OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Thayer, William Roscoe

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THAYER, WILLIAM ROSCOE (1850-), American writer, was born in Boston, Mass., Jan. 16 1859. He studied at St. Mark's Academy, Concord, N.H., travelled with a private tutor in Europe, and graduated from Harvard in 1881, in the class with Theodore Roosevelt. For several years he was assistant editor of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, then returned to Harvard, receiving the degree of A.M. in 1886. When the Harvard Graduates' Magazine was established in 1892 he was appointed editor, serving until 1915. In 1903, at the International Historical Congress at Rome, he represented both Harvard University and the American Historical Association, and in 1906 was their representative at the Italian Historical Congress in Milan. He was a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers from 1913 to 1919. In 1902 he was made Knight of the Order of the Crown of Italy, and in 1917 Knight of the Order of Saints Maurizio and Lazaro. In 1918 he was elected president of the American Historical Association. He was best known for his works on Italian history, especially The Dawn of Italian Independence 1814 to 1840, 2 vols. (1893); A Short History of Venice (1905), and The Life and Times of Cavour, 2 vols. (1911). His other works include Italica (1908); The Life and Letters of John Hay, 2 vols. (1915); Letters of John Holmes (1917); Theodore Roosevelt — An Intimate Biography (1918); Democracy: Discipline: Peace (1919, lectures at Brown University); Volleys From a Non-Combatant (1919); and The Art of Biography (1920, lectures at the university of Virginia).
# 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Tata, Sir Ratan

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TATA, SIR RATAN (1871-1918), Parsee financier and philanthropist, was born at Bombay Jan. 20 1871, the son of the famous Parsee merchant Jamsetji Nasarwanji Tata (see 26.448). He was educated at St. Xavier's College, Bombay, and afterwards entered his father's firm. On the death of the elder Tata in 1904, Ratan Tata and his brother Dorabji Jamsetji Tata (b. 1859) inherited a very large fortune, much of which they devoted to philanthropic works of a practical nature and to the establishment of various industrial enterprises for developing the resources of India. An Indian institute of scientific and medical research was founded at Mysore in 1905, and in 1912 the Tata Iron and Steel Co. began work at Sachi, in the Central Provinces, with marked success. The most important of the Tata enterprises, however, was the storing of the water-power of the Western Ghats (1915), which provided the city of Bombay with an enormous amount of electrical power, and hence vastly increased the productive capacity of the Bombay industries. Sir Ratan Tata, who was knighted in 1916, did not confine his benefactions to India. In England, where he had a permanent residence at York House, Twickenham, he founded (1912) the Ratan Tata department of social science and administration at the London School of Economics, and in 1912 established a Ratan Tata fund at the university of London for studying the conditions of the poorer classes. He died at St. Ives, Cornwall, Sept. 5 1918.
# 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Taussig, Frank William

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TAUSSIG, FRANK WILLIAM (1859-), American economist (see 26.456), was during 1917-9 chairman of the U.S Tariff Commission, which made a special study of commercial
treaties and prepared much material for the American Peace Commission in Paris. In March 1919 he was called to Paris to advise in the adjustment of commercial treaties, and in Nov., on invitation of President Wilson, attended the second industrial conference in Washington for promoting peace between capital and labour. He was a strong supporter of the Covenant of the League of Nations. He was the author of Principles of Economics (1911; 2nd ed. 1915); Some Phases of the Tariff Question (1915); Investors and Money-Makers (1915); and Free Trade, the Tariff, and Reciprocity (1919).
# 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Teisserenc de Bort, Léon Philippe

