OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bellini, Vincenzo

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​BELLINI, VINCENZO (1801–1835), operatic composer of the Italian school, was born at Catania in Sicily, on the 1st of November 1801. He was descended from a family of musicians, both his father and grandfather having been composers of some reputation. After having received his preparatory musical education at home, he entered the conservatoire of Naples, where he studied singing and composition under Tritto and Zingarelli. He soon began to write pieces for various instruments, as well as a cantata and several masses and other sacred compositions. His first opera, Adelson e Savina, was performed in 1825 at a small theatre in Naples; his second dramatic work, Bianca e Fernando, was produced next year at the San Carlo theatre of the same city, and made his name known in Italy. His next work, Il Pirata (1827), was written for the Scala in Milan, to words by Felice Romano, with whom Bellini formed a union of friendship to be severed only by his death. The splendid rendering of the music by Tamburini, Rubini and other great Italian singers contributed greatly to the success of the work, which at once established the European reputation of its composer. In almost every year of the short remainder of his life he produced a new operatic work, which was received with rapture by the audiences of France, Italy, Germany and England. The names and dates of four of Bellini’s operas familiar to most lovers of Italian music are: I Montecchi e Capuleti (1830), in which the part of Romeo became a favourite with all the great contraltos; La Sonnambula (1831); Norma, Bellini’s best and most popular creation (1831); and I Puritani (1835), written for the Italian opera in Paris, and to some extent under the influence of French music. In 1833 Bellini had left his country to accompany to England the singer Pasta, who had created the part of his Sonnambula. In 1834 he accepted an invitation to write an opera for the national grand opera in Paris. While he was carefully studying the French language and the cadence of French verse for the purpose, he was seized with a sudden illness and died at his villa in Puteaux near Paris on the 24th of September 1835. His operatic creations are throughout replete with a spirit of gentle melancholy, frequently monotonous and almost always undramatic, but at the same time irresistibly sweet. To this spirit, combined with a rich flow of cantilena, Bellini’s operas owe their popularity. “I shall never forget,” wrote Wagner, “the impression made upon me by an opera of Bellini at a period when I was completely exhausted with the everlastingly abstract complication used in our orchestras, when a simple and noble melody was revealed anew to me.”
See also G. Labat, Bellini (Bordeaux, 1865); A. Pougin, Bellini, sa vie et ses œuvres (Paris, 1868).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bellinzona

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​BELLINZONA (Ger. Bellenz), the political capital of the Swiss canton of Tessin or Ticino. It is 105 m. from Lucerne by the St Gotthard railway, 19 m. from Lugano and 14 m. from Locarno at the head of the Lago Maggiore, these two towns having been till 1881 capitals of the canton jointly with Bellinzona. The old town is built on some hills, on the left bank of the Tessin or Ticino river, and a little below the junction of the main Ticino valley (the Val Leventina) with that of Mesocco. It thus blocked the road from Germany to Italy, while a great wall was built from the town to the river bank. Bellinzona still possesses three picturesque castles (restored in modern times), dating in their present form from the 15th century. They belonged for several centuries to the three Swiss cantons which were masters of the town. The most westerly, Castello Grande or of San Michele, belonged to Uri; the central castle, that of Montebello, was the property of Schwyz; while the most easterly castle, that of Sasso Corbaro, was in the hands of Unterwalden. The 13th-century church of San Biagio (Blaise) has a remarkable 14th-century fresco, while the collegiate church of ​San Stefano dates from the 16th century. In 1900 the population of Bellinzona was 4949, practically all Romanists and Italian-speaking.
Possibly Bellinzona is of Roman origin, but it is first mentioned in 590. It played a considerable part in the early history of Lombardy, being a key to several Alpine passes. In the 8th century it belonged to the bishop of Como, while in the 13th and 14th centuries it was tossed to and fro between the cities of Milan and Como. In 1402 it was taken from Milan by Albert von Sax, lord of the Val Mesocco, who in 1419 sold it to Uri and Obwalden, which, however, lost it to Milan in 1422 after the battle of Arbedo. In 1499 (like the rest of the Milanese) it was occupied by the French, but in 1500 it was taken by Uri. In 1503 the French king ceded it to Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden, which henceforth ruled it very harshly through their bailiffs till 1798. At that date it became the capital of the canton Bellinzona of the Helvetic republic, but in 1803 it was united to the newly-formed canton of Tessin. (W. A. B. C.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Belleville (Ontario)

