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

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​SAIGA (Saiga tatarica) the native designation of a desert-dwelling antelope, easily recognized by its extraordinary swollen and puffy nose, in which the apertures of the tubular nostrils are directed downwards. The ringed lyrate horns of the males are amber-coloured, and wide apart on the heads. There is a small gland on each side of the face below the eye; and the ears are remarkable for the short and rounded form. The colour is whitish in winter and sandy in summer. It is the sole representative of its genus. At the present day the headquarters of this antelope are the Kirghiz Steppes, but a century ago its range extended as far west as Poland. During the latter part of the Tertiary period the saiga was much more widely distributed, fossilized remains having been obtained from many parts of Western Europe, including Britain.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Steele, Thomas

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​STEELE, THOMAS (1788–1848), Irish politician and writer, a member of a Somerset family which settled in Ireland during the 17th century, was born on the 3rd of November 1788. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and succeeded to a large estate in Co. Clare. As a volunteer he fought against the Bourbons in Spain in 1823, and, returning to Ireland, he became an enthusiastic worker for Roman Catholic emancipation, helping greatly to ​return Daniel O’Connell to parliament for Co. Clare at the famous election of 1828. It is interesting to note that Steele himself was a Protestant. Having ruined his fortune by contributing liberally to the causes in which he was interested, he died in London on the 15th of June 1848. He wrote Notes of the War in Spain (1824) and some essays on Irish questions.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Steelyard, Merchants of the

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​STEELYARD, MERCHANTS OF THE, Hanse merchants who settled in London in 1250 at the steelyard on the river-side, near Cosin Lane, now Ironbridge Wharf. Henry III. in 1259, at the request of his brother Richard of Cornwall, king of the Romans, conferred on them important privileges, which were confirmed by Edward I. It was chiefly through their enterprise that the early trade of London was developed, and they continued to flourish till, on the complaint of the Merchant Adventurers in the reign of Edward VI., they were deprived of their privileges. Though Hamburg and Lübeck sent ambassadors to intercede for them, they were not reinstated in their monopolies, but they succeeded in maintaining a footing in London till expelled by Elizabeth in 1597. Their beautiful guildhall in Thames Street, adorned with allegorical pictures by Holbein, and described by Stow, was made a naval storehouse; The land and buildings still remained the property of the Hanseatic League, and were subsequently let to merchants for business purposes. Destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 they were rebuilt as warehouses, and were finally sold to the South-Eastern Railway Company in 1852 by the Hanseatic towns, Lübeck, Bremen and Hamburg. The site is now occupied by Cannon Street railway station.
See Lappenburg, Urkundliche Geschichte des hansischen Stahlhofes zu London (Hamburg, 1851); Stow, Survey of London (1598); Pauli, Pictures of Old London (1851); Ehrenberg, Hamburg und England im Zeitalter der Konigin Elizabeth (Jena, 1896).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Steele, William

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​STEELE, WILLIAM (d. 1680), lord chancellor of Ireland, was a son of Richard Steele of Sandbach, Cheshire, and was educated at Caius College, Cambridge. In 1648 he was chosen recorder of London, and he was one of the four counsel appointed to conduct the case against Charles I. in January 1649, but illness prevented him from discharging this duty. However, a few days later he took part in the prosecution of the duke of Hamilton and other Royalists. Steele was M.P. for the City of London in 1654, was chief baron of the exchequer in 1655, and was made lord chancellor of Ireland in 1656. After the fall of Richard Cromwell he was one of the five commissioners appointed in 1659 to govern Ireland. At the end of this year he returned to England, but he refused to sit on the committee of safety to which he had been named. At the Restoration he obtained the full benefits of the Act of Indemnity, but he thought it advisable to reside for a time in Holland; However, he had returned to England before his death towards the end of 1680.
See O. J. Burke, History of the Lord Chancellors of Ireland (Dublin, 1879).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Steelton

