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

See also Millbury, Massachusetts and Millbury High School on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​MILLBURY, a township of Worcester county, Massachusetts, on the Blackstone river, 5 m. S.S.E. of Worcester. Pop. (1890), 4428; (1900) 4460 (1176 foreign-born); (1905, state census) 4631; (1910) 4740. Area, 15·79 sq. m. Millbury is served by the New York, New Haven & Hartford, and the Boston & Albany railways, and by electric interurban railways. It lies for the most part in the valley of the Blackstone river, from which water-power is derived for its mills; among its manufactures are cotton, linen, felt and woollen goods, hemp thread, and foundry and machine-shop products. The municipality owns and operates the waterworks and electric-lighting plant. Millbury was formed in 1813 from the North Parish of Sutton; in 1851 a part of Auburn was annexed to the township.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Milledgeville

See also Milledgeville, Georgia on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​MILLEDGEVILLE, a city and the county-seat of Baldwin county, in the central part of Georgia, U.S.A., on the Oconee river, at the head of navigation, 32 m. E.N.E. of Macon. Pop. (1890), 3322; (1900), 4219 (2663 negroes); (1910), 4385. It is served by the Georgia and the Central of Georgia railways. Milledgeville is situated in the Cotton Belt, and its principal industry is the preparation of cotton for the markets. The importance of the place, however, is mainly educational and historical. It is the seat of the Middle Georgia Military and Agricultural College, which occupies the old capitol building, and of the Georgia Normal and Industrial College for girls (1889; enrolment 1908–1909, 653), which is a part of the University of Georgia, and occupies the site of the old state penitentiary. About 2 m. north-west of Milledgeville is the state juvenile reformatory; 2 m. south of the city are the state asylums for white and negro insane; and 3 m. north-west is the state prison farm. Milledgeville was founded in 1803, and was named in honour of John Milledge (1757–1818), a representative in Congress in 1792–1793 and 1795–1802, governor of Georgia in 1802–1806, a United States senator in 1806–1809, and a benefactor of the state university. In 1804 it was made the seat of the state government in place of Louisville (capital in 1795–1804; pop. in 1900, 1009), a dignity it held until 1868. The city was first chartered in 1836. Although admirably situated for trade and manufacturing, Milledgeville was surpassed in both by Macon, which became the commercial emporium of middle Georgia; but it was a favourite place of residence for the wealthy and cultivated class of Georgians before the Civil War. It was seized by General William T. Sherman on the 23rd of November 1864. In order to remove the state documents beyond reach of the enemy, Governor Joseph E. Brown called upon the convicts in the penitentiary for aid, granting them pardons in return for their services.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Millar, Andrew

See also Andrew Millar on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​MILLAR, ANDREW (1707–1768), British publisher, was born in 1707. About 1729 he started business as a bookseller and publisher in the Strand, London. His own judgment in literary matters was small, but he collected an excellent staff of literary advisers, and did not hesitate to pay what, at the time were considered large prices for good material. “I respect Millar, sir,” said Dr Johnson in 1755, “he has raised the price of literature.” He paid Thomson £105 for The Seasons, and Fielding a total sum of £700 for Tom Jones and £1000 for Amelia. He was one of the syndicate of booksellers who financed Johnson’s Dictionary, and on him the work of seeing that book through the press mainly fell. He also published the histories of Robertson and Hume. He died at his villa at Kew Green, near London, on the 8th of June 1768.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Miller's Thumb

