Word: messina
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...these are not Biddle's favorites, and good as they are, they do not have the impact of the third part of the show. This consists of Biddle's Goyaesque drawings of the mummies buried in the crypt of a Capuchin church south of Messina in Sicily. Once upon a time, the Capuchins were famous for having brought back from the Holy Land sacred earth; and in the 17th century, their cemeteries were where the rich