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​STEELTON, a borough of Dauphin county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on the Susquehanna river, 3 m. S.E. of Harrisburg. Pop. (1890), 9250; (1900), 12,086, of whom 2300 were foreign born and 1508 were negroes; (1910 census), 14,246. Steelton is served by the Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia & Reading railways, and is connected with Harrisburg by electric line. The city has a public library. Steelton is in an agricultural district, but its industrial importance is due primarily to the vast steel works of the Pennsylvania Steel Company. Other manufactures are flour and grist mill products, bricks, planing mill products, &c. In 1905 the total value of the borough’s factory products was $15,745,628; the capital invested in manufacturing increased from $6,266,068 in 1900 to $18,642,853 in 1905, or 197·5%. There is a large limestone quarry within the borough limits. The municipality owns its Waterworks and filtration plant. The place was laid out in 1866 under the name of Baldwin, but when it was incorporated as a borough, in 1880, the present name was adopted.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Steeple

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​STEEPLE (akin to "steep"), a general architectural name (Fr. clocher, Ital. campanile, Ger. Glockenturm) for the whole arrangement of tower, belfry, spire, &c.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Steeplechase

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​STEEPLECHASE, a variety of horse-racing not run on the flat, but either across country or on a made course with artificial fences, water-jumps, &c. (see Horse-racing). The origin of the sport and the name is due to matches run by owners of hunters, the goal being some prominent landmark, such as a neighbouring church steeple. There is an early record of such a match in 1732 in Ireland, when the course was 4½ m., " from the Church of Buttevaut to the spire of St Leger Church." The name is sometimes used of cross-country running or of a race on a made course over hurdles and other obstacles. It is also given to an English variation of the old French game of Goose (q.v.). It is played with two dice on a board, on which is depicted a race-course with hurdles, water-jumps and other obstacles. The course is marked in 60 compartments by means of radii, and the game is won by the player whose horse makes the circuit in the fewest throws. Each player is provided with a marker, usually in the form of a jockey on horseback, which is moved forward after each throw to the space to which the number thrown entitles it.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Steer, Paul Wilson

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​STEER, PAUL WILSON (1860–), English painter, was born at Birkenhead. He was trained first at the Gloucester school of art and afterwards in Paris at the Académie Julian, and in the École des Beaux Arts under Cabanel. After 1886, before which date he had shown three pictures at the Royal Academy, practically the whole of his work was seen in the exhibitions of the New English Art Club, of which he is a prominent member. His figure subjects and landscapes show great originality and technical skill (see Painting: Recent British). His portrait of himself is included in the collection in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Midshipman

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​MIDSHIPMAN, the title in the British and American navies of the “young gentlemen” who are serving in order to qualify themselves to hold a commission as lieutenant. The English midshipman was originally a petty officer, one of the crew under the immediate orders of the boatswain. After the restoration of King Charles II., in 1660, the king and his brother, James Duke of York, lord high admiral, decided to train officers for the sea service. They therefore decided to send a volunteer to each ship of a squadron in commission, with a “letter of service,” which instructed the admirals and captains that the bearer was to be shown “such kindness as you shall judge fit for a gentleman, both in accommodating him in your ship and in furthering his improvement.” He was to receive the pay of a midshipman, and one midshipman less was to be borne in the ship. Until 1729 the young gentlemen who entered the British navy were known as “king’s letter boys.” In that year the system was altered. A school, known as the naval academy, was founded at Portsmouth in which forty lads were to be trained for the sea service. In 1773 the school, having proved unsatisfactory, was reorganized and the number of boys to be trained there increased from forty to seventy. In 1806 it was again reorganized, under the name of the naval college, and was finally suppressed in 1837, when the practice of training the boys under instructors in the ships was introduced. A special school was re-established in 1857, and was finally placed in the “Britannia.” In the meantime the number of midshipmen had increased far beyond one for a ship. A line-of-battle ship in the 18th century carried as many as twenty-four, and the title had come to be confined entirely to those who were being trained as officers. The immense majority of officers of the British navy never passed through the academy or the college. They entered the ships directly as “captains’ servants” or “volunteers,” and were rated midshipman, if there was a vacancy, at the age of fifteen. As they were expected to learn navigation, they were instructed by the master, and at the age of seventeen were supposed to be qualified to be masters’ mates. To-day the midshipman is the officer of the British and American navies who has passed through the ​preliminary schools and has been appointed to a ship. The French equivalent is aspirant, and other European navies use that name, or cadet.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Middlewich