See also European bullhead on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​MILLER’S THUMB (Cottus gobio), a small fish, abundant in all rivers and lakes of northern and central Europe with clear water and gravelly bottom. The genus Cottus, to which the miller’s thumb belongs, is easily recognized by its broad, flat head, rounded and scaleless body, large pectoral and narrow ventral fins, with two dorsal fins, the anterior shorter than the posterior; the praeoperculum is armed with a simple or branched spine. The species of the genus Cottus are rather numerous, and are confined to the north temperate zone of the globe, the majority being marine, and known by the name of “bullheads.” The miller’s thumb is confined to fresh water; and only one other freshwater species is found in Europe, C. poecilopus, from rivers of Hungary, Galicia, and the Pyrenees; some others occur in the fresh waters of northern Asia and North America. The miller’s thumb is common in all suitable localities in Great Britain, but is extremely rare in Ireland; in the Alps it reaches to an altitude of 7000 ft. Its usual length is from 3 to 5 in. Generally hidden under a stone or in a hollow of the bank, it watches for its prey, which consists of small aquatic animals, and darts when disturbed with extraordinary rapidity to some other place of refuge. The female deposits her ova in a cavity under a stone, whilst the male watches and defends them until the young are hatched and able to shift for themselves.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Miller, Joaquin

See also Joaquin Miller on Wikipedia; the 1922 update; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​MILLER, JOAQUIN (Cincinnatus Heine) (1841–), American poet, was born in Indiana, on the 10th of November 1841, and was educated for the law. After some experiences of mining and journalism in Idaho and Oregon, he settled down in 1866 as judge in Grant county, Oregon, and during his four years’ tenure of this post he began to write verse. In 1870 he travelled in Europe, and in 1871 he published his first volume of poetry, full of tropical passion, Songs of the Sierras, on which his reputation mainly rests. His Songs of the Sunlands (1873) followed in the same vein, and after other volumes had appeared, his Collected Poems were published in 1882. He also wrote plays, The Danites in the Sierras having some success as a sensational melodrama. On his return from Europe he became a journalist in Washington, but in 1887 returned to California. His penname, “Joaquin Miller,” by which he is known, was assumed by him when he published his first book, in consequence of his having written an article in defence of Joaquin Murietta, the Mexican brigand.
Revised editions of his Complete Poetical Works appeared at San Francisco in 1902.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Millau

See also Millau on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​MILLAU, a town of southern France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Aveyron, on the right bank of the Tarn at its confluence with the Dourbie, 74 m. N. of Béziers on the Southern railway. Pop. (1906), 16,853. Millau lies in a ​rich valley 1200 ft. above the sea surrounded by the spurs of the Levezou, Causse Noir and Larzac ranges. The streets are narrow and some of the houses of great antiquity, but the town is surrounded by spacious boulevards. One of its squares is bordered on two sides by wooden galleries supported on stone columns. The only buildings of special interest are the Romanesque church of Notre Dame, restored in the 16th century, and the fine Gothic belfry of the old hôtel de ville. Millau is seat of a sub-prefect, and possesses tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a board of trade-arbitrators, a chamber of commerce and a communal college. The principal industry is the manufacture of gloves, and various branches of the leather industry are carried on. The chief articles of trade are skins, wool, wine and Roquefort cheese.
In the middle ages Millau was the seat of a viscounty held by the counts of Barcelona and afterwards by the counts of Armagnac. In the 16th century it became one of the leading strongholds of Calvinism in southern France. In 1620 it revolted against Louis XIII., and after its submission Richelieu caused its fortifications to be dismantled. The edict of Nantes hastened the decline of the town, which did not recover its prosperity till after the Revolution.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Miller, Joe

See also Joe Miller (actor) on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​MILLER, JOE (Joseph or Josias) (1684–1738), English actor, first appears in the cast of Sir Robert Howard’s Committee at Drury Lane in 1709 as Teague. Trinculo in The Tempest, the First Grave-digger in Hamlet and Marplot in The Busybody, were among his many favourite parts. He is said to have been a friend of Hogarth. He died on the 16th of August 1738. After his death, John Mottley (1692–1750) brought out a book called Joe Miller’s Jests, or Wit’s Vade Mecum (1739), a collection of contemporary and ancient coarse witticisms, only three of which are told of Miller. Owing to the quality of the jokes in Mottley’s book, their number increasing with each of the subsequent editions, any time-worn jest has, somewhat unjustly, come to be called a “Joe Miller.”
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Danby, Francis

