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27 unusual facts about Sicily


1943 in organized crime

Popular myth has it that a US Army airplane had flown over Vizzini’s home town Villalba on the day of the invasion and dropped a yellow silk handkerchief marked with a black L (indicating Luciano).

Aditya Bhattacharya

Presently he is married to an Italian, Maria Giovanna and divides his time between Sicily and Mumbai.

Angelo Bruno

Born in Villalba, Province of Caltanissetta, Sicily, Bruno emigrated to the United States in his teens and settled in Philadelphia.

Antonio Saverio De Luca

Born Bronte, Sicily, he was ordained on 10 February 1839, aged 33, as Priest of Monreale, Italy.

Bronte House

Lowe completed the construction of the house and its gardens and named it after Lord Nelson, who was known as the Duke of Bronte (a town in Sicily).

Carmelina Moscato

Born in Mississauga, Ontario to Sicilian-born parents, Moscato began playing soccer at the age of four when she started playing for Dixie SC.

Carmine Falcone

Lastly, his elder son Mario's deportation to Sicily, physical appearance and desire to redeem and legitimize the Falcone family name are all traits shared with Michael Corleone.

Dago Creek

The name derives from the numerous Sicilian fishermen who would anchor in the protected waters during closed fishing periods and collectively celebrate their heritage with plenty of food and wine.

Dormouse

During the Pleistocene, giant dormice the size of large rats, such as Leithia melitensis, lived on the islands of Malta and Sicily.

Franciscan Order in modern times

They form less than a score of houses—two in Rome, five in Sicily, seven in Austria, and two in the United States.

Frank Interlandi

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Interlandi was a self-described "Sicilian."

Italian submarine Enrico Toti

1- patrol the mediterranean sea with special attention to the Channel of Sicily during the Cold War; for this reason their main base was the Military Arsenal of Augusta (Syracuse);

Joe Culmone

Joe Culmone was born in Delia, Sicily, where he lived in a farming area and learned to ride horses.

Kewullay Conteh

After two seasons for Venezia, one in Serie B and one in Serie A, Conteh, together with many other team players, left Venezia for Palermo in 2002 after chairman Maurizio Zamparini bought the Sicilian team.

Key lime

Its apparent path of introduction was through the Middle East to North Africa, then to Sicily and Andalucia and via Spanish explorers to the West Indies, including the Florida Keys.

Kirk Haston

He and his wife Kasey soon returned from Sicily to Middle Tennessee when he was waived due to a right knee injury prior to the start of the season.

Motobomba

The FFF was subsequently used in attacks against invasion shipping at Bône in Algeria on April 16, 1943 and at Syracuse during the Allied invasion of Sicily later that year.

Nino Bixio

At Bronte, on August 4, 1860, the recovered Bixio bloodily repressed one of these revolts with two battalions of Redshirts.

Pierre de Brézé

He had made his name in the English wars when in 1433 he joined with Yolande, queen of Sicily, the constable Richmond and others, in chasing from power Charles VII's minister La Trémoille.

Rock Partridge

While it generally manages to hold its own, the status of the Sicilian population may be more precarious and certainly deserves attention (Randi 2006).

Roman mole

(It was last been recorded on Sicily in 1885. There is also an unconfirmed report about an isolated subpopulation in the Var region of southern France.)

Sinagra, Western Australia

The City of Wanneroo established a sister city relationship with Sinagra, Sicily as a large number of families migrated from there to make a new home in Wanneroo.

SS Empire Bairn

Empire Bairn was a member of Convoy NV 7 which sailed from Naples, Italy on 3 November 1943 and arrived at Augusta, Italy on 5 November.

SS Empire Cameron

Empire Cameron was on a voyage from Alexandria, Egypt, joining the convoy at Oran and leaving at her destination of Augusta, Italy.

Tortorici

Located in the Nebrodi regional park, Tortorici borders the following municipalities: Bronte, Castell'Umberto, Floresta, Galati Mamertino, Longi, Randazzo, San Salvatore di Fitalia, Sinagra, Ucria.

Uzeda

Uzeda is a Sicilian math rock group founded in 1987, consisting of lead singer Giovanna Cacciola, guitarists Agostino Tilotta and Giovanni Nicosia, bassist Raffaele Gulisano and drummer Davide Oliveri.

Via Valeria

A second Via Valeria, the Via Valeria of Sicily, connected Messina and Siracusa.


1983 in organized crime

Sicilian mafioso Salvatore Contorno begins anonymously writing letters to the police with information on the mafia.

2005–06 Serie C2

Division C2/A was mainly composed by Northern Italy and Sardinian teams, whereas division C2/B included North-Central and Central Italy teams, with the exception of two teams from Campania (Benevento and Cavese), and division C2/C was represented by teams hailing from Central-Southern Italy and Sicily.