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​MIDDLEWICH, an urban district in the Northwich parliamentary division of Cheshire, England, 166 m. N.W. of London, ​on the London & North Western railway. Pop. (1901), 4669. It lies in open country near the river Dane, having water communications by the Trent and Mersey canal, and a branch giving access to the Shropshire Union canal. The church of St Michael and All Angels is of various periods and contains numerous monuments. In the streets not a few old buildings remain, making for picturesqueness, and a number of the fine timbered houses in which Cheshire abounds are seen in the immediate neighbourhood. Middlewich shares in the salt industry common to several towns, such as Northwich and Winsford, in this part of the county; there are also chemical works and a manufacture of condensed milk.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Midleton

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​MIDLETON, or Middleton, a market town of Co. Cork, Ireland, on the river Owenacurra, 13 m. E. of Cork by the Youghal branch of the Great Southern & Western railway. Pop. (1901), 3361. The river here enters a branch of Cork harbour. The surrounding hilly country is pleasant and fertile, and furnishes the town with a good agricultural trade. There are also whisky-distilleries. Ballinacurra, 1 1/2 m. south on the estuary, serves as a small port. The grammar school was founded in 1696, and here among its students were John Philpot Curran and Isaac Butt. Midleton is governed by an urban district council.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Midhurst

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​MIDHURST, a market town in the north-western parliamentary division of Sussex, England, 12 m. N. by E. of Chichester by the London, Brighton & South Coast railway; served also by the London & South Western railway. Pop. (1901), 1674. It is pleasantly situated on slightly rising ground near the river Rother. The church of St Mary Magdalen and St Denis is a large Perpendicular building. The town retains several picturesque old houses, and in the vicinity, by the river, are the ruins of the 16th century mansion of Cowdray, burnt down in 1793. A grammar-school was founded at Midhurst in 1672 and attained some eminence. After being closed for many years it was reopened in 1880. In 1906 a magnificent sanatorium for consumptives was opened about 4 m. from Midhurst; it bears the name of King Edward VII., who laid its foundation stone and opened it.
The name of Midhurst (Middeherst, Mudhurst) first occurs in the reign of Henry I. when Savaric Fitz-Cana held it of the honour of Arundel, then presumably in the king’s hands. The charter of Henry I., although no longer extant, is quoted in later confirmation charters of Richard I., Henry III., Edward III. and Richard II. Franco de Bohun inherited Midhurst from his uncle Savaric Fitz-Savaric, and the De Bohuns held the lordship until 1499 when Sir David Owen obtained it through his marriage with the daughter of the last male heir. He sold it to Sir William Fitz-William, from whom it passed to Sir Anthony Browne and descended to the viscounts Montague. Midhurst is definitely called a borough in the reign of Edward I., but the borough-court and market were probably in existence much earlier. It was governed by a bailiff, elected annually, until the office lapsed, probably early in the 19th century. In an act of 1883 it is mentioned as one of the towns which had long ceased to be municipal. No charter of incorporation is known. Midhurst returned two members to parliament from 1300–1301 till 1832, and from that date one member until 1885 when it was disfranchised. In the reign of Henry VI. a market was held by the burgesses every Thursday, and a fair on Whit-Tuesday, by grant from Sir John Bohun. In 1888 the fair-days were the 6th of April, the 9th of May and the 29th of October. The market-day was Thursday. Pleasure-fairs are still held on the 6th of April and the 29th of October, but there is no market.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Midian