See also Francis Danby on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​DANBY, FRANCIS (1793–1861), English painter, was born in the south of Ireland on the 16th of November 1793. His father farmed a small property he owned near Wexford, but his death caused the family to remove to Dublin, while Francis was still a schoolboy. He began to practice drawing at the Royal Dublin Society’s schools; and under an erratic young artist named O’Connor he began painting landscape. Danby also made acquaintance with George Petrie, and all three left for London together in 1813. This expedition, undertaken with very inadequate funds, quickly came to an end, and they had to get home again by walking. At Bristol they made a pause, and Danby, finding he could get trifling sums for water-colour drawings, remained there working diligently and sending to the London exhibitions pictures of importance. There his large pictures in oil quickly attracted attention. “The Upas Tree” (1820) and “The Delivery of the Israelites” (1825) brought him his election as an associate of the Royal Academy. He left Bristol for London, and in 1828 exhibited his “Opening of the Sixth Seal” at the British Institution, receiving from that body a prize of 200 guineas; and this picture was followed by two others from the Apocalypse. He suddenly left London, declaring that he would never live there again, and that the Academy, instead of aiding him, had, somehow or other, used him badly. Some insurmountable domestic difficulty overtook him also, and for eleven or twelve years he lived on the Lake of Geneva, a Bohemian with boat-building fancies, painting only now and then. He returned to England in 1841, when his sons, James and Thomas, both artists, were growing up. Other pictures by him were “The Golden Age” and “The Evening Gun,” the first begun before he left England, the second painted after his return; he had taken up his abode at Exmouth, where he died on the 9th of February 1861.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dancourt, Florent Carton

See also Florent Carton Dancourt on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​DANCOURT, FLORENT CARTON (1661–1725), French dramatist and actor, was born at Fontainebleau on the 1st of November 1661. He belonged to a family of rank, and his parents entrusted his education to Père de la Rue, a Jesuit, who made earnest efforts to induce him to join the order. But he had no religious vocation and proceeded to study law. He practised at the bar for some time, but his marriage to the daughter of the comedian François Lenoir de la Thorillière led him to become an actor, and in 1685, in spite of the strong opposition of his family, he ​appeared at the Théâtre Français. His gifts as a comedian gave him immediate and marked success, both with the public and with his fellow actors. He was the spokesman of his company on occasions of state, and in this capacity he frequently appeared before Louis XIV., who treated him with great favour. One of his most famous impersonations was Alceste in the Misanthrope of Molière. His first play, Le Notaire obligeant, produced in 1685, was well received. La Désolation des joueuses (1687) was still more successful. Le Chevalier à la mode (1687) is generally regarded as his best work, though his claim to original authorship in this and some other cases has been disputed. In Le Chevalier à la mode appears the bourgeoise infatuated with the desire to be an aristocrat. The type is developed in Les Bourgeoises à la mode (1692) and Les Bourgeoises de qualité (1700). Dancourt was a prolific author, and produced some sixty plays in all. Some years before his death he terminated his career both as an actor and as an author by retiring to his château at Courcelles le Roi, in Berry, where he employed himself in making a poetical translation of the Psalms and in writing a sacred tragedy. He died on the 7th of December 1725. The plays of Dancourt are faithful descriptions of the manners of the time, and as such have real historical value. The characters are drawn with a realistic touch that led to his being styled by Charles Palissot the Teniers of comedy. He is very successful in his delineation of low life, and especially of the peasantry. The dialogue is sparkling, witty and natural. Many of the incidents of his plots were derived from actual occurrences in the “fast” and scandalous life of the period, and several of his characters were drawn from well-known personages of the day. Most of the plays incline to the type of farce rather than of pure comedy. Voltaire defined his talent in the words: “Ce que Regnard était à l’égard de Molière dans la haute comédie, le comédien Dancourt l’était dans la farce.”
His two daughters, Manon and Marie Anne (Mimi), both obtained success on the stage of the Théâtre Français.
The complete works of Dancourt were published in 1760 (12 vols. 12mo). An edition of his Théâtre choisi, with a preface by F. Sarcey, appeared in 1884.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Danegeld