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​BELLEVILLE, a city and port of entry of Ontario, Canada, and capital of Hastings county, 106 m. E.N.E. of Toronto, on Bay of Quinté and the Grand Trunk railway. Pop. (1901) 9117. Communication is maintained with Lake Ontario and St Lawrence ports by several lines of steamers. It is the commercial centre of a fine agricultural district, and has a large export trade in cheese and farm produce. The principal industries are planing mills and cement works, cheese factories and distilleries. There are several educational institutions, including a business college, a convent, and a government institute for the deaf and dumb. Albert College, under the control of the Methodist church, was formerly a university, but now confines itself to secondary education.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bellingham

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​BELLINGHAM, a city of Whatcom county, Washington, U.S.A., on the E. side of Bellingham Bay, 96 m. N. of Seattle. Pop. (1900) 11,062; (1905, state est.) 26,000; (1910, U.S. census) 24,298. Area about 23 sq. m. It is served by the Great Northern, the Northern Pacific, the Canadian Pacific, and the Bellingham Bay & British Columbia railways—being a terminus of the last named, which operates only 62 m. of line and connects with the Mt. Baker goldfields and the Nooksack valley farm and orchard region. A suburban electric line was projected in 1907. About 21/2 m. south-east of the city is the main body of Lake Whatcom, 13 m. long, 11/4 m. wide, and 318 ft. higher than the city and the source of its water-supply, a gravity system which cost $1,000,000, being owned by the city. Bellingham has two Carnegie libraries. Among the principal buildings are the county court-house, the city hall, the Young Men’s Christian Association building, and Beck’s theatre, with a seating capacity of 2200. The largest of the state’s normal colleges is situated here; in 1907 it had a faculty of 25 and 350 students; there are two high schools, two business colleges, and one industrial school also in the city. The excellent harbour, and the fact that Bellingham is nearer to the great markets of Alaska than any other city in the states, make the port an important shipping centre. In the value of manufactured product the city was fourth in the state in 1905 (being passed only by Tacoma, Seattle and Spokane), with a value of $3,293,988; according to a census taken by the local chamber of commerce the value of the product in 1906 was $7,751,464. The principal industrial establishments are shingle (especially cedar) and saw-mills, salmon canneries and factories for the manufacture of tin cans, and machinery used in the canning of salmon. Motive and electric lighting power is brought 52 m. from the falls of the north fork of the Nooksack river, where there is a power plant which furnishes 3500 horsepower. There are deposits of clay and limestone in the surrounding country, and cement is manufactured in the vicinity of the city. The blue-grey Chuckanut sandstone is quarried on the shore of Chuckanut Bay, south of Bellingham; and a coarse, dark-brown sandstone is quarried on Sucia Island, west of the city. There are quarries also on Waldron Island. Bellingham was formed in 1903 by the consolidation of the cities of New Whatcom (pop. in 1900, 6834) and Fairhaven (pop. in 1900, 4228), and was chartered as a city of the first class in 1904; it is named from Bellingham Bay, which Vancouver is supposed to have named, in 1792, in honour of Sir Henry Bellingham.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bellini, Lorenzo

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​BELLINI, LORENZO (1643–1704), Italian physician and anatomist, was born at Florence on the 3rd of September 1643. At the age of twenty, when he had already begun his researches on the structure of the kidneys and had described the ducts known by his name (Exercitatio anatomica de structura et usu renum, 1662), he was chosen professor of theoretical medicine at Pisa, but soon after was transferred to the chair of anatomy. After spending thirty years at Pisa, he was invited to Florence and appointed physician to the grand duke Cosimo III., and was also made senior consulting physician to Pope Clement XI. He died at Florence on the 8th of January 1704. His works were published in a collected form at Venice in 1708.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Belli, Giuseppe Gioachino

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​BELLI, GIUSEPPE GIOACHINO (1791–1863), Italian poet, was born at Rome, and after a period of literary employment in poor circumstances was enabled by marriage with a lady of means to follow his own special bent. He is remembered for his vivid popular poetry in the Roman dialect, a number of satirical sonnets which in their own way are unique.
See Morandi’s edition, I sonetti romaneschi (1886–1889).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bellingham, Sir Edward

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​BELLINGHAM, SIR EDWARD (d. 1549), lord deputy of Ireland, was a son of Edward Bellingham of Erringham, Sussex, his mother being a member of the Shelley family. As a soldier he fought in France and elsewhere, then became an English member of parliament and a member of the privy council, and in 1547 took part in some military operations in Ireland. In May 1548 he was sent to that country as lord deputy. Ireland was then in a very disturbed condition, but the new governor crushed a rebellion of the O’Connors in Leinster, freed the Pale from rebels, built forts, and made the English power respected in Münster and Connaught. Bellingham, however, was a headstrong man and was constantly quarrelling with his council; but one of his opponents admitted that he was “the best man of ​war that ever he had seen in Ireland.” His short but successful term of office was ended by his recall in 1549.
See R. Bagwell, Ireland Under the Tudors, vol. i. (1885).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Blind, Mathilde

