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

See also Whalebone on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​WHALEBONE, the inaccurate name under which the baleen plates of the right whale are popularly known; the trade-name of whale-fin, which the substance receives in commerce, is equally misleading. Whalebone is formed in the palate on the roof of the mouth and is an exaggeration of the ridges, often horny in character, which are found on the roof of the mouth of all mammals. Three kinds are recognized by traders—the Greenland, yielded by the Greenland whale, Balaena mysticetus; the South Sea, the produce of the Antarctic black whale, B. australis; and the Pacific or American, which is obtained from B. japonica. Very many different names have been given to whales of the B. australis group, and it is possible that local races exist, whilst some writers are inclined to regard B. japonica as not specifically distinct from B. australis. Of these the Greenland whalebone is the most valuable. It formed the only staple known in earlier times, when the northern whale fishery was a great and productive industry. This whalebone usually comes into the market trimmed and clean, with the hairy fringe which edges the plates removed. To prepare whalebone for its economic applications, the blades or plates are boiled for about twelve hours, till the substance is quite soft, in which state it is cut either into narrow strips or into small bristle-like filaments, according to the use to which it is to be devoted.
Whalebone possesses a unique combination of properties which render it peculiarly and almost exclusively suitable for several purposes. It is light, flexible, tough and fibrous, and its fibres run parallel to each other without intertwisting. One of its earliest uses, referred to by William le Breton in the 13th century, was to form the plumes on helmets. It has been found practicable to employ flexible steel for several purposes to which whalebone was formerly applied, especially in the umbrella and corset industries, in which steel is now almost exclusively used. Whalebone, is, however, still in large demand among dressmakers and milliners; but it is principally used in the brush trade. In cases where bristles are too soft and weak, and where the available vegetable fibres possess insufficient elasticity and durability, whalebone offers the great advantage of being procurable in strips or filaments, long or short, thick or thin, according to requirement. Hence it is principally used for making brushes for mechanical purposes. The use of whalebone in brush making was originally patented by Samuel Crackles in 1808, and various special machines have been adapted for cutting the material into filaments. When whalebone came into the English market in the 17th century it cost at first about £700 per ton. In the 18th century its price ranged from £350 to £500 per ton, but early in the 19th century it fell as low as £25. Later it varied from £200 to £250; but with the decrease in whaling the article has become very scarce, and upwards of £2000 per ton is now paid for Greenland whalebone.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wharton, Henry

See also Henry Wharton on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​WHARTON, HENRY (1664–1695), English writer, was descended from Thomas, and Baron Wharton (1520–1572), being a son of the Rev. Edmund Wharton, vicar of Worstead, Norfolk. Born at Worstead on the 9th of November 1664, Wharton was educated by his father, and then at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Both his industry and his talents were exceptional, and his university career was brilliant. In 1686 he entered the service of the ecclesiastical historian, the Rev. William Cave (1637–1713), whom he helped in his literary work; but considering that his assistance was not sufficiently appreciated he soon forsook this employment. In 1687 he was ordained deacon, and in 1688 he made the acquaintance of the archbishop of Canterbury, William Sancroft, under whose generous patronage some of his literary work w^as done. The archbishop, who had a very high opinion of Wharton's character and talents, made him one of his chaplains, and presented him to the Kentish living of Sundridge, and afterwards to that of Chartham in the same county. In 1689 he took the oath of allegiance to William and Mary, but he wrote a severe criticism of Bishop Burnet's History of the Reformation, and it was partly owing to the bishop's hostility that he did not obtain further preferment in the English church. He died on the 5th of March 1695, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Wharton's most valuable work is his Anglia sacra, a collection of the lives of English archbishops and bishops, which was published in two volumes in 1691. Some of these were written by Wharton himself; others were borrowed from early writers. His other writings include, in addition to his criticism of the History of the Reformation, A treatise of the celibacy of the clergy (1688); The enthusiasm of the Church of Rome demonstrated in some observations upon the life of Ignatius Loyola (1688); and A defence of pluralities (1692, new ed. 1703). In the Lambeth Library there are sixteen volumes of Wharton's manuscripts. Describing him as “this wonderful man,” Stubbs says that Wharton did for the elucidation of English Church history " more than any one before or since." A life of Wharton is included in George D’Oyly's Life of W. Sancroft (1821).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Turnu Severin

