OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Simbirsk (town)

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​SIMBIRSK, a town of Russia, capital of the government of the same name, 154 m. by the Volga S.S.W. from Kazan, between the Volga and the Sviyaga. Pop. (1897) 44,111. It is one of the best built provincial towns of Russia. It is an episcopal see of the Orthodox Greek Church. The central part of Simbirsk—the Crown (Venets), containing the cathedral and the best houses—is built on a hill 560 ft. above the Volga. Adjoining this is the commercial quarter, while farther down the slope, towards the Volga, are the storehouses and the poorest suburbs of the city; these last also occupy the W. slope towards the Sviyaga. There are three suburbs on the left bank of the Volga, communication with them being maintained in summer by steamers. A great fire having destroyed nearly all the town in 1864, it has been built again on a new plan, though still mostly of wood. The cathedral of St Nicholas dates from 1712. The new cathedral of the Trinity was erected in 1824–1841 in commemoration of the French invasion of 1812. The historian Karamzin (born in 1766 in the vicinity of Simbirsk) has a monument here, and a public library bearing his name contains about 15,000 volumes. The trade is brisk, corn being the principal item, while next come potash, wood, fruits, wooden wares and manufactured produce. Simbirsk fair has a turnover of £650,000 annually. The city was founded in 1648, and in 1670 endured a long siege by the rebel leader Stenka Razin.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Simcoe, John Graves

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​SIMCOE, JOHN GRAVES (1752–1806), British soldier and first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, was born at Cotterstock, Northumberland, England, on the 25th of February 1752. His father, John Simcoe, who was a captain in the Royal Navy, died in 1759, and his only brother was drowned in early youth. During Simcoe’s childhood the family removed to Exeter. He was sent to Eton at the age of fourteen, and three years later entered Merton College, Oxford. After two years of college life, he became ensign in the 35th regiment, first seeing active service at Boston in 1775, and remaining in America during the greater part of the Revolutionary War. In 1776 he secured command of the Queen’s Rangers with the rank of major. His military career in America ended with the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown (Oct. 19, 1781). He returned to England on parole, and for the next ten years divided his time between London and his family estate in Devon. In December ​1782 he married Elizabeth Posthuma, only child of Colonel Thomas Gwillim of Old Court, Herefordshire. In 1790 he was elected member of parliament for St Mawes in Cornwall, and at the close of his first session was appointed lieutenant-governor of the new province of Upper Canada created under the Constitutional Act of 1791. He reached Kingston, Upper Canada, on the 1st of July 1792. There the first council was assembled, the government of the new province proclaimed, and the oaths of office taken. Immediately afterwards preparations were made for the election of the first house of assembly, which opened at Newark near the mouth of the Niagara river, on the 17th of September 1792. Simcoe’s ideas of colonial government were dominated by military and aristocratic conceptions quite unsuited to the pioneer conditions of Upper Canada. Thus, while his administration was characterized by the most dis-interested devotion to what he conceived to be for the best interests of the province, it was rendered ineffective by the impracticable character of his projects and the friction which developed between himself and Lord Dorchester, the governor-general. He left Canada in September 1796, and was immediately afterwards sent on a mission to San Domingo, from which, however, he returned in a few months on account of ill-health. In October 1798 he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant- general, and appointed colonel of the 22nd foot. During 1800–1801 he was in command at Plymouth. Desiring more active service, he was designated commander-in-chief for India to succeed Lord Lake, but before taking the appointment his health broke and he died at Exeter on the 26th of October 1806.
See D. C. Scott, John Graves Simcoe (1905).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Silverius

