Word: etna
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...fact, it was the latest and one of the most violent episodes in the current eruptions of 10,970-ft.-high Mount Etna, Europe's largest active volcano...
...Magma. Etna's fireworks have provided Europeans with one of the most exciting spectacles in years, and tourists flooded to the region. There were also more serious visitors: the numerous volcanologists and other earth scientists who are clambering over Etna's slopes, hoping to learn more about the processes at work inside the mountain. Most volcanoes lie near the meeting place of the massive, slow-moving plates that are believed to make up the earth's outer shell. Their crunching movements apparently cause cracks in the earth's crust that enable hot material known as magma...
Although the increased emission of gases from Etna in recent years gave scientists some hint of impending trouble, they are still unable to predict eruptions with any accuracy. As a result, they concentrate on trying to minimize damage once the lava flows. Belgian Volcanologist Haroun Tazieff, whose asbestos-suited sorties into fuming craters round the globe have earned him the sobriquet "The Inferno Detective," has suggested bombing Etna to test methods for diverting the lava flow from villages. The Italians shrugged off the idea. It could raise a Solomonic question: Whose land should be spared and whose should be ruined...
Sicily, that tragic outcropping of volcanic rock that looms from the Mediterranean just two miles off Italy's toe, was the prize. Neither the centuries nor Etna, Sicily's restless mountain, had ever let the island sleep. Eight waves of plunderers had overrun it before the Normans arrived in 1061 to add it to their already extensive holdings in southern Italy. In 31 years of savage combat, the Normans subdued the Saracens, who then controlled Sicily, ushering in an era of nationhood and peace the likes of which the island had never known before-nor was ever...
...scale-thoughtfully set back 1 ½ kg. (roughly 3 Ibs.). ¶ San Domenico Palace in Taormina, Italy. A converted monastery, one of its cloisters 600 years old, the San Domenico has been a hotel since 1896. Part of its appeal is the monkish ambiance, part the views of Mount Etna and the Sicilian seascape. Though rooms are air-conditioned, most guests leave their windows open to enjoy the perfume from orange, lemon and almond trees in the garden beneath. Winter used to be the peak season, and in those days, recalls Night Porter Antonino Cappelli, as few as three titled...