8th Airlift Squadron

The history of the 8th includes airborne assaults on Sicily and Southern France, support of partisans in Northern Italy and the Balkans, and transportation of personnel and supplies in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations, during World War II.

Álvaro de Bazán, 2nd Marquis of Santa Cruz

The other male of the family, Fernando, became Chancellor, Rector, of the University of Salamanca, and later, after ecclesiastical jobs at Seville and Cordoba, Archbishop of Palermo, Sicily, Italy .

Antonio del Duca

Antonio del Duca or Lo Duca (Cefalù 1491 — Rome 1564) was the Sicilian friar whose persistent campaign for an official veneration of the "Seven Angelic Princes" was partly answered in the dedication of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri, constructed to the orders of Pope Pius IV within the ruins of the Baths of Diocletian.

Autonomy South

In December 2009 Raffaele Lombardo, leader of MpA and President of Sicily, formed his third cabinet including ministers from his MpA party, the PdL–Sicily and the newly formed regional section of Alliance for Italy, plus some independents, including one who was close to the opposition Democratic Party (PD).

Battle of Panormus

Towards the end of 252 BC or early 251 BC, Carthage had put down a Libyan revolt in Africa and sent an army under the command of Hasdrubal, son of Hanno the Great, to Sicily.

CAID

Qaid (also caid or kaid), various forms of responsible official found in places ranging from the Kingdom of Sicily to rural North Africa

Charles II of Naples

He went to Rieti, where the new Pope Nicholas IV immediately absolved him from all the conditions he had sworn to observe, crowned him King of Sicily in 1289, and excommunicated King Alfonso III of Aragon.

Corsican hare

It is common and widespread on Sicily where it occurs from sea-level up to 2400 metres on Mount Etna.

David ben Judah Messer Leon

However, in 1495 the city fell to the French under Charles VIII, and he fled east to the Ottoman Empire to escape the violent pogroms that ensued, spending time in Istanbul before moving sometime between 1498 and 1504 to teach Torah in Salonica, at that time in a state of intellectual vibrancy due to the settlement there of many Sephardi exiles forced to leave after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, Sicily in 1493, and Portugal in 1496.

Deinomenes

The historian Herodotus writes that his ancestors came from the island of Telos in the Aegean Sea and were the founders of the city of Gela in southern Sicily.

Dusán Sžetzetižicž

Dusán Sžetzetižicž (born 8 December 1990 in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina), is a Bosnian football (soccer) player who currently plays in Italy for Sicilian club A.S.D. Castiglione.

Dwarf elephant

Fossil remains of dwarf elephants have been found on the Mediterranean islands of Cyprus, Malta (at Ghar Dalam), Crete (in Nomos Chanion at Vamos, Stylos and in a now under water cave on the coast), Sicily, Sardinia, the Cyclades Islands and the Dodecanese Islands.

Edward Rooker

Among Rooker's early works are a view on the Thames from Somerset House (1750), and a view of Vauxhall Gardens (1751), both after Canaletto; a view of the Parthenon for Dalton's 'Views of Sicily and Greece' (1751), and a section of St. Paul's Cathedral, decorated according to the

Emilio Diena

In addition to writing numerous articles in philatelic journals, Diena wrote in great detail on stamps of Modena, Romagna, Sicily, Parma, and Naples during the 1920s and 1930s.

Euphemia of Sicily

Euphemia of Sicily (1330–1359) was regent of Sicily from 1355 until 1357 during the minority of her brother, King Frederick the Simple.

Ferdinando d' Aragona y Guardato, 1st Duke of Montalto

1.2.1) Maria d'Aragona y de Luna, 5th Duchesa of Montalto; she married, 1590, Sicilian Francesco de Moncada y de Luna, 3rd Prince di Paternò, deceased 1595.

Filarete of Calabria

Saint Filarete of Calabria (also the gardener) (c. 10201070) he was born in Palermo in 1020, into a family of Calabrian origin deported to Sicily by the Saracens, and subsequently released.

Francesco Brancati

Francesco Brancati (1607 in Sicily – 1671 in China) was an Italian Jesuit missionary.

Gigi D'Amico

In 1995 he began a sound engineer course at Centro Professione Musica (CPM), while working as a sound engineer touring Sicily in support of several international artists, including Tom Harrell, Tonino Horta, Rickie Lee Jones, Gloria Gaynor, Temptation, Blonde Redhead, Warmers, and Uzeda.

Giuseppe Castellano

He became convinced that the Mafia was the strongest political and social force on Sicily to be reckoned with.