See also Turnu Severin on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​TURNU SEVERIN, the capital of the department of Mehedintzi, Rumania, on the main Walachian railway, and on the left bank of the river Danube, below the Iron Gates cataracts. Pop. (1900), 18,628. It is a modern commercial town, having a school of arts and crafts, several churches, and large government yards for the building of river steamers, lighters and tug-boats. There is a considerable trade in livestock, preserved meat, petroleum and cereals. The town, which was originally called Drobetae by the Romans, took its later name of Turris Severi, or the “Tower of Severus,” from a tower which stood on a small hill surrounded by a deep fosse. This was built to commemorate a victory over the Quadi and Marcomanni, by the Roman emperor Severus (A.D. 222–235). Near Turnu Severin are the remains of the celebrated Trajan's bridge, the largest in the Roman Empire, built in A.D. 103 by the architect Apollodorus of Damascus. The river is about 4000 ft. broad at this spot. The bridge was composed of twenty arches supported by stone pillars, several of which are still visible at low water.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Turpin, François Henri

See also François Henri Turpin on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​TURPIN, FRANÇOIS HENRI (1709–1799), French man of letters, was born at Caen. He was first a professor at the university of his native town, then went to seek his fortunes in Paris, where he made some stir in philosophical circles, and especially in that of the magnificent Helvetius; but he was only enabled with difficulty to earn a livelihood by putting his pen at the service of the booksellers. He translated, or rather adapted from the English, Edward W. Montague's Histoire du gouvernement des anciennes républiques (1769), and wrote a continuation of Father Pierre Joseph d’Orleans, Histoire des révolutions d’Angleterre (1786). His Histoire naturelle et civile du royaume de Siam (1771) is an interesting but faulty adaptation of the observations of a vicar-apostolic who had lived for a long time in that country, and who accused Turpin of having misrepresented his ideas. His chief work, La France illustre, ou Le Plutarque français, contains the biographies of generals, ministers, and eminent officers of the law (5 vols., 1777–1790), in which, however, as La Harpe said, he showed himself to be “ni Plutarque ni Français.” He also wrote an Histoire des hommes publics tirés du tiers état (1789).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Turpin, Richard

See also Dick Turpin on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​TURPIN, RICHARD [Dick] (1706–1739), English robber, was born in 1706 at Hempstead, near Saffron Walden, Essex, where his father kept an alehouse. He was apprenticed to a butcher, but, having been detected at cattle-stealing, joined a notorious gang of deer-stealers and smugglers in Essex. This gang also made a practice of robbing farmhouses, terrorizing the women in the absence of their husbands and brothers, and Turpin took the lead in this class of outrage. On the gang being broken up Turpin went into partnership with Tom King, a well-known highwayman. To avoid arrest he finally left Essex for Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, where he set up under an assumed name as a horse dealer. He was convicted at York assizes of horse-stealing and hanged on the 7th of April 1739. Harrison Ainsworth, in his romance Rookwood, gives a spirited account of a wonderful ride by Dick Turpin on his mare, Black Bess, from London to York, and it is in this connexion that Turpin’s name has been generally remembered. But as far as Turpin is concerned the incident is pure fiction. A somewhat similar story was told about a certain John Nevison, known as “Nicks,” a well-known highwayman in the time of Charles II., who to establish an alibi rode from Gad’s Hill to York (some 190 m.) in about 15 hours. Both stories are possibly only different versions of an old north road myth.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Turret

See also Turret on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​TURRET (from O. Fr. tourette, diminutive of tour, tower, mod. Fr. tourelle), a small tower, especially at the angles of larger buildings, sometimes overhanging and built on corbels, when it is often called a “bartizan” (q.v.), and sometimes rising from the ground.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Turnu Magurele