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​SILVERIUS, pope from June 536 to March 537, successor of Pope Agapetus I., was a legitimate son of Pope Hormisdas, born before his father entered the priesthood. He was consecrated on the 8th of June 536, having purchased his elevation from the Gothic king Theodotus. Six months afterwards (Dec. 9) he was one of those who admitted Belisarius into the city. He opposed the restoration of the patriarch Anthimus, whom Agapetus had deposed, and thus brought upon himself the hatred of Theodora, who desired to see Vigilius made pope. He was deposed accordingly by Belisarius in March 537 on a charge of treasonable correspondence with the Goths, and degraded to the rank of monk. He went to Constantinople, and Justinian, who entertained his complaint, sent him back to Rome, but Vigilius was ultimately able to banish his rival to Pandataria, where the rest of his life was spent in obscurity. The date of his death is unknown.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Silvestrines

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​SILVESTRINES, or Sylvestrines, an order of monks under the Benedictine rule, founded 1231 by St Silvester Gozzolini. He was born at Osimo near Ancona and held a canonry there. About 1227 he resigned it to lead an austere eremitical life. Disciples came to him, and in 1231 he built a monastery at Montefano. The rule was the Benedictine, but as regards poverty in external things, far stricter than the Benedictine. The order was approved in 1247 by Innocent IV., and at Silvester’s death in 1267 there were eleven Silvestrine monasteries. At a later date there were 56, mostly in Umbria, Tuscany and the March of Ancona. In 1907 there were nine Silvestrine houses, one in Rome, and about 60 choir monks. Since 1855 they ​have had a house and a mission in Ceylon. The order has no history. The habit is blue.
See Helyot, Histoire des ordres religieux (1718), vi. c. 21; Max Heimbucher, Orden u. Kongregationen (1907), i. § 30; Wetzer u. Welte, Kirchenlexicon (ed. 2).  (E. C. B.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Silvestre, Paul Armand

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​SILVESTRE, PAUL ARMAND (1837–1901), French poet and conteur, was born in Paris on the 18th of April 1837. He studied at the École polytechnique with the intention of entering the army, but in 1870 he entered the department of finance. He had a successful official career, was decorated with the Legion of Honour in 1886, and in 1892 was made inspector of fine arts. Armand Silvestre made his entry into literature as a poet, and was reckoned among the Parnassians. His volumes of verse include: Rimes neuves et vieilles (1866), to which George Sand wrote a preface; Les Renaissances (1870); La Chanson des heures (1878); Le Chemin des étoiles (1885), &c. The poet was also a contributor to Gil Blas and other Parisian journals, distinguishing himself by the licence he permitted himself. To these “absences” from poetry, as Henri Chantavoine calls them, belong the seven volumes of La Vie pour rire (1881–1883), Contes pantagruéliques et galants (1884), Le Livre des joyeusetés (1884), Gauloiseries nouvelles (1888), &c. For the stage he wrote in many different manners: Sapho (1881), a drama; Henry VIII (1883), with Léonce Détroyat, music by Saint-Saëns; and the Drames sacrés (1893), religious pictures after 14th- and 15th-century Italian painters, with music by Gounod. An account of his varied and somewhat incongruous production is hardly complete without mention of his art criticism. Le Nu an Salon (1888–1892), in five volumes, with numerous illustrations, was followed by other volumes of the same type. He died at Toulouse on the 19th of February 1901.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Peirce, Benjamin

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​PEIRCE, BENJAMIN (1809–1880), American mathematician and astronomer, was born at Salem, Massachusetts, on the 4th of April 1809. Graduating at Harvard College in 1829, he became mathematical tutor there in 1831 and professor in 1833 He had already assisted Nathaniel Bowditch in his translation of the Mécanique céleste, and now produced a series of mathematical textbooks characterized by the brevity and terseness which made his teaching unattractive to inapt pupils. Young men of talent, on the contrary, found his instruction most stimulating, and after Bowditch’s death in 1838 Peirce stood first among American mathematicians. His researches into the perturbations of Uranus and Neptune (Proc. Amer. ​Acad., 1848) gave him a wider fame; he became in 1849 consulting astronomer to the American Nautical Almanac, and for this work prepared new tables of the moon (1852). A discussion of the equilibrium of Saturn’s rings led him to conclude in 1855 that they must be of a fluid nature. From 1867 to 1874 he was superintendent of the Coast Survey. In 1857 he published his best known work, the System of Analytical Mechanics, which was, however, surpassed in brilliant originality by his Linear Associative Algebra (lithographed privately in a few copies, 1870; reprinted in the Amer. Journ. Math., 1882). He died at Cambridge, Mass., on the 6th of October 1880.
See New Amer. Cyclopaedia (Ripley and Dana), vol. xiii. (1861); T. J. J. See, Popular Astronomy, iii. 49; Nature, xxii. 607; R. Grant, Hist. of Phys. Astronomy, pp. 205, 292; J. C. Poggendorff, Biog. lit. Handworterbuch, Month. Notices Roy. Astr. Society, xli. 191.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Peile, John