History of Punic-era Tunisia: chronology

In 480 BC (concurrent with Persia's invasion of Greece), Mago's grandson Hamilcar landed a large army in Sicily in order to confront Syracuse (a colony of Corinth) on the island's eastern coast; yet the Greeks decisivelly prevailed at the Battle of Himera.

Joe C. Davis, Jr.

During the Second World War, he joined the United States Navy and served as a Lieutenant, participating in the invasions of Sicily, Salerno and Normandy.

Kempinski Hotel Giardino di Costanza

The Resort stands among rows of vineyards and olive groves in the western side of Sicily, near Mazara del Vallo, in the province of Trapani.

Luciano Leggio

There were many suspicions that corrupt figures in authority had helped Leggio avoid justice, with plenty of suspicion falling on the General Attorney of Sicily, Pietro Scaglione; he was shot dead in 1971.

Margaret of Sicily

Margaret of Sicily (also called Margaret of Hohenstaufen or Margaret of Germany) (1 December 1241, in Foggia – 8 August 1270, in Frankfurt-am-Main), was a Princess of Sicily and Germany, and a member of the House of Hohenstaufen.

Metapontum

At the time of the Athenian expedition to Sicily, 415 BCE, the Metapontines at first, like the other states of Magna Graecia, endeavoured to maintain a strict neutrality; but in the following year were induced to enter into an alliance with Athens, and furnish a small auxiliary force to the armament under Demosthenes and Eurymedon.

Morgantina treasure

The Morgantina treasure is a set of 16 pieces of Greek silverware with details in gold dating from the third century BC, which was illegally excavated from Morgantina, an Ancient Greek city in Sicily, near modern Aidone.

Muslim conquest of Sicily

The new emir sent fresh troops to Sicily, where the Muslims regained the upper hand after Mousele's departure: in 839–840, the Muslims reduced the fortresses of Corleone, Platani, Caltabellotta, and possibly also Marineo, Geraci and other forts, and in 841, they raided from Enna as far as Grotte.

Necropolis of Pantalica

Pantalica is located on a limestone promontory surrounded by a deep gorge formed by the Anapo and Calcinara rivers between the towns of Ferla and Sortino in south-eastern Sicily.

Niccolò Turrisi Colonna

Niccolò Turrisi Colonna (August 10, 1817 - May 13, 1889), baron of Buonvicino, was a Sicilian politician from Palermo.

Otto Kerner, Jr.

He was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for merit and the Soldier's Medal for rescuing a drowning soldier off the coast of Sicily.

Peter of Blois

Peter went with Stephen du Perche and Walter of the Mill to Sicily in 1166 and there became the tutor to King William II of Sicily in 1167.

Reggiane Re.2001

MM.7210, hit during the dogfight, made an emergency landing at Comiso, in Sicily.

Richard J. Burke

He was married on October 19, 1940 to Josephina Battaglia the daughter of Carmelo Battaglia of Monte Maggiore Belsito, Palermo, Sicily, and Antonia Fasulo of Burgio, Agrigento, Sicily.

Riserva naturale integrale Saline di Trapani e Paceco

Riserva naturale integrale Saline di Trapani e Paceco is a nature reserve in the Province of Trapani between the municipalities Marsala, Trapani, and Paceco at the west coast of Sicily.

Salvatore Contorno

Salvatore "Totuccio" Contorno (born May 28, 1946) is a former member of the Sicilian Mafia who turned into a state witness against Cosa Nostra in October 1984, following the example of Tommaso Buscetta.

Salvatore Lima

Lima arranged an unusually lucrative concession to collect taxes in Sicily to Antonio Salvo and Ignazio Salvo, two wealthy mafia-cousins from the town of Salemi in the province of Trapani, in exchange for their loyalty to Salvo Lima and the Andreotti faction of the DC.

Seguenzia monocingulata

It was originally described by Seguenza in fossil form during the Miocene in Calabria and during the Pliocene in Sicily.

Southern Italy

The peninsular territories, contemporaneously called Kingdom of Sicily, but called Kingdom of Naples by modern scholarship, went to Charles II of the House of Anjou, who had likewise been ruling it.

The del Carreto Barons of Racalmuto

The del Carreto Barons of Racalmuto were the descendents of Constanzia di Chiaramonte (1290 - 1350) the heiress and daughter of Federico di Chiaramonte, Lord of Racalmuto a member of the prominent Sicilian Chiaramonte family.

The Sicilian

He is a very close personal friend of the Guiliano family, a mentor for Turi, and a man who caters to the Friends of the Friends (the word Mafia is rarely spoken in Sicily).

Walter of the Mill

He was long thought to be an Englishman who came to Sicily with Peter of Blois and Stephen du Perche at the direction of Rotrou, Archbishop of Rouen, cousin of Queen Margaret of Navarre, originally as a tutor to the royal children of William I of Sicily and Margaret.