save those of painting and engraving. Few books were published in Prussia for some years without plate or vignette by Chodowiecki. It is not surprising, therefore, that the catalogue of his works (Berlin, 1814) should include over 3000 items, of which, however, the picture of “Jean Calas and his Family” is the only one of any reputation. He became director of the Berlin Academy in 1797. The title of the German Hogarth, which he sometimes obtained, was the effect of an admiration rather imaginative than critical, and was disclaimed by Chodowiecki himself. The illustrator of Lavater’s Essays on Physiognomy, the painter of the “Hunt the Slipper” in the Berlin museum, had indeed but one point in common with the great Englishman—the practice of representing actual life and manners. In this he showed skilful drawing and grouping, and considerable expressional power, but no tendency whatever to the use of the grotesque.
His brother Gottfried (1728–1781) and son Wilhelm (1765–1803) painted and engraved after the style of Daniel, and sometimes co-operated with him.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Benson, Frank Weston

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​BENSON, FRANK WESTON (1862– ), American painter, was born in Salem, Massachusetts, on the 24th of March 1862. He was a pupil of Boulanger and of Lefebvre in Paris; won many distinctions in American exhibitions, and a silver medal at the Paris Exhibition of 1900; and became a member of ​the “Ten Americans,” and of the National Academy of Design, New York. Besides portraits, he painted landscape and still life; and he was one of the decorators of the Congressional library, Washington, D.C.