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​PEILE, JOHN (1838–1910), English philologist, was born at Whitehaven on the 24th of April 1838 He was educated at Repton and Christ’s College, Cambridge. After a distinguished career (Craven scholar, senior classic and chancellor’s medallist), he became fellow and tutor of his college, reader of comparative philology in the university (1884–1891), and in 1887 was elected master of Christ’s. He took a great interest in the higher education of women and became president of Newnham College He was the first to introduce the great philological works of George Curtius and Wilhelm Corssen to the English student in his Introduction to Greek and Latin Etymology (1869). He died at Cambridge on the 9th of October 1910, leaving practically completed his exhaustive history of Christ’s College.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Peipus

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​PEIPUS, or Chudskoye Ozero, a lake of north-west Russia, between the governments of St Petersburg, Pskov, Livonia and Esthonia. Including its southern extension, sometimes known as Lake Pskov, it has an area of 1356 sq. m. Its shores are flat and sandy, and in part wooded; its waters deep, and they afford valuable fishing. The lake is fed by the Velikaya, which enters it at its southern extremity, and by the Embach, which flows in half way up its western shore; it drains into the Gulf of Finland by the Narova, which issues at its north-east corner.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pegnitz

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​PEGNITZ, a river of Germany. It rises near Lindenhard in Upper Franconia (Bavaria) from two sources. At first it is called the Fichtenohe, but at Buchau it takes the name of the Pegnitz, and flowing in a south-westerly direction disappears below the small town of Pegnitz in a mountain cavern. It emerges through three orifices, enters Middle Franconia, and after flowing through the heart of the city of Nuremberg falls into the Regnitz at Fürth.
See Specht, Das Pegnitzgebiet in Bezug auf seinen Wasserhaushalt (Munich, 1905).
The Pegnitz Order (Order of the society of Pegnitz shepherds), also known as “the crowned flower order on the Pegnitz,” was one of the societies founded in Germany in the course of the 17th century for the purification and improvement of the German language, especially in the domain of poetry. Georg Philipp Harsdörffer and Johann Klaj instituted the order in Nuremberg in 1644, and named it after the river. Its emblem was the passion flower with Pan’s pipes, and the motto Mit Nutzen erfreulich, or Alle zu einem Ton einstimmig. The members set themselves the task of counteracting the pedantry of another school of poetry by imagination and gaiety, but lacking imagination and broad views they took refuge in allegorical subjects and puerile trifling. The result was to debase rather than to raise the standard of poetic art in Germany. At first the meetings of the order were held in private grounds, but in 1681 they were transferred to a forest near Kraftshof or Naunhof. In 1794 the order was reorganized, and it now exists merely as a literary society.
See Tittman, Die nürnberger Dichterschule (Göttingen, 1847); and the Festschrift zur 250-jährigen Jubelfeier des pegnesischen Blumenordens (Nuremberg, 1894).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Peiraeus

