Family Reference Books: Encyclopedia Britannica Questions & Answers Part 2

About the Encylopedia Britannica a reference book recommended for all families, a list of questions we asked the book and its answers.

Recommended for the Family Reference Shelf

ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA

Our Questions

4. Who was the Irish dancer and courtesan who spent her last years in New York lecturing on fashion and beauty?

5. What Danzig-born German physicist invented one of the most popular instruments in medicine?

6. Who was the notorious Tichborne claimant?

Answers provided by Encyclopaedia Britannica

4. Lola Montez, born in Ireland in 1818, died in New York in 1861, was an "adventuress and 'Spanish' dancer who achieved in ternational notoriety through her liaison with King Louis I of Bavaria. After 5 months' study, she made a disastrous debut as a dancer in London in 1843; her striking beauty, however, brought her additional dancing engagements." Her influence over King Louis caused a furor in Bavaria, forcing her to flee and the King to abdicate. "Montez danced in America and Australia, then returned to America to lecture on fashion and feminine beauty."

5. Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit, born in Danzig in 1686, died in The Hague in 1736, was a "German physicist who invented the alcohol thermometer (1709) and the mercury thermometer (1714) and introduced the Fahrenheit thermometric scale, which is still commonly used in the U.S. and Canada. He spent most of his life in The Netherlands...."

6. "Tichborne claimant was the name given to a man who in 1865 claimed to be Roger Charles Tichborne, heir to a large estate in Hampshire, who had been missing at sea since 1854. After 2 marathon trials (1871 and 1874) which attracted intense public interest, the claimant was declared to be a certain Arthur Orton, a butcher's son from Wapping, a district of London." The real Tichborne was aboard a ship out of Rio de Janeiro which was lost at sea, apparently with no survivors. His mother refused to believe him dead. "In 1865 she learned through a missing-persons agency that a man claiming to be her son was working as a butcher in Wagga Wagga, Australia; she met and 'acknowledged' him in 1867, but other members of the family asserted that he was an impostor and tried to prove that he was Arthur Orton, who had jumped ship in South America in 1849." The claimant sued to win the baronetcy and inheritance. After 2 trials, he was judged to be an impostor and to have committed perjury. Orton was sent to jail in 1874. "The case received wide publicity and the claimant won a large following among the British public. Released in 1884, he died in poverty in London in 1898."

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