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​TEISSERENC DE BORT, LÉON PHILIPPE (1855-1913), French meteorologist, was born in Paris Nov. 5 1855, the son of an engineer. He began his scientific career in 1880, when he entered the meteorological department of the Bureau Central Météorologique in Paris under E. E. W. Mascart. In 1883, 1885 and 1887 he made journeys to N. Africa to study geology and terrestrial magnetism, and during this, period published some important charts of the distribution of pressure at a height of 4,000 metres. In 1892 he became chief meteorologist to the Bureau, but resigned in 1896 and founded a private meteorological observatory at Trappes, near Versailles, where he carried out investigations on clouds and the problems of the upper air. In 1898 he published an important paper in Comptes Rendus detailing his researches by means of balloons into the constitution of the atmosphere. His discovery of the so-called isothermal layer, or stratosphere as it is now generally called, will always stand out as one of the most important events in the study of the upper atmosphere. He also carried out investigations in Sweden and over the Zuider Zee, the Mediterranean and the tropical region of the Atlantic, and fitted out a special vessel in order to study the currents above the trade-winds. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society in 1903, hon. member in 1909, and was awarded the Symons gold medal of the society in 1908. He collaborated with Hugo Hildebrandsson in Les bases de la météorologie dynamique (1907). He died at Cannes Jan. 2 1913.
# 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Tewfik, Ahmed, Pasha

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TEWFIK, AHMED, Pasha (1843-), Turkish statesman, was born in Constantinople in 1843, and in 1859 entered the army. In 1870 he quitted the military service and was attached to the translation bureau of the Sublime Porte. He entered the diplomatic service and acted as political agent for the army of the Danube and the Balkans during the Russo-Turkish War (1877-8). He was subsequently attached to the Turkish legation at Athens, where he later became minister. In 1884 he was appointed ambassador to Berlin, but in 1895 was recalled in order to become Minister of Foreign Affairs. After the Young Turk revolution he became grand vizier (1909), but the same year was sent as ambassador to London. In 1912 he was again grand vizier for a brief period. On the close of the World War (Nov. 1918), during which his sympathies were with the Entente, he became grand vizier for the third time, and formed a Government which excluded all members of the Committee of Union and Progress. He resigned in March 1919, but again became head of the Government on the resignation of Damad Ferid Pasha in Oct. 1920.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/White, Thomas (bishop)

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​WHITE, THOMAS (1628–1698), bishop of Peterborough, was born at Aldington in Kent, and educated at St John's College, Cambridge. Having taken holy orders, he became vicar of Newark-on-Trent in 1660, vicar of Allhallows the Great, London, in 1666, and vicar of Bottesford, Leicestershire, in 1679. In 1683 he was appointed chaplain to the princess Anne, and in 1685 he was chosen bishop of Peterborough. In 1688 he joined the archbishop of Canterbury, William Sancroft, and five of his suffragan bishops in petitioning against the declaration of indulgence issued by James II., sharing the trial and the triumphant acquittal of his colleagues. In 1689 he refused to take the oath of allegiance to William and Mary and was deprived of his see, but he did not become very active among the nonjurors. White died on the 30th of May 1698.
The bishop must be distinguished not only from the founder of Sion College, but also from Thomas White (1593–1676), philosopher and controversialist. Educated at St Omer, Valladolid and Douai, the latter was ordained priest in 1617, and taught for some years in the college at Douai. Later he was president of the English college at Lisbon. He died in London on the 6th ​of July 1676. White was a voluminous writer; not only did he engage in controversy with Protestants, but he attacked the personal infallibility of the pope.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Whiteaves, Joseph Frederick

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​WHITEAVES, JOSEPH FREDERICK (1835- ), British palaeontologist, was born at Oxford, on the 26th of December 1835. He was educated at private schools, and afterwards worked under John Phillips at Oxford (1858-1861); he was led to study the Oolitic rocks, and added largely to our knowledge of the fossils of the Great Oolite series, Cornbrash and Corallian (Rep. Brit. Assoc. 1860, and Ann., Nat. Hist. 1861). In 1861 he visited Canada and made acquaintance with the geology of Quebec and Montreal, and in 1863 he was appointed curator of the museum and secretary of the Natural History Society of Montreal, posts which he occupied until 1875. He studied the land and freshwater mollusca of Lower Canada, and the marine invertebrata of the coasts; and also carried on researches among the older Silurian (or Ordovician) fossils of the neighbourhood of Montreal. In 1875 he joined the palaeontological branch of the Geological Survey of Canada at Montreal; in the following year he became palaeontologist, and in 1877 he was further appointed zoologist and assistant directory of the survey. In 1881 the offices of the survey were removed to Ottawa. His publications on Canadian zoology and palaeontology are numerous and important. Dr. Whiteaves was one of the original fellows of the Royal Society of Canada, and contributed to its Transactions, as well as to the Canadian Naturalist and other journals. He received the hon. degree of LL.D. in 1900 from McGill University, Montreal.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/White, Sir George Stuart