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​BLIND, MATHILDE (1841–1896), English author, was born at Mannheim on the 21st of March 1841. Her father was a banker named Cohen, but she took the name of Blind after her step-father, the political writer, Karl Blind (1826–1907), one of the exiled leaders of the Baden insurrection in 1848–1849, and an ardent supporter of the various 19th-century movements for the freedom and autonomy of struggling nationalities. The family was compelled to take refuge in England, where Mathilde devoted herself to literature and to the higher education of women. She produced also three long poems, “The Prophecy of St Oran” (1881), “The Heather on Fire” (1886), an indignant protest against the evictions in the Highlands, and “The Ascent of Man” (1888), which was to be the epic of the theory of evolution. She wrote biographies of George Eliot (1883) and Madame Roland (1886), and translated D. F. Strauss’s The Old Faith and the New (1873–1874) and the Memoirs of Marie Bashkirtseff (1890). She died on the 26th of November 1896, bequeathing her property to Newnham College, Cambridge.
A complete edition of her poems was edited by Mr Arthur Symons in 1900, with a biographical introduction by Dr Richard Garnett.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Blinding

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​BLINDING, a form of punishment anciently common in many lands, being inflicted on thieves, adulterers, perjurers and other criminals. The inhabitants of Apollonia (Illyria) are said to have inflicted this penalty on their “watch” when found asleep at their posts. It was resorted to by the Roman emperors in their persecutions of the Christians. The method of destroying the sight varied. Sometimes a mixture of lime and vinegar, or barely scalding vinegar alone, was poured into the eyes. Sometimes a rope was twisted round the victim’s head till the eyes started out of their sockets. In the middle ages the punishment seems to have been changed from total blindness to a permanent injury to the eyes, amounting, however, almost to blindness, produced by holding a red-hot iron dish or basin before the face. Under the forest laws of the Norman kings of England blinding was a common penalty. Shakespeare makes King John order his nephew Arthur’s eyes to be burnt out.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Blessington, Marguerite

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​BLESSINGTON, MARGUERITE, Countess of (1789–1849), Irish novelist and miscellaneous writer, daughter of Edmund Power, a small landowner, was born near Clonmel, Co. Tipperary, Ireland, on the 1st of September 1789. Her childhood was made unhappy by her father’s character and poverty, and her early womanhood wretched by her compulsory marriage at the age of fifteen to a Captain Maurice St Leger Farmer, whose drunken habits brought him at last as a debtor to the king’s bench prison, where, in October 1817, he died. His wife had left him some time before, and in February 1818 she married Charles John Gardiner, earl of Blessington. Of rare beauty, charm and wit, she was no less distinguished for her generosity and for the extravagant tastes which she shared with her husband, which resulted in encumbering his estates with a load of debt. In the autumn of 1822 they went abroad, spent four months of the next year at Genoa in close intimacy with Byron, and remained on the continent till Lord Blessington’s death in May 1829. Some time before this they had been joined by Count D’Orsay, who in 1827 married Lady Harriet Gardiner, Lord Blessington’s only daughter by a former wife. D’Orsay, who had soon separated from his wife, now accompanied Lady Blessington to England and lived with her till her death. Their home, first at Seamore Place, and afterwards Gore House, Kensington, became a centre of attraction for whatever was distinguished in literature, learning, art, science and fashion. After her husband’s death she supplemented her diminished income by contributing to various periodicals as well as by writing novels. She was for some years editor of The Book of Beauty and The Keepsake, popular annuals of the day. In 1834 she published her Conversations with Lord Byron. Her Idler in Italy (1839–1840), and Idler in France (1841) were popular for their personal gossip and anecdote, descriptions of nature and sentiment. Early in 1849, Count D’Orsay left Gore House to escape his creditors; the furniture and decorations were sold, and Lady Blessington joined the count in Paris, where she died on the 4th of June 1849.
Her Literary Life and Correspondence (3 vols.), edited by R. R. Madden, appeared in 1855. Her portrait was painted in 1808 by Sir Thomas Lawrence.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Blindman's-Buff

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​BLINDMAN’S-BUFF (from an O. Fr. word, buffe, a blow, especially a blow on the cheek), a game in which one player is blindfolded and made to catch and identify one of the others, who in sport push him about and “buffet” him.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Blind Hookey