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​PEIRAEUS, or Piraeus (Gr. Πειραιεύς), the port town of Athens, with which its history is inseparably connected. Pop. (1907), 67,982. It consists of a rocky promontory, containing three natural harbours, a large one on the north-west which is still one of the chief commercial harbours of the Levant, and two smaller ones on the east, which were used chiefly for naval purposes. Themistocles was the first to urge the Athenians to take advantage of these harbours, instead of using the sandy bay of Phaleron; and the fortification of the Peiraeus was begun in 493 B.C. Later on it was connected with Athens by the Long Walls in 460 B.C. The town of Peiraeus was laid out by the architect Hippodamus of Miletus, probably in the time of Pericles. The promontory itself consisted of two parts—the hill of Munychia, and the projection of Acte; on the opposite side of the great harbour was the outwork of Eetioneia. The most stirring episode in the history of the Peiraeus is the seizure of Munychia by Thrasybulus and the exiles from Phyle, and the consequent destruction of the “30 tyrants” in 404 B.C. The three chief arsenals of the Peiraeus were named Munychia, Zea and Cantharus, and they contained galley slips for 82, 196 and 94 ships respectively in the 4th century B.C.
See under Athens Also Angelopoulos, Περὶ Πειραιῶς καὶ τῶν λιμένων αὑτον (Athens, 1898).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pegu

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​PEGU, a town and former capital of Lower Burma, giving its name to a district and a division. The town is situated on a river of the same name, 47 m. N.E. of Rangoon by rail; pop. (1901), 14,132. It is still surrounded by the old walls, about 40 ft. wide, on which have been built the residences of the British officials. The most conspicuous object is the Shwe-maw-daw pagoda, 324 ft. high, considerably larger and even more holy than the Shwe-dagon pagoda at Rangoon. Pegu is said to have been founded in 573, as the first capital of the Talaings; but it was as the capital of the Toungoo dynasty that it became known to Europeans in the 16th century. About the middle of the 18th century it was destroyed by Alompra; but it rose again, and was important enough to be the scene of fighting in both the first and second Burmese Wars. It gave its name to the province (including Rangoon) which was annexed by the British in 1852.
The district, which was formed in 1883, consists of an alluvial tract between the Pegu Yoma range and the Sittang river: area, 4276 sq m.; pop. (1901), 339,572, showing an increase of 43% in the decade. Christians numbered nearly 9000, mostly Karens. Almost the only crop grown is rice, which is exported in large quantities to Rangoon. The district is traversed by the railway, and also crossed by the Pegu-Sittang canal, navigable for 85 m., with locks.
The division of Pegu comprises the five districts of Rangoon city, Hanthawaddy, Tharrawaddy, Pegu and Prome, lying east of the Irrawaddy: area 13,084 sq. m.; pop. (1901), 1,820,638.
Pegu has also given its name to the Pegu Yoma, a range of hills running north and south for about 200 m., between the Irrawaddy and Sittang rivers. The height nowhere exceeds 2000 ft. but the slopes are steep and rugged. The forests yield teak and other valuable timber. The Pegu river, which rises in this range, falls into the Rangoon river just below Rangoon city, after a course of about 180 m.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Peine Forte et Dure

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​PEINE FORTE ET DURE (French for “hard and severe punishment”), the term for a barbarous torture inflicted on those who, arraigned of felony, refused to plead and stood silent, or challenged more than twenty jurors, which was deemed a contumacy equivalent to a refusal to plead. By early English law a prisoner, before he could be tried, must plead “guilty” or “not guilty.” Before the 13th century it was usual to imprison and starve till submission, but in Henry IV.’s reign the peine was employed. The prisoner was stretched on his back, and stone or iron weights were placed on him till he either submitted or was pressed to death. Pressing to death was abolished in 1772; “standing mute” on an arraignment of felony being then made equivalent to conviction. By an act of 1828 a plea of “not guilty” was to be entered against any prisoner refusing to plead, and that is the rule to-day. An alternative to the peine was the tying of the thumbs tightly together with whipcord until pain forced the prisoner to speak. This was said to be a common practice at the Old Bailey up to the 19th century.
Among recorded instances of the infliction of the peine are: Juliana Quick (1442) for high treason in speaking derisively of Henry VI.; Margaret Clitherow, “the martyr of York” (1586); Walter Calverly, of Calverly, Yorks, for the murder of his children (1605); and Major Strangways at Newgate, charged with murder of his brother-in-law (1657). In this last case it is said that upon the weights being placed in position several cavalier friends of Strangways sprang on his body and put him out of his pain In 1721 one Nathaniel Hawes lay under a weight of 250 ℔ for seven minutes, finally submitting. The peine was last employed in 1741 at Cambridge assizes, when a prisoner was so put to death; the penalty of thumb-tying having first been tried. In 1692 at Salem, Massachusetts, Giles Corey, accused of witchcraft, refusing to plead, was pressed to death. This is believed to be the only instance of the infliction of the penalty in America.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Peine