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​WHITE, SIR GEORGE STUART (1835-), British field marshal, the son of an Irish country gentleman, was born in County Antrim on the 6th of July 1835. He was educated at Sandhurst, and in 1853 joined the Inniskillings, with which regiment he served in India during the Mutiny in 1857. In the second Afghan War (1878-80) he was second in command of the Gordon Highlanders, whom he led in their charge at the battle of Charasiah. For conspicuous gallantry in this action, and again shortly afterwards at Kandahar, he received the Victoria Cross. In 1881 he assumed command of the Gordon Highlanders, and took part in the Nile Expedition of 1884-85. As brigadier in the Burmese War (1885-87) he rendered distinguished service, for which he was promoted major-general; and when Sir Frederick (afterwards Lord) Roberts returned to India from Burma in 1887, White was left in command of the force charged with the duty of suppressing the dacoits and pacifying the country. This he accomplished with a thoroughness which earned the thanks of the government of India. He was in command of the Zhob expedition in 1890, and in 1893 he succeeded Lord Roberts as commander-in-chief in India; and during his tenure of this office directed the conduct of the Chitral expedition in 1895 and the Tirah campaign in 1897. In the latter year he was made G.C.B. and in 1898 G.C.S.I. Returning to England in 1898 he became quartermaster-general to the forces; and on the outbreak of the Boer War in 1899 he was given command of the forces in Natal. He defeated the Boers at Elandslaagte on the 21st of October 1899 and at Reitfontein on the 24th; but the superior numbers of the Boers enabled them to invest Ladysmith, which Sir George White defended in a siege lasting 119 days, from the 2nd of November 1899 to the 1st of March 1900, in the course of which he refused to entertain Sir Redvers Buller's suggestion that he should arrange terms of capitulation with the enemy (see Ladysmith, Siege and Relief of). After the relief of Ladysmith, White, whose health had been impaired by the siege, returned to England, and was appointed governor of Gibraltar (1900-1904). King Edward VII., who visited the fortress in 1903, personally gave him the baton of a field marshal. In 1905 Sir George White was appointed governor of Chelsea Hospital, and in the same year was decorated with the Order of Merit.
See T. F. G. Coates, Sir George White (1900).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/White, Sir Thomas

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​WHITE, SIR THOMAS (1492–1567), founder of St John's College, Oxford, was a son of William White, a clothier, and was born at Reading. At an early age he became a merchant in London and was soon a member, and then master of the Merchant Taylors Company; growing wealthier he became an alderman and sheriff of the city of London. One of the promoters of the Muscovy Company, he was knighted in 1553, and in October of the same year he was chosen lord mayor. His term of office fell in a strenuous time. He had to defend the city against Sir Thomas Wyat and his followers, and he took part in the trial of the rebels, as just previously he had done in the case of Lady Jane Grey. In 1555 White received a licence to found a college at Oxford, which he endowed with lands in the neighbourhood of the city and which, dedicated to the Virgin Mary and St John Baptist, was opened in 1560. Soon after this event Sir Thomas began to lose money, and he was comparatively poor when he died at Oxford on the 12th of February 1567. His later years were mainly spent in Oxford, and he was buried in the chapel of St John's College. White had some share in founding the Merchant Taylors' School in London. He was twice married, but left no children. A portrait of him hangs in the hall of St John's College and one on glass, painted in the 16th century, is in the old library. Several early lives of him are among the college manuscripts. Sir Thomas must be distinguished from another Sir Thomas White of South Wamborough, Hampshire, some of whose property, by a curious coincidence, passed also into the possession of St John's College.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/White, Sir William Arthur