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​MIDIAN (properly Madyān, so Sept.), in the Bible, one of the peoples of North Arabia whom the Hebrews recognized as distant kinsmen, representing them as sons of Abraham’s wife Ketūrah (“incense”). Thus the sons of Keturah are the “incense-men,” not indeed inhabitants of the far south incense-land, but presumably the tribes whose caravans brought the incense to Palestine and the Mediterranean ports. So the Midianites appear in connexion with the gold and incense trade from Yemen (Isa. lx. 6), and with the trade between Egypt and Syria (Gen. xxxvii. 28, 36). They appear also as warriors invading Canaan from the eastern desert, and ravaging the land as similar tribes have done in all ages when Palestine lacked a strong government (see Gideon). Again, they are described as peaceful shepherds, and the pastures of the Midianites, or of the branch of Midian to which Moses’s father-in-law (Jethro or Reuel, or Hobab) belonged, lay near Mount Horeb (Exod. iii. 1). The Kenites who had friendly relations with Israel and are represented in Judg. i. 16, iv. 11, as the kin of Moses’s father-in-law, appear to have been but one fraction of Midian which took a separate course from their early relations to Israel. Balaam, according to one version of the story, was a Midianite (Num. xxii. seq.) and his association with Moab has been connected with the statement in Gen. xxxvi. 35, that the Edomite king Hadad defeated Midian in the land of Moab; (see Balaam, Edom).
​A place Midian is mentioned in 1 Kings xi. 18, apparently between Edom and Paran, and in later times the name lingered in the district east of the Gulf of ʽAkaba, where Eusebius knows a city Madiam in the country of the Saracens and Ptolemy (vi. 7) places Modiana. Still later Madyan was a station on the pilgrim route from Egypt to Mecca, the second beyond Aila (Elath). Here in the middle ages was shown the well from which Moses watered the flocks of Shoʽaib (Jethro), and the place is still known as “the caves of Shoʽaib.” It has considerable ruins, which have been described by Sir R. Burton (Land of Midian, 1879).
This district which has on its east Taimā, a centre of civilization in the 5th century B.C., and on its south-east El-ʽOlā whose existence as a seat of culture is possibly even older, is identified by some scholars with the Muṣrān of the Minaean (south Arabian) inscriptions, on which see Sabaeans, Yemen. That this part of north-west Arabia had frequent intercourse with Palestine appears certain from its commercial relations with Gaza; and the association of the Midianite Jethro with early Hebrew legislation, as also the possibility that Mizraim (“Egypt”) in the Old Testament should be taken in some cases to refer to this district, have an important bearing upon several Old Testament questions. See Mizraim.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Midnapore