See also Turnu Magurele on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​TURNU MAGURELE, the capital of the department of Teleorman, Rumania; 2½ m. N.E. of the confluence of the Olt and Danube, at the terminus of a branch railway. Pop. (1900), 8668. A ferry plies across the Danube to the Bulgarian fortress of Nicopolis. Large quantities of grain are shipped in lighters to Braila. There are some vestiges of a Roman bridge across the Danube built (c. A.D. 330) by Constantine the Great.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Schiavone

See also Schiavona on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​SCHIAVONE, the Italian name of the basket-hilted sword of the 17th century, resembling what is erroneously called the “claymore” of modern Highland regiments. The “schiavone” was the sword of the Slavonic guards (Schiavoni) of the doges of Venice, whence the name (see Sword).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Schiedam

See also Schiedam on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​SCHIEDAM, a town and river port of Holland, in the province of South Holland, on the Schie, near its confluence with the Maas, and a junction station 3 m. by rail and steam tramway W. of Rotterdam. Pop. (1905) 29,227. The public buildings of interest are the Groote or Janskerk, the old Roman Catholic rhurch, the synagogue, the town-hall, the exchange, the concert-hall and a ruined castle. Schiedam is famous as the seat of a great gin manufacture, which, carried on in more than three hundred distilleries, gives employment besides to malt-factories, cooperages and cork-cutting establishments, and supplies grain refuse enough to feed about 30,000 pigs, as well as sufficient yeast to form an important article of export. Other industries include shipbuilding, glass-blowing and the manufacture of stearine candles.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Schill, Ferdinand Baptista von

See also Ferdinand Baptista von Schill on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​SCHILL, FERDINAND BAPTISTA VON (1776–1809), Prussian soldier, was born in Saxony. Entering the Prussian cavalry at the age of twelve, he was still a subaltern of dragoons when he was wounded at the battle of Auerstadt. From that field he escaped to Kolberg, where he played a very prominent part in the celebrated siege of 1807, as the commander of a volunteer force of all arms. After the peace of Tilsit he was promoted major and given the command of a hussar regiment formed from his Kolberg men. In 1809 the political situation in Europe appeared to Schill to favour an attempt to liberate his country from the French domination. Leadingout his regiment from Berlin under pretext of manoeuvres, he raised the standard of revolt, and, joined by many officers and a company of light infantry, marched for the Elbe. At the village of Dodendorf (5th of May 1809) he had a brush with the Magdeburg garrison, but was soon driven northwards, where he hoped to, find British support. The king of Prussia/s proclamations prevented the patriots from receiving, any appreciable assistance, and with little more than his original force Schill was surrounded by 5000 Danish and Dutch troops in the neighbourhood of Wismar. He escaped by hard fighting (action of Damgarten, 24th of May) to Stralsund, and attempted to put the crumbling fortincations in order. The Danes and Dutch soon hemmed him in, and by sheer numbers overwhelmed the defenders (May 31). Schill himself was killed. Some parties escaped to Prussia, where the officers were tried by court-martial, cashiered and imprisoned. A few escaped to Swinemiinde, but the restwere either killed or taken. Handed over to the French, the soldiers were sent (to the galleys, and the eleven officers shot at Wesel on the 16th ​of September. The body of Schill was buried at Stralsund, his head sent to Leiden, where it remained until 1837. Monuments were erected at Brunswick, Stralsund and Wesel, and the 1st Silesian Leib-Hussars have borne Schill's name since 1889.
See Haken, Ferdinand von Schill (Leipzig, 182); Barsch, Ferdinand von Schill's Zu und Tod (Leipzig, 1860), and F. von Schill, ein Charakterbild (Potsdam, 1860); Petrich, Pommer' sche Lebensbilder, (Stettin, 1884); Francke, Aus Stralsunds Franzosenzeit (1890).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Schimmel, Hendrik Jan