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​WHITE, SIR WILLIAM ARTHUR (1824-1S91), British diplomatist, was born at Pulawy, in Poland, on the 13th of February 1S24. He was descended on his father's side from an Irish Roman Catholic family. His mother's family, though not of Polish extraction, owned considerable estates in Poland, where While, though educated at King William's College, Isle of Man, and Trinity College, Cambridge, spent a great part of his early days, and thus gained an intimate knowledge of the Slavonic tongues. From 1843 to 1857 he lived in Poland as a country gentleman, but in the latter year he accepted a post in the British consulate at Warsaw, and had almost at once to perform the duties of acting consul-general. The insurrection of 1863 gave him an opportunity of showing his immense knowledge of Eastern politics and his combination of diplomatic tact with resolute determination. He was promoted in 1864 to the post of consul at Danzig. The Eastern Question was, however, the great passion of his life, and in 1875 he succeeded in getting transferred to Belgrade as consul-general for Scrvia. In 1870 he was made British Agent at Bucharest. In 1884 he was offered by Lord Granville the choice of the legation at Rio or Buenos Aires, and in 18S5 Lord Salisbury, who was then at the Foreign Office, urged him to go to Peking, pointing out the increasing importance of that post. White's devoted friend. Sir Robert Morier, wrote in the same sense. But White, who was already acting as ambassador ad interim at Constantinople, decided to wait; and during this year he rendered one of his most conspicuous services. It was largely owing to his efforts that the war between Servia and Bulgaria was prevented from spreading into a universal conflagration, and that the union of Bulgaria and eastern Rumeha was accepted by the powers. In the following year he was rewarded with the embassy at Constantinople. He was the first Roman Catholic ajspointed to a British embassy since the Reformation. He pursued consistently the poUcy of counteracting Russian influence in the Balkans by erecting a barrier of independent states animated with a healthy spirit of national life, and by supporting Austrian interests in the East. To the furtherance of this policy he brought an unrivalled knowledge of all the under-currents of Oriental intrigue, which his mastery of languages enabled him to derive not only from the newspapers, of which he was an assiduous reader, but from the obscurest sources. His bluff and straightforward manner, and the knowledge that with him the deed was ready to follow the word, enabled him at once to inspire confidence and to overawe less masterful rivals. The official honours bestowed on him culminated in 1888 with the G.C.B . and a seat on the Privy Council. He was stUl ambassador at Constantinople when he was attacked by influenza during a visit to Berlin, where he died on the 28th of December 1891.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/White Mountains

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​WHITE MOUNTAINS, the portion of the Appalachian Mountain system which traverses New Hampshire, U.S.A., between the Androscoggin and Upper Ammonoosuc rivers on the north and the lake country on the south. They cover an area of about 1300 sq. m., are composed of somewhat homogeneous granite rocks, and represent the remnants of long-continued erosion of a region formerly greatly elevated. From a plateau which has been cut deep by rivers and streams they rise to rounded summits often noble in outline and of greater elevation than elsewhere in the Appalachian system, except in North Carolina, and culminate in Mount Washington, 6293 ft. above the sea. Thirteen other summits have an elevation exceeding 5000 ft. The scenery is so beautiful and varied that the region has long been popular as a summer resort. It is traversed by railways, one which ascends Mount Washington, and contains numerous villages and fine hotels.
See the article New Hampshire; the Guidebook (Part i., Boston, 1907) published by the Appalachian Mountain Club; and Appalachia (ibid., 1876 seq.), a periodical published by the same club.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/White, Sir William Henry