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​BLIND HOOKEY, a game of chance, played with a full pack of cards. The deal, which is an advantage, is decided as at whist, the cards being shuffled and cut as at whist. The dealer gives a parcel of cards to each player including himself. Each player puts the amount of his stake on his cards, which he must not look at. The dealer has to take all bets. He then turns up his parcel, exposing the bottom card. Each player in turn does the same, winning or losing according as his cards are higher or lower than the dealer’s. Ties pay the dealer. The cards rank as at whist. The suits are of no importance, the cards taking precedence according to their face-value.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Blida

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​BLIDA, a town of Algeria, in the department of Algiers, 32 m. by railway S.W. from Algiers, on the line to Oran. Pop. (1906) 16,866. It lies surrounded with orchards and gardens, 630 ft. above the sea, at the base of the Little Atlas, on the southern edge of the fertile plain of the Metija, and the right bank of the Wad-el-Kebir affluent of the Chiffa. The abundant water of this stream provides power for large corn ​mills and several factories, and also supplies the town, with its numerous fountains and irrigated gardens. Blida is surrounded by a wall of considerable extent, pierced by six gates, and is further defended by Fort Mimieh, crowning a steep hill on the left bank of the river. The present town, French in character, has well-built modern streets with many arcades, and numbers among its buildings several mosques and churches, extensive barracks and a large military hospital. The principal square, the place d’Armes, is surrounded by arcaded houses and shaded by trees. The centre of a fertile district, and a post on one of the main routes in the country, Blida has a flourishing trade, chiefly in oranges and flour. The orange groves contain over 50,000 trees, and in April the air for miles round is laden with the scent of the orange blossoms. In the public gardens is a group of magnificent olive trees. The products of the neighbouring cork trees and cedar groves are a source of revenue to the town. In the vicinity are the villages of Joinville and Montpensier, which owe their origin to military camps established by Marshal Valée in 1838; and on the road to Medea are the tombs of the marabout Mahommed-el-Kebir, who died in 1580, and his two sons.
Blida, i.e. boleida, diminutive of the Arab word belad, city, occupies the site of a military station in the time of the Romans, but the present town appears to date from the 16th century. A mosque was built by order of Khair-ed-din Barbarossa, and under the Turks the town was of some importance. In 1825 it was nearly destroyed by an earthquake, but was speedily rebuilt on a site about a mile distant from the ruins. It was not till 1838 that it was finally held by the French, though they had been in possession for a short time eight years before. In April 1906 it was chosen as the place of detention of Behanzin, the ex-king of Dahomey, who died in December of that year.
Blida is the chief town of a commune of the same name, having (1906) a population of 33,332.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bligh, William

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​BLIGH, WILLIAM (1754–1817), English admiral, was born of a good Cornish family in 1754. He accompanied Captain Cook in his second expedition (1772–1774) as sailing-master of the “Resolution.” During the voyage, the bread-fruit, already known to Dampier, was found by them at Otaheite; and after seeing service under Lord Howe and elsewhere, “Bread-fruit Bligh,” as he was nicknamed, was despatched at the end of 1787 to the Pacific in command of H.M.S. “Bounty,” for the purpose of introducing it into the West Indies from the South Sea Islands. Bligh sailed from Otaheite, after remaining there about six months; but, when near the Friendly Islands, a mutiny (April 28, 1789) broke out on board the “Bounty,” headed by Fletcher Christian, the master’s mate, and Bligh, with eighteen others, was set adrift in the launch. The mutineers themselves settled on Pitcairn Island (q.v.), but some of them were afterwards captured, brought to England and in three cases executed. This mutiny, which forms the subject of Byron’s Island, did not arise so much from tyranny on the part of Bligh as from attachments contracted between the seamen and the women of Otaheite. After suffering severely from hunger, thirst and storms, Bligh and his companions landed at Timor in the East Indies, having performed a voyage of about 4000 m. in an open boat. Bligh returned to England in 1790, and he was soon afterwards appointed to the “Providence,” in which he effected the purpose of his former appointment by introducing the bread-fruit tree into the West India Islands. He showed great courage at the mutiny of the Nore in 1797, and in the same year took part in the battle of Camperdown, where Admiral Duncan defeated the Dutch under De Winter. In 1801 he commanded the “Glatton” (54) at the battle of Copenhagen, and received the personal commendations of Nelson. In 1805 he was appointed “captain general and governor of New South Wales.” As he made himself intensely unpopular by the harsh exercise of authority, he was deposed in January 1808 by a mutiny headed by Major George Johnston of the 102nd foot, and was imprisoned by the mutineers till 1810. He returned to England in 1811, was promoted to rear-admiral in that year, and to vice-admiral in 1814. Major Johnston was tried by court martial at Chelsea in 1811, and was dismissed the service. Bligh, who was an active, persevering and courageous officer, died in London in 1817.