See also Danegeld on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​DANEGELD, an English national tax originally levied by Æthelred II. (the Unready) as a means of raising the tribute which was the price of the temporary cessation of the Danish ravages. This expedient of buying off the invader was first adopted in 991 on the advice of certain great men of the kingdom. It was repeated in 994, 1002, 1007 and 1012. With the accession of the Danish king Canute, the original raison d’être of the tax ceased to exist, but it continued to be levied, though for a different purpose, assuming now the character of an occasional war-tax. It was exceedingly burdensome, and its abolition by Edward the Confessor in 1051 was welcomed as a great relief. William the Conqueror revived it immediately after his accession, as a convenient method of national taxation, and it was with the object of facilitating its collection that he ordered the compilation of Domesday Book. It continued to be levied until 1163, in which year the name Danegeld appears for the last time in the Rolls. Its place was taken by other imposts of similar character but different name.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dandolo, Vincenzo, Count

See also Vincenzo Dandolo on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​DANDOLO, VINCENZO, Count (1758–1819), Italian chemist and agriculturist, was born at Venice, of good family, though not of the same house as the famous doges, and began his career as a physician. He was a prominent opponent of the oligarchical party in the revolution which took place on the approach of Napoleon; and he was one of the envoys sent to seek the protection of the French. When the request was refused, and Venice was placed under Austria, he removed to Milan, where he was made member of the great council. In 1799, on the invasion of the Russians and the overthrow of the Cisalpine republic, Dandolo retired to Paris, where, in the same year, he published his treatise Les Hommes nouveaux, ou moyen d’opérer une régénération nouvelle. But he soon after returned to the neighbourhood of Milan, to devote himself to scientific agriculture. In 1805 Napoleon made him governor of Dalmatia, with the title of provéditeur général, in which position Dandolo distinguished himself by his efforts to remove the wretchedness and idleness of the people, and to improve the country by draining the pestilential marshes and introducing better methods of agriculture. When, in 1809, Dalmatia was re-annexed to the Illyrian provinces, Dandolo returned to Venice, having received as his reward from the French emperor the title of count and several other distinctions. He died in his native city on the 13th of December 1819.
Dandolo published in Italian several treatises on agriculture, vine-cultivation, and the rearing of cattle and sheep; a work on silk-worms, which was translated into French by Fontanelle; a work on the discoveries in chemistry which were made in the last ​quarter of the 18th century (published 1796); and translations of several of the best French works on chemistry.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Danbury

See also Danbury, Connecticut on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​DANBURY, a city and one of the county-seats of Fairfield county, Connecticut, U.S.A., in Danbury township, in the ​south-west part of the state, on the Still river, a tributary of the Housatonic. Pop. (1890) 16,552; (1900) 16,537 (3702 foreign-born); (1910) 20,234. In 1900 the population of the township, including that of the city, was 19,474, and in 1910, 23,502. Danbury is served by three divisions of the New York, New Haven & Hartford railway; by the Danbury & Harlem electric railway, which connects at Goldens Bridge, New York, with the Harlem division of the New York Central; and by an electric line to Bethel, Connecticut. Lake Kenosia, about 21/2 m. from the centre of the city, is a pleasure resort. A state normal school was opened in Danbury in 1904, and there is a home for destitute and homeless children under private (unsectarian) control. The city has good water-power, and the municipality owns the water works. The principal industry is the manufacture of felt hats, begun in 1780, and in 1905 engaging about thirty factories, with a product for the year valued at $5,798,107 (71.9% of the value of all the factory products of the city, and 15.8% of the value of all the felt hats produced in the United States). The city ranked first among the cities of the country in this industry in 1900 and second in 1905, and in 1905 no other city showed so high a degree of specialization in it. Silver-plated ware (mostly manufactured by Rogers Bros.) is another important product. At Danbury is held annually the well-known agricultural Danbury Fair. The township was settled in 1684 by emigrants from Norwalk, and received its present name in 1687. When the War of Independence opened, Enoch Crosby, believed to be the original of Harvey Birch, the hero of J. F. Cooper’s The Spy, was a resident of Danbury. A depot of military supplies was established in the village of Danbury in 1776; in April 1777 Governor William Tryon, of New York, raided the place, destroying the military stores and considerable private property. During his retreat he was attacked (April 26th) at Ridgefield (about 9 m. south by east of Danbury) by the Americans under General David Wooster (1710–1777), who was fatally wounded in the conflict (being succeeded by General Benedict Arnold), and to whose memory a monument was erected in Danbury in 1854. Danbury was chartered as a borough in 1832 and as a city in 1880. In 1870 the Danbury News was established by the consolidation of the Jeffersonian and the Times, by James Montgomery Bailey (1841–1894), from 1865 to 1870 proprietor of the Times. He wrote for the News humorous sketches, which made him and the paper famous, Bailey being known as the “Danbury News Man”; among his books are Life in Danbury (1873), The Danbury News Man’s Almanac (1873), They All Do It (1877), England from a Back Window (1878), Mr Philip’s Goneness (1879), The Danbury Boom (1880), and History of Danbury (1896).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Guimet, Jean Baptiste

