ejaasaari/simplewiki-2025-04-01 huggingface dataset:
Stanisław Konarski, Sch.P. (actual name: Hieronim Konarski; 30 September 1700 – 3 August 1773) was a Polish teacher and writer. He wrote political books, poems, and plays. He was a monk - member of the order of Piarists; he brought the Enlightenment in Poland. Between 1725 and 1727 Konarski learned at the Collegium Nazarenum in Rome, where he became a teacher of rhetoric - the art of good speaking. After that, in order to make better his own learning, he traveled through France, Germany and Austria. In 1730 he went back to Poland and began to work on a new text of Polish law ("Volumina legum").  From 1736 Konarski taught at the Collegium Resoviense in Rzeszów and in 1740 he started the Collegium Nobilium in Warsaw, a school for sons of the people of high social class ("szlachta"). Thereafter, he improved teaching of Piarists in Poland, in a way that agrees with his program of teaching ("Ordinationes Visitationis Apostolicae...", 1755). His improvements became an important point in the fight of 18th century to make the system of Polish teaching more modern. In the beginning, Konarski was joined politically with King Stanislas Leszczynski; later, he came near to Czartoryski's "Familia" and to King Stanislas August Poniatowski. He took part in the well-known "Thursday dinners". Stanislas August Poniatowski caused that a medal was made in the honor of Konarski, with his likeness. There was written in Latin: "Sapere auso" ("who was brave to be wise").
Gaetano Donizetti (born Bergamo 29 November 1797; – Bergamo 8 April 1848) was an Italian composer. He was the most famous composer of operas in Italy in the years between the death of Bellini (1835) and the time when Verdi was becoming well-known. Bellini and Donizetti wrote operas in the bel canto style: music with beautiful, smooth melodies. Donizetti’s family were very poor. His talent was discovered by Simon Mayr who was maestro di cappella (music director) at S Maria Maggiore in Bergamo. He opened a school which trained boys to sing in the church choir and gave them a good musical education. Donizetti learned a lot from Mayr and was always very grateful to him. Donizetti’s first operas were performed in Venice. A rich lady who realized he was very talented paid so that he did not have to do military service. His opera "Zoraida di Granata" was very successful in Rome and he was given a contract for an opera for Naples. For several years he composed between two and five operas every year. They were not particularly successful. One of the reasons was that the libretti he was given (the words he had to set) were not very good.  In the 1820s, while living in Rome, Donizetti met Virginia Vasselli, whom he would marry in 1828. None of their three children lived very long. His wife died in 1837 which made him very sad during his last years. This can be felt in his music. His opera "Anna Bolena" made him internationally famous. It was performed in London and Paris. His opera "Maria Stuarda" was based on a play by Schiller. It was not popular at first. The audience did not like the tragic ending. Today it is recognized as containing some great music, especially in the final scene. After a visit to Paris he returned to Naples to produce "Lucia di Lammermoor" which was based on Scott’s novel "The Bride of Lammermoor". There is a French version
Blond or blonde is a light color of hair or a person with this color hair. The spelling "blonde" means a person with this hair color, and the spelling "blond" may mean another person with the same hair color. The color itself can have either spelling ("blonde" or "blond"), according to "Merriam-Webster's Dictionary". Natural blonds have quite fair skins, and their skin is finer (less thick) than people with dark skin. Light skin is natural amongst people living (or whose ancestors lived) in northern climates. It is an adaptation for their skins to make vitamin D. This vitamin is essential for health, and people in northern climates may not make enough. One thing to mention: hair color may change during life, and many children have blond hair at first, but it grows darker as they get older. That's a normal thing. Blondes do not make the melanin for their hair (and skin) to go dark. It is very unusual to see a blond person with dark skin, but it does happen occasionally.  People who are blonde have less pigment in their hair than dark haired people. To be blonde is usually to have blonde ancestors. It is not albinism. People may also use chemicals to make themselves blonde, but that is just a fashion thing.  "Natural" blondes are most common around the Baltic Sea and Scandinavia. The Nordic countries such as Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, and Finland also have many blond people. Ireland and Scotland also have a high number of natural blondes.  Likewise in Poland), north-western parts of Russia.
Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, OM, PC (10 February 1894 – 29 December 1986), was a Conservative politician. He was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963. Macmillan was in the Grenadier Guards during the First World War. After the war he joined his family publishing company. He entered Parliament at the 1924 general election. After losing his seat in 1929, he won it again in 1931. During World War II, Churchill made Macmillan Minister Resident in the Mediterranean. This made him the go-between for Churchill and the British forces in North Africa and the Middle East. The Mediterranean was a major theatre of war, and Macmillan's work made his name as a serious politician. Macmillan became Foreign Secretary and then Chancellor of the Exchequer under Churchill's successor Sir Anthony Eden. When Eden resigned in 1957 after the Suez Crisis, Macmillan succeeded him as Prime Minister and Leader of the Conservative Party. Macmillan presided over a country becoming richer, with low unemployment and high (but uneven) economic growth. In his Bedford speech of July 1957 he told the nation they had 'never had it so good'. Macmillan was granted the last hereditary peerage given to a prime minister when he became the Earl of Stockton and Viscount Macmillan of Ovenden.
Crucifixion is a way to execute (kill) someone, usually because they have committed a crime. It was used as a capital punishment by the government of Rome. A prisoner was beaten with whips, and made to carry their own cross. They were either tied or nailed to the cross. The Romans used different types of crosses: T-shaped, X-shaped, and sometimes just trees. It killed people by making them bleed, go into shock, and making it hard for them to breathe, eventually dying of suffocation. Some of the people would live for several days before dying. Roman soldiers would often break the legs of the criminal to speed it up. Jesus Christ. The most famous person to have been crucified was Jesus Christ, the Son of God according to the Christian religion. He was crucified along with two thieves. The cross later became a symbol of Christianity. Six of the twelve apostles of Jesus were also crucified later on, but most of them asked to be crucified in a different way from Jesus. For example, Andrew (who later became the patron saint of Scotland) was crucified on an X-shaped cross. In the year 337 AD, Emperor Constantine I abolished crucifixion in the Roman Empire.
Kaleva or Kalevi and his sons are people or creatures in Finnish, Karelian and Estonian stories. However many things about them are forgotten.  History. Estonian history. The name of Estonian national Epos Kalevipoeg means "Sons of Kalevi" and the name of Finnish national epos Kalevala means "Land of Kaleva". In Estonian stories sons of Kaleva are sons of King.  Finnish history. Finnish people called Sirius "Kalevantähti" which means "Star of Kaleva". Belt of Orion was called Kalevas sword. In Finnish stories they are more often giants. People told that some things in nature, like big or weird stones, are made by Kalevas sons. Stories tells that while people became Christians, they started to hate Kaleva's sons who remained pagans. Soon Kaleva's sons had to go away. All the time Christian people took more land, Kaleva's sons had to go farther away. At one island they staid and did not want to leave. Priests came and they cursed Kaleva's sons until they took a big stone and sailed with it away. They have not been seen since that, but sometimes they come at night and hits crop or even forest down. Other creatures. Almost the same thing happened to Hiisi people who resembles trolls. Christian humans made them to flee also.