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​MIDNAPORE, a town and district of British India, in the Burdwan division of Bengal. The town is 68 m. W. of Calcutta; it has a station on the Bengal Nagpur railway. Pop. (1901), 33,140. It is an important centre of trade, being the terminus of a navigable canal to Calcutta, and also the junction for the Sini branch of the Bengal-Nagpur railway. There are manufactures of brass and copper wire. It has an American mission, a municipal college, and a public library founded in 1852.
The District of Midnapore has an area of 5186 sq. m. The general appearance is that of a large open plain, of which the greater part is under cultivation. In the northern portion the soil is poor, and there is little wood. The country along the western boundary, known as the Jungle Mahals, is undulating and picturesque; it is almost uninhabited. The eastern and south-eastern portions are swampy and richly cultivated. The chief rivers of the district are the Hugli and its three tributaries, the Rupnarayan, the Haldi and the Rasulpur. The Midnapore high-level canal used also for irrigation runs almost due east and west from the town of Midnapore to Ulubaria on the Hugli 16 m. below Calcutta, and affords a continuous navigable channel 53 m. in length. There is also a tidal canal for navigation, 26 m. in length, extending from the Rupnarayan river. The district is traversed as well by the Bengal-Nagpur railway towards Orissa, with a branch to Chota Nagpur. The jungles in the west of the district yield lac, tussur, silk, wax, resin, fire-wood, charcoal, &c., and give shelter to large and small game. The principal exports are rice, silk and sugar; and the chief imports consist of cotton cloth and twist. Salt, indigo, silk, mats and brass and copper utensils are manufactured. Both silk and indigo are decaying industries. The population in 1901 was 2,789,114, showing an increase of 6% in the decade.
The early history of Midnapore centres round the ancient town of Tamluk, which in the beginning of the 5th century was an important Buddhist settlement and maritime harbour. The first connexion of the English with the district dates from 1760, when Mir Kasim ceded to the East India Company Midnapore, Chittagong, and Burdwan (then estimated to furnish one-third of the entire revenue of Bengal) as the price of his elevation to the throne of Bengal on the deposition of Mir Jafar.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Middletown (Pennsylvania)

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​MIDDLETOWN, a borough of Dauphin county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on the east bank of the Susquehanna river, 9 m. below Harrisburg. Pop. (1890), 5080; (1900), 5608 (340 foreign-born and 289 negroes); (1910), 5374. It is served by the Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia & Reading railways, and by an electric line to Harrisburg. The borough has a considerable trade with the surrounding agricultural country, and owing to the proximity of the Yorkhaven power-plant (across the river) and the excellent railway service, is a manufacturing centre. The municipality owns its electric lighting plant. Middletown was founded in 1755 by Friends (from Philadelphia and other places in Pennsylvania) and Scotch-Irish, and was so named because of its position midway between Lancaster and Carlisle. It was first incorporated as a borough in 1828.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Midleton, William St John Fremantle Brodrick, 9th Viscount

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See also St John Brodrick, 1st Earl of Midleton on Wikipedia; and Midleton, William St. John Fremantle Brodrick, 1st Earl of on Wiksource 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​MIDLETON, WILLIAM ST JOHN FREMANTLE BRODRICK, 9th Viscount (1856–), English politician, was the son of the 8th viscount (1830–1907). He came of a Surrey family who in the 17th century, in the persons of Sir St John Brodrick and Sir Thomas Brodrick, obtained grants of land in the south of Ireland. Sir St John Brodrick settled at Midleton, between Cork and Youghal in 1641; and his son Alan Brodrick (1660–1728), speaker of the Irish House of Commons and lord chancellor of Ireland, was created Baron Brodrick in 1715 and Viscount Midleton in 1717 in the Irish peerage. In 1796 the title of Baron Brodrick in the peerage of the United Kingdom was created. The English family seat at Peper Harow, near Godalming, Surrey, was designed by Sir William Chambers. The 8th viscount was a Conservative in politics, who for a few years had a seat in the House of Commons, and who was responsible in the House of Lords for carrying the Infants Protection Act. His brother, the Hon. G. C. Brodrick, was for many years warden of Merton College, Oxford. As Mr St John Brodrick, the 9th viscount had a distinguished career in the House of Commons. After being at Eton and Balliol, Oxford, and serving as president of the Oxford Union, he entered parliament as conservative member for one of the Surrey divisions in 1880. From 1886 to 1892 he was financial secretary to the war office; under secretary for war, 1895–1898; under secretary for foreign affairs, 1898–1900; secretary of state for war, 1900–1903; and secretary of state for India, 1903–1905. He lost his seat for the Guildford division of Surrey at the general election of January 1906. In March 1907 he was made an alderman of the London County Council. He married, first in 1880, Lady Hilda (d. 1901), daughter of the 9th earl of Wemyss, by whom he had a family; and secondly in 1903, Madeleine Stanley, daughter of Lady St Helier by her first husband.