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​WHITE, SIR WILLIAM HENRY (1845- ), English naval architect, was born at Devonport on the 2nd odf February 1845, and at the age of fourteen became an apprentice in the dockyard there. In 1864 he took the first place in the scholarship competition at the Royal School of Architecture, which had then just been established by the Admiralty at South Kensington, and in 1867 he gained his diploma as fellow of the school with first-class honours. At once joining the constructive staff of the Admiralty, he acted as confidential assistant to the chief constructor, Sir Edward Reed, until the latter's retirement in 1870. The loss of the "Captain" in that year was followed by an inquiry for designs for ships of war, and in connexion with this White, together with his old fellow-student, William John, worked out a long series of calculations as to the stability and strength of vessels, the results of which were published in an important paper read in 1871 before the Institution of Naval Architects. In 1872 White was appointed secretary to the Council of Construction at the Admiralty, in 1875 assistant constructor, and in 1881 chief constructor. In April 1883 he left the service of the Admiralty, at the invitation of Lord (then Sir W. G.) Armstrong, in order to undertake the difficult task of organizing a department for the construction of warships of the largest size at the Elswick works; but he only remained there for two and a half years, for in October 1885 he returned to the Admiralty in succession to Sir Nathaniel Barnaby as director of naval construction, retaining that post until the beginning of 1902, when ill-health obliged him to relinquish the arduous labours it entailed. During that period, which in Great Britain was one of unprecedented activity in naval shipbuilding as a result of the awakening of public opinion to the vital importance of sea-power, more than 200 vessels of various types were added to the British navy, at a total cost of something like 100 millions sterling, and for the design of all these, as well as for the work of their construction, Sir William White was ultimately responsible. In addition, he did much to further the knowledge of scientific shipbuilding. He was professor of naval architecture at the Royal School from 1870 to 1873, and when in the latter year it was moved to Greenwich to be merged in the Royal Naval College, he reorganized the course of instruction and acted as professor for eight years more. The lectures he gave in that capacity were the foundation of his Manual of Naval Architecture, which has been translated into several foreign languages and is recognized as a standard text-book all over the world. Sir William White, who was chosen a fellow of the Royal Society in 1888, also read many professional papers before various learned and engineering societies. He was created K.C.B. in 1895.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/White, Thomas (canon)

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​WHITE, THOMAS (c. 1550–1624), English divine, was born at Bristol about 1550, the son of a clothier. He graduated from Magdalen Hall (now Hertford College), Oxford, in 1570; took holy orders, and, coming to London, became rector of St Gregory by St Paul's and shortly after vicar of St Dunstan's in the West. Several of his sermons, attacking play-going and the vices of the metropolis, were printed. He was made a prebendary of St Paul's, treasurer of Salisbury, canon of Christ Church, Oxford, and canon of Windsor. In 1613 he built and endowed an almshouse, called the Temple Hospital, in Bristol. In 1621 he founded what is now known as White's chair of moral philosophy at Oxford, with a salary of £100 per annum for the reader, and several small exhibitions for scholars of Magdalen Hall. He died on the 1st of March 1624, bequeathing £3000 for the establishment of a college of “all the ministers, parsons, vicars, lecturers and curates in London and its suburbs” (afterwards Sion College (q.v.)), and an almshouse, now abolished; and leaving bequests for lectureships at St Paul's, St Dunstan's and at Newgate.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Witherite

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​WITHERITE, a mineral consisting of barium carbonate (BaCO$_3$), crystallizing in the orthorhombic system. The crystals are invariably twinned together in groups of three, giving rise to pseudo-hexagonal forms somewhat resembling bipyramidal crystals of quartz, the faces are usually rough and striated horizontally. The colour is dull white or sometimes greyish, the hardness is 3½ and the specific gravity 4.3. The mineral is named after W. Withering, who in 1784 recognized it to be chemically distinct from barytes. It occurs in veins of lead ore at Hexham in Northumberland, Alston in Cumberland, Anglezark, near Chorley in Lancashire, and a few other localities. Witherite is readily altered to barium sulphate by the action of water containing calcium sulphate in solution, and crystals are therefore frequently encrusted with barytes. It is the chief source of barium salts, and is mined in considerable amounts in Northumberland. It is used for the preparation of rat poison, in the manufacture of glass and porcelain, and formerly for refining sugar. (L. J. S.)