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​PEINE, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hanover, 16 m. by rail N.W. of Brunswick, on the railway to Hanover and Hamburg. Pop. (1905), 15,421. The town has a Roman Catholic and a Protestant church and several schools. Its industries include iron and steel works, breweries, distilleries and brickyards, and the manufacture of starch, sugar, malt, machinery and artificial manure. There are also large horse and cattle markets held here Peine was at one time a strongly fortified place, and until 1803 belonged to the bishopric of Hildesheim.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/San Sebastian

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​SAN SEBASTIAN (Basque Iruchulo), a seaport and the capital of the Spanish province of Guipúzcoa, on the Bay of Biscay, and on the Northern railway from Madrid to France. Pop. (1900) 37,812. In 1886 San Sebastian became the summer residence of the court. The influx of visitors, attracted by the presence of the royal family, by the prolonged local festivities, the bull-fights and the bathing, increases the number of the inhabitants in summer to about 50,000. The city occupies a narrow sandy peninsula, which terminates on the northern or seaward side in a lofty mass of sandstone, Monte Urgull; it is flanked on the east by the estuary of the river Uruméa, on the west by the broad bay of La Concha. The old town, rebuilt after the fire of 1813, lies partly at the foot of Monte Urgull, partly on its lower slopes. Until 1863 it was enclosed by walls and ramparts, and a strong fort, the Castillo de la Mola, still crowns the heights of Urgull. There are also batteries and redoubts facing landward and seaward below this fort; but the other defences have been either razed or dismantled. The Alameda, one of many fine avenues, was laid out on the site of the chief landward wall, and separates the old town from the new—in which the houses are uniformly modern, and built in straight streets or regular series of squares. The bay of La Concha has a broad sandy shore, the Playa de Baños, admirable for bathing and sheltered from sea-winds by the rocky islet of Santa Clara. Its centre is faced by the casino, a handsome building, and the summer palace and park of Miramar occupy the rising ground towards its western extremity. The other noteworthy buildings are the bull-ring, capable of seating 10,000 spectators, the theatre, fine provincial and municipal halls, barracks, a hospital, a Jesuit college, the American International School for girls, and many other schools. There are numerous breweries, saw and flour mills, and manufactures of preserves, soap, candles, glass and paper, especially in the busy suburb that has sprung up on the right bank of the Uruméa. The fisheries are important. The harbour consists of three artificial basins, opening into La Concha Bay, and situated in the midst of the old town; it is chiefly frequented by coasting and fishing vessels, and cannot accommodate large ships. From its position near the frontier San Sebastian was long a first-class fortress, and has sustained many sieges. The last and most memorable was in August 1813, when the allied British, Portuguese and Spanish armies under Lord Wellington captured the city from the French, and then sacked and burned it.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/San Sepolcro

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​SAN SEPOLCRO, or Borgo S. Sepolcro, a town and episcopal see of Tuscany, Italy, in the province of Arezzo, from which it is 28 m. N.E. by rail. Pop. (1901) 4537 (town); 9077 (commune). It is situated 1083 ft. above sea-level, on the Tiber. It was the birthplace of Piero della Francesca (1420–1492) and of Raffaello del Colle (1490–1540), a pupil of Raphael. The Romanesque cathedral and the picture-gallery contain works by both these artists.