Word: etna
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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History has recorded much greater catastrophes. Etna overflowed and 20,000 Sicilians died. An Indonesian crater blew its top, washed the sea over 36,000 Javanese and Sumatrans. Beneath Tokyo Bay, the earth shifted and two great cities were laid in ruins...
...Etna. In Sicily, Mt. Etna was erupting again. A wide stream of lava creeping down its 10,741-ft. slope had cut a mountain highway, partially filled a reservoir, and frightened the villagers of Cisterna from their homes...
...happened before. Mt. Etna was a familiar story to Julius Caesar and Pericles. Even before Homer's day, Sicilians were fleeing from their huts pursued by Etna's lava. Geologists estimate that Etna broke through the earth's crust in the middle Pleistocene period, some 300,000 years...
...time the Greeks began telling their myths, Etna was deeply encrusted with legend. Somewhere under the sea, the lame god Vulcan (for whom volcanoes are named) had his workshop. It was said that the smoke and flame from his forge, where he devised various contraptions to annoy his estranged mother (Juno) and his wife (Venus), roared up through Etna's crater...
Although the towns on Vesuvius clustered nearer the cone than those on Etna, none was seriously damaged by the several threatening flows, but the funicular railway on the slope was completely overwhelmed and ashes were reported to have fallen in Albania, 300 miles away