Yellowstone National Park is a national park in the United States. It was the world's first national park. United States President Ulysses S. Grant signed a law to create it in 1872.  The name comes from the Yellowstone River, which flows through the park. Yellowstone became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978. Yellowstone National Park is famous for its geysers and hot springs. About half the world's geysers are in the park. The world's most famous geyser is the Old Faithful Geyser. It is in Yellowstone National Park. Large animals such as grizzly bears, wolves, bison and elk live in Yellowstone. Many tourists visit the park each year to see the geysers and animals. The park is the main part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. This is the largest, almost complete ecosystem in the Earth's northern temperate zone. It has many regions; the subalpine forest covers the largest area. History. People have lived in the Yellowstone area for at least 11,000 years. Some Native Americans still lived there when the first people came from Europe in 1807/1808. John Colter, a trapper, came with the Lewis and Clark Expedition. They visited a big area which was unknown to the world at that time. Colter came back to St. Louis and told the people there that he had found a beautiful place of hot springs and geysers. This area was Yellowstone, but nobody believed him. Yellowstone was not famous at that time. For the next sixty years, only a few other trappers traveled through the area, and the same thing happened to them. When they reported that Colter had been right, nobody listened to their stories. Then three trips between 1868 and 1871 visited Yellowstone, and they told the news of its beauty to the people in the East. One year later, on March 1, 1872, United States President Ulysses S. Grant signed a law to make the first National Park in the world. For the first sixteen years, the Interior Department managed the park. But Congress did not give them any money. So from 188
A national park is a park or an area of land officially recognized and protected by a nation's government. National parks are often made to protect the animals that live inside them or the land itself. There are many National Parks in the world. The first one established (in 1872) was the United States Yellowstone National Park. It was the first national park in the world. But the idea of protecting areas from human development was proposed years earlier. American painter George Catlin offered the idea during the 1830s.  An international organization, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and its World Commission on Protected Areas, has defined National Parks as its category II type of protected areas. The largest national park in the world meeting the IUCN definition is the Northeast Greenland National Park, which was established in 1974. According to the IUCN, there are about 7000 national parks worldwide (2010 figure). Definitions. In 1969 the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) declared a national park to be a relatively large area with:  While national parks are generally understood to be administered by national governments (hence the name), in Australia national parks are run by State Governments and predate the Federation of Australia. Also in Japan, some of them called "Quasi-national Parks" (国定公園) are recognized by the government and managed by local governments.
William Ewart Gladstone (29 December 1809 – 19 May 1898) was a British Victorian politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for the Liberal Party in four terms between 1868 and 1894. His career lasted more than 60 years. He served as Liberal Prime Minister four times. This was more than any other person (1868–1874, 1880–1885, 1886 and 1892–1894). Gladstone was 84 years old when he resigned for the last time. This made him Britain's oldest ever Prime Minister. He served as Chancellor of the Exchequer four times (1853–1855, 1859–1866, 1873–1874 and 1880–1882). Gladstone was educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford.
Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon (12 June 1897–14 January 1977) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He was better known throughout his time in office as Sir Anthony Eden. He was educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford. Eden was one of the best-known politicians of his generation. He was appointed Foreign Secretary in 1935 by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, and resigned in 1938 in protest at Chamberlain's appeasement of Adolf Hitler. He was Churchill's Foreign Secretary during World War II, and again in 19511955. He had an operation to remove gallstones in 1953. The operation went wrong, and his health was ruined. He became Prime Minister in 1955 when Winston Churchill retired. He resigned as Prime Minister in 1957, and Harold Macmillan replaced him. The Suez Crisis of 1956 was a critical period. This and his health led up to his resignation as Prime Minister. Eden died of liver cancer, aged 79. His widow, Clarissa Eden, Countess of Avon, was born in 1920 and died in 2021. She was a niece of Winston Churchill. Eden's life can be described in two halves. The first half, in the 1930s and in wartime, was brilliant. But he is often ranked among the least successful British Prime Ministers of the 20th century. Two broadly sympathetic biographies (in 1986 and 2003) have gone some way to redressing the balance of opinion. D.R. Thorpe says the Suez Crisis "was a truly tragic end to his premiership, and one that came to assume a disproportionate importance in any assessment of his career". Biography. Born into an aristocratic family. He volunteered for the British army at the beginning of the First World War, participated in the fighting in France. In 1919—1922 he was a student at the Faculty of Oriental Languages at Oxford, graduating with honors. From 1945 to 1973 he served as rector of the University of Birmingham. In 1961, he received the title of count. Eden had
Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, (3 August 186714 December 1947) was a Prime Minister of the United Kingdom three times. He presided over the economic crisis of the 1930s and abdication of King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom. He also believed in being soft on Germany since many people in nearby countries were German and wanted to become part of it, the country stopped the Soviet Union from spreading its communism and most British people did not want another world war.
Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home, Baron Home of the Hirsel, (; 2 July 1903 – 9 October 1995) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1963 to 1964. He was better known as Alec Douglas-Home. Home was a Member of Parliament and a junior official (a Parliamentary Private Secretary) when Neville Chamberlain went to Munich to meet Adolf Hitler in 1938. He was present at the main meetings between Hitler and Chamberlain. Later in life, he was appointed by Harold Macmillan as Foreign Secretary in 1960–1963, and again in Edward Heath's government from 1970 to 1974. Home's name and title changed a few times during his life. Born as Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home, he became Lord Dunglass when his father became the Earl of Home. Dunglass is a junior title, that is, a lower title which is held by the eldest son. When his father died Alec became the 14th Earl of Home. He also became Baron Douglas in the peerage of the United Kingdom (that was also a junior title). Leader of Party and Prime Minister. When he was chosen as Leader of the Conservative Party after Harold Macmillan retired, he knew it would be difficult to lead a government from the House of Lords. So he renounced his title, four days after becoming Prime Minister. Once he renounced the title, he became simply Sir Alec Douglas-Home. He had been made a Knight of the Thistle in 1962. Finally, after he lost the election of 1964, he was given a life peerage, titled 'Baron Home of the Hirsel'. That title is not hereditary but, after his death, his son became the 15th Earl of Home. Rapidly, after the title was renounced, arrangements were made. The safe Conservative seat of Kinross and Western Perthshire was vacant, and Douglas-Home was adopted as his party's candidate. Parliament was due to meet on 24 October after the summer recess, but its return was postponed until 12 November pending the by-election. For twenty days Douglas-Home was Prime Minister while
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881), born Benjamin D'Israeli, was a British politician. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1852, from 1858 to 1859 and from 1866 to 1868. He was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1868 and from 1874 to 1880. His main opponent was William Ewart Gladstone. Disraeli was also a novelist and biographer. Disraeli was born into a Jewish family which converted to Anglicanism. He is the only prime minister of Jewish heritage in British history. He followed his father, and converted to Anglicanism at the age of 12. Political ideas. Disraeli invented the idea of "One Nation" conservatism, designed to appeal to all ranks in society. This is conservatism that values paternalism and pragmatism. Paternalism means looking after people, and pragmatism means it was practical not ideological. Disraeli wanted it to appeal to working-class men as a solution to worsening divisions in society. This idea was opposed to the Liberals (or "Whigs"), which was the party of the urban elite (moneyed and well-educated people in towns and cities). Disraeli made the Conservatives the party that supported the British Empire and the military action to go with it. This was partly in reaction to Gladstone, who disliked the expense of empire, and partly because Disraeli knew it would be popular. Parliament in the 19th century. The 19th century saw the Commons gradually take over from the Lords. In the first half of the century the prime minister and most of the cabinet were peers, members of the House of Lords. By the late 19th century, the prime minister and most of the cabinet came from the House of Commons. This happened gradually, and perhaps the reform of elections helped make the Commons the more important chamber. Disraeli's achievements. In Disraeli's first short period as prime minister, his government passed legislation which had wide support. It ended public executions, and the Corrupt Practices Act did much to
William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (15 November 1708 – 11 May 1778) was a prime minister of Great Britain. He was appointed by King George III.  His London house, in St. James's Square, is now the home of the international affairs think tank called Chatham House. In 1758, during the Seven Years' War, he came up with the strategy of blocking the St. Lawrence River so the French troops in Quebec and Montreal could not get more . This weakened the French side, and helped to win the war. His son, William Pitt the Younger, was also a prime minister.
Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith (12 September 1852 – 15 February 1928) served as the Liberal Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1908 to 1916. Until 5 January 1988, he had been the longest continuously serving Prime Minister in the 20th century. He was not, however, in favour of the right of women to vote. As Prime Minister, he led the Liberal Party to a series of domestic reforms, including social insurance and the reduction of the power of the House of Lords. He led the nation into the First World War, but a series of military and political crises led to his replacement in late 1916 by David Lloyd George. His falling out with Lloyd George played a major part in the downfall of the Liberal Party. His ministry was significant for the Old Age Pension (1908), National Insurance Act (1911) and the Parliamentary Act (1911), which restricted the power of the House of Lords.  Asquith's descendants include: ambassador Dominic Asquith (great-grandson), actress Helena Bonham Carter (great-granddaughter) and actress Anna Chancellor (great-great-granddaughter).
Commerce is another word for trade or business and can mean simply the buying and selling of goods and services. Car-sales and online-stores are among the biggest commercial activities. Some commerce involves high finance and big companies and organisations. Commercial real estate is a place to do business.  Interstate commerce is the movement of goods, money or transportation between two or more states. International trade is the exchange of goods and services between countries.
A plantation is a large farm on which normally only one type of crop is grown. Plantations grow cash crops, mostly for export, and less for local use. Crops grown on plantations include banana, sugarcane, coffee, tea, cotton and tobacco.  Most plantations are monocultures, which means that there is only one kind of crop which is grown there. This means that the farms are more vulnerable to pests. Among the first known types of plantations were the latifundia of the Roman Empire. They produced large amounts of wine and olive oil for export. There has been more plantation agriculture since there has been more international trade and less subsistence farming. Like every economic activity, it has changed over time. This has changed based on the amount of money people have had, who owns the land, and politics. Slavery meant that a lot of black people worked on southern American plantations.
Pines are a large and important genus of conifers in the family Pinaceae. The Plant List of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri Botanical Garden lists 126 species of pines, plus a lot of synonyms. Pines live in almost the entire Northern Hemisphere. In North America, they live in the southern part of Arctic to Nicaragua and Hispaniola. In Europe, they live in areas from Portugal and Scotland to Russia. In Asia, they live in areas from Russia to Japan and the Philippines. They also live in the Himalayas, some northern parts of Africa, and north of Majorca (Mallorca) on the rugged mountains. Pines are long-lived trees (rarely large shrubs), typically reaching heights of 5–70 metres tall and ages of 100–1,000 years, some even more. The longest-lived is the Great Basin bristlecone pine, "Pinus longaeva". One individual of this species, named "Methuselah", is the world's oldest living tree at around 4,600 years old. This tree can be found in the White Mountains of California. Cones. Pines usually have male and female cones on the same tree (monoecious). The male cones are small, typically 1–5 cm long, and are only present for a short period, usually in spring. They fall as soon as they have shed their pollen. The female cones take 1.5–3 years (depending on species) to mature after pollination, with actual fertilization delayed by one year. At maturity, the female cones are 3–60 cm long. Each cone has numerous spirally arranged scales, with two seeds on each fertile scale; the scales at the base and tip of the cone are small and sterile, without seeds. The seeds are mostly small and winged, and are wind-dispersed. Some have larger seeds that look like nuts and are dispersed by birds.  At maturity, the cones usually open to release the seeds, but in some of the bird-dispersed species (e.g. whitebark pine), the seeds are only released by the bird breaking the cones open. In others, the seeds are stored in closed ("serotinous") cones for many years until a forest fire triggers the cones to open, releasing the seeds. The resin on the cones holds the scales closed until it melts in the fire.