See also Hendrik Jan Schimmel on Wikipedia; the 1922 update; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​SCHIMMEL, HENDRIK JAN (1825–), Dutch poet and novelist, was born on the 30th of June 1825, at ’S Graveland, in the province of North Holland, where his father was a notary and the burgomaster., From 1836 to 1842 Schimmel served in his father's office, and upon his death he was taken into the office of the agent of the Dutch Treasury in Amsterdam, exchanging in 1849 for a post with the Dutch Trading Company there. In 1863 he became a director of the Amsterdam Credit Association. His first volume of poems appeared in 1852; but it was as a writer of historical dramas in blank verse and one of the regenerators of the Dutch stage that his literary position was made. His finest production was Struensee (1868), which was preceded by Napoleon Bonaparte (1851) and Juffrouw Serklaas (“Mrs Serklaas,” 1857). Among his other dramatic works may be mentioned Joan Woutersz (a drama, 1847), Twee ​Tudors (“Two Tudors,” 1847), Gondelbald (1848), Schuld en Boete (“Guilt and Retribution,” a drama, 1852), Het Kind van Staat (“The State Child,” a dramatic fragment, 1859); Zege na Strijd (“Struggle and Triumph,” a drama, 1878). Schimmel's renderings of Casimir de la Vigne's Louis XI., Geibel's Sophonisbe, and Ponsard's Lucrèce are also still acted in the Netherlands. His novels are distinguished by their vigorous style and able characterization. The earlier, better-known ones betray the writer's English proclivities. The plots of Mary Hollis (1860, 3 vols., English translation, London 1872, under the title of “Mary Hollis, a Romance of the Days of Charles II. and William, Prince of Orange,” 3 vols.) and of Mylady Carlisle (1864, 4 vols.) are laid in England, whereas those of his Sinjeur Semeyns (1875, 3 vols.), a powerful picture of the terrible year 1672, and of De Kapitein van de Lijfgarde (1888, 3 vols., English adaptation, 1896, under the title of “The Lifeguardsman,” 1 vol.), a continuation of “Master Semeyns,” are almost entirely centred in Holland. He had many points of style and manner in common with Madame Bosboom-Toussaint, though both remained highly original in their treatment. Both finally reverted to essentially national subjects. To the earlier romances of Schimmel belong: Bonaparte en zyn Tyd (“Bonaparte and his Time,” 1853), De Eerste Dag eens Nieuwen Levens (“The First Day of a New Life,” 2 vols., 1855), Sproken en Vertellingen (“Legends and Tales,” 1855), Een Haagsche Joffer (“A Hague Damsel,” 1857), De Vooravond der Revolutie (“The Eve of the Revolution,” 1866). Schimmel was an early collaborator of Potgieter on the Gids staff. His dramatic works appeared in a collected edition in 1885–1886 at Amsterdam (3 vols.), followed by a complete and popular issue of his novels (Schiedam, 1892).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Schichau, Ferdinand

See also Ferdinand Schichau on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​SCHICHAU, FERDINAND (1814–1896), German engineer and shipbuilder, was born at Elbing, where his father was a smith and iron worker, on the 30th of January 1814. He studied engineering at Berlin and then in England, and returning to Elbing in 1837 started works of his own, which from small beginnings eventually developed into an establishment employing some 8000 men. He began by making steam engines, hydraulic presses and industrial machinery, and, by concerning himself with canal work and river or coast improvement, came to the designing and construction of dredgers, in which he was the pioneer (1841), and finally to the building of ships.
His “Borussia,” in 1855, was the first screw-vessel constructed in Germany. Schichau began to specialize in building torpedo boats and destroyers (at first for the Russian government) at an early date. From 1873 he had the co-operation of Carl H. Ziese, who married his daughter. Ziese introduced compound engines into the first vessels built by Schichau for the German navy, the gunboats “Habicht” and “Möwe,” launched in 1879, and also designed in 1881 the first triple-expansion machinery constructed on the continent, supplying these engines to the torpedo-boats built by Schichau for the German navy in 1884 the first of some 160 that by the year 1909 were provided for Germany out of the Elbing yards. Torpepo-boats were also built for China, Austria and Italy. Meanwhile Elbing had become insufficient for the increased output demanded. In 1889 Schichau established a floating dock and repairing shops at Pillau, and soon afterwards, by arrangement with the government, started a large shipbuilding yard at Danzig, for the purpose of constructing the largest ships of war and for the mercantile marine. He died on the 23rd of January 1896; but Ziese carried on the work, and not only made the Danzig yard the chief cradle of the new German fleet, rivalling the finest English establishments, but also largely developed the equipment at Elbing. The Schichau works have made the name of their originator to rank with that of Krupp.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Schiaparelli, Giovanni Virginio