See also Jean-Baptiste Guimet on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​GUIMET, JEAN BAPTISTE (1795–1871), French industrial chemist, was born at Voiron on the 20th of July 1795. He studied at the École Polytechnique in Paris, and in 1817 entered the Administration des Poudres et Salpêtres. In 1828 he was awarded the prize offered by the Société d’Encouragement pour l’Industrie Nationale for a process of making artificial ultramarine with all the properties of the substance prepared from lapis lazuli; and six years later he resigned his official position in order to devote himself to the commercial production of that material, a factory for which he established at Fleurieux sur Saône. He died on the 8th of April 1871.
His son Émile Étienne Guimet, born at Lyons on the 26th of June 1836, succeeded him in the direction of the factory, and founded the Musée Guimet, which was first located at Lyons in 1879 and was handed over to the state and transferred to Paris in 1885. Devoted to travel, he was in 1876 commissioned by the minister of public instruction to study the religions of the Far East, and the museum contains many of the fruits of this expedition, including a fine collection of Japanese and Chinese porcelain and many objects relating not merely to the religions of the East but also to those of Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. He wrote Lettres sur l’Algérie (1877) and Promenades japonaises (1880), and also some musical compositions, including a grand opera, Taï-Tsoung (1894).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Guillon, Marie Nicolas Sylvestre

See also Marie Nicolas Sylvestre Guillon on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​GUILLON, MARIE NICOLAS SYLVESTRE (1760–1847), French ecclesiastic, was born in Paris on the 1st of January 1760. He was librarian and almoner in the household of the princess de Lamballe, and when in 1792 she was executed, he fled to the provinces, where under the name of Pastel he practised medicine. A man of facile conscience, he afterwards served in turn under Napoleon, the Bourbons and the Orleanists, and became canon of St Denis, bishop of Morocco and dean of the Sorbonne.
Among his many literary works are a Collection des brefs du pape Pie VI (1798), Bibliothèque choisie des pères grecs et latins (1822, 26 vols.) and a French translation of Cyprian with notes (1837, 2 vols.).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Guimard, Marie Madeleine

See also Marie-Madeleine Guimard on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​GUIMARD, MARIE MADELEINE (1743–1816), French dancer, was born in Paris on the 10th of October 1743. For twenty-five years she was the star of the Paris Opéra. She made herself even more famous by her love affairs, especially by her long liaison with the prince de Soubise. She bought a magnificent house at Pantin, and built a private theatre connected with it, where Collé’s Partie de chasse de Henri IV which was prohibited in public, and most of the Proverbes of Carmontelle (Louis Carrogis, 1717–1806), and similar licentious performances were given to the delight of high society. In 1772, in defiance of the ​archbishop of Paris, she opened a gorgeous house with a theatre seating five hundred spectators in the Chaussée d’Antin. In this Temple of Terpsichore, as she named it, the wildest orgies took place. In 1786 she was compelled to get rid of the property, and it was disposed of by lottery for her benefit for the sum of 300,000 francs. Soon after her retirement in 1789 she married Jean Etienne Despréaux (1748–1820), dancer, song-writer and playwright.