Sydney, Sir Philip: see Sidney, Sir Philip.

Sydney, Algernon: see Sidney, Algernon.

Sydney Mines, town (1991 pop. 7,551), Cape Breton Island, N.S., Canada, on Sydney Harbour. It is a former coal-mining center, coal having been mined in the area from 1784 to 2001. There are steel mills, foundries, and machine shops. The town is the terminus of a transatlantic cable.

Sydney, city (1991 pop. 3,097,956), capital of New South Wales, SE Australia, surrounding Port Jackson inlet on the Pacific Ocean. Sydney is Australia's largest city, chief port, and main cultural and industrial center. The city serves as the center for retail and wholesale trade as well as public administration and finance. Its main exports are wool, wheat, flour, sheepskins, and meat; the chief imports are petroleum, coal, timber, and sugar. Sydney has shipyards, oil refineries, textile mills, brass foundries, and automobile, electronics, and chemical plants. The city was founded in 1788 as the first penal settlement of Australia. Its name was taken from a cave named for Captain Cook's patron, Viscount Sydney. In World War II the city was an Allied military base.

Sydney has experienced tremendous growth since World War II, and there has been extensive urban redevelopment since the 1970s. Two notable bridges cross Port Jackson inlet: the Sydney Harbour Bridge (1932) and the Gladesville Bridge (1964). In the city are the Univ. of Sydney (1850), Macquarie Univ. (1964), and the Univ. of New South Wales (1949). Among its museums are the National Gallery of Art and the Australian Museum (natural history). The dramatic, modernistic Sydney Opera House complex was largely designed by Joern Utzon, the Danish winner of an international competition; it opened in 1974 and is now Sydney's most famous landmark. Centrepoint Tower (1981) is Australia's tallest building. Sydney was the site of the Summer Olympic Games in 2000.

Sydney, city (1991 pop. 26,063), Cape Breton Island, N.S., Canada, on the northeast coast at the head of the South Arm of Sydney Harbour. It is the port and the commercial, trade, and industrial center in a former coal-mining area. The city has steel mills and plants manufacturing wood, aluminum, food products, and chemicals. Sydney was founded (1783) by United Empire Loyalists and was the capital (1784-1820) of Cape Breton prov. St. George's Church (1786) is one of the oldest Anglican churches in Canada.

Smith, Sydney, 1771-1845, English clergyman, writer, and wit, ordained in the Church of England in 1794. In 1798 he went as a tutor to Edinburgh, where he studied medicine, occasionally preached, and with Jeffrey and others founded (1802) the Edinburgh Review. His brilliant contributions were a strong factor in the periodical's success. Moving to London in 1803, Smith lectured on moral philosophy at the Royal Institution and became a well-known figure in literary society. His "Peter Plymley" letters (published anonymously in 1807-8) in defense of Catholic Emancipation were the first of his many appeals for religious toleration. In 1809 he moved to Yorkshire, where he had been given a living of £500 a year. There he also acted as magistrate and village doctor. He went to a parish in Somerset in 1829; in 1831 he was given a residentiary canonry at St. Paul's. Smith's religion was strong and of a practical nature. A lover of justice and truth, he was a life-long defender of the oppressed. His failure to rise higher in the church is attributed to his wide reputation as a master of wit and satire. He is placed among the premier English wits and has been compared to Swift and to Voltaire.

Porter, William Sydney: see O. Henry.

Olivier, Sydney Haldane Olivier, 1st Baron, 1859-1943, British colonial administrator. Olivier was one of the first members of the Fabian Society, contributing to the famous Fabian Essays (1889). He was colonial secretary in Jamaica from 1899 to 1904 and later governor of the island (1907-13). In 1924 he was secretary of state for India during Ramsay MacDonald's brief Labour government and was raised to the peerage. A number of his works deal with colonial questions, among them White Capital and Coloured Labour (1906, rev. ed. 1927) and The Anatomy of African Misery (1927).

North Sydney, town (1991 pop. 7,260), NE Cape Breton Island, N.S., Canada, on the north shore of Sydney Harbour. It was the coal-shipping port for the nearby Sydney Mines and a winter base for the Cape Breton fisheries. There is ferry service to Newfoundland.

Dobell, Sydney Thompson, 1824-74, English poet. He is best known for the melodramatic, extravagantly emotional poem Balder (1853). In 1855 he published jointly with Alexander Smith (1830-67) some sonnets on the Crimean War.

orig. William Sydney Porter

(born Sept. 11, 1862, Greensboro, N.C., U.S.—died June 5, 1910, New York, N.Y.) U.S. short-story writer. He wrote for newspapers and later worked as a bank teller in Texas, where he was convicted of embezzlement; he began writing stories in prison as O. Henry. He moved to New York, where his tales romanticizing the commonplace, particularly the life of ordinary New Yorkers, and often using coincidence and surprise endings, became highly popular. His collections include Cabbages and Kings (1904); The Four Million (1906), including “The Gift of the Magi”; The Trimmed Lamp (1907), including “The Last Leaf”; and Whirligigs (1910), including “The Ransom of Red Chief.”

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City (pop., 2006: 4,119,191), capital of New South Wales, Australia. Located on Australia's southeastern coast, it is the oldest and largest city in Australia and a major commercial and manufacturing centre. It was founded in 1788 as a penal colony (see Botany Bay) and quickly became a major trading centre. It is built on low hills surrounding one of the world's finest natural harbours, which supports extensive port facilities. It is dominated by Sydney Harbour Bridge, one of the biggest single-span bridges in the world, and the Sydney Opera House. The city is widely known for its water sports, recreational facilities, and cultural life. It is the site of the Universities of Sydney (1850) and New South Wales (1949) and Macquarie University (1964). Sydney was the host of the 2000 Summer Olympic Games.

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