See also Giovanni Schiaparelli on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​SCHIAPARELLI, GIOVANNI VIRGINIO (1835–1910), Italian astronomer and senator of the kingdom of Italy, was born on the 14th of March 1835 at Savigliano in Piedmont. He entered Turin university in 1850, and graduated in 1854. Two years later he went to Berlin to study astronomy under Encke, and in 1859 was appointed assistant observer at Pulkova, a post which he resigned in 1860 for a similar one at Brera, Milan. On the death of Francesco Carlini (b. 1783) in 1862, Schiaparelli succeeded to the directorship, a position which he held until 1900. He died at Milan on the 4th of July 1910.
Schiaparelli was primarily an observer—his first discovery was of the asteroid Hesperia in 1861—but he had also considerable mathematical gifts, as is shown in his treatment of orbital motions, published in 1864, and in other papers. His great contribution to astronomy dates from 1866, when he showed that meteors or shooting stars traverse space in cometary orbits, and, in particular, that the orbits of the Perseids and Comet III., 1862, and of the Leonids and Comet I., 1866, were practically the same. These discoveries, subsequently amplified in his Le Stelle cadenti (1873) and in his Norme per le osservazioni delle stelle cadenti e dei bolidi (1896) gained for him the Lalande prize of the Academy of Sciences, Paris, in 1868, and the gold medal and foreign associateship of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1872. He next worked on the double stars, but his results have only been partially published. This labour was followed in ​1877 by observations of the surface of Mars, whereon he detected, among other peculiar characters, certain streaky markings or canali, the nature and origin of which is still controversial (see Mars). Mercury and Venus were also studied, and he concluded that these planets rotated on their axes in the same time as they revolved about the sun; but these views are questioned. He also discussed many other problems, such as stellar distribution, the extent of the universe, &c., whilst at Brera. On his retirement he turned to the astronomy of the Hebrews and Babylonians; his earlier results are given in his L’ Astronomia nell' antico Testamento (1903), a work which has been translated into English and German, whilst later ones are to be found in various journals, the last being in Scientia (1908).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Schiavonetti, Luigi

See also Luigi Schiavonetti on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​SCHIAVONETTI, LUIGI (1765–1810), Italian engraver, was born at Bassano in Venetia on the 1st of April 1765. After having studied art for several years he was employed by Testolini, an engraver of very indifferent abilities, to execute imitations of Bartolozzi’s works, which he passed off as his own. In 1790 Testolini was invited by Bartolozzi to join him in England, and, it having been discovered that Schiavonetti, who accompanied him, had executed the plates in question, he was employed by Bartolozzi and became an eminent engraver in both the line and the dot manner. Among his early works are four plates of subjects from the French Revolution, after Benazech. He also produced a “Mater Dolorosa” after Vandyck, and Michelangelo’s cartoon of the “Surprise of the Soldiers on the Banks of the Arno.” From 1805 to 1808 he was engaged in etching Blake’s designs to Blair’s Grave, which, with a portrait of the artist engraved by Schiavonetti after T. Phillips, R.A., were published in 1808. The etching of Stothard’s “Canterbury Pilgrims” was one of his latest works, and on his death on the 7th of June 1810 the plate was taken up by his brother Niccolo, and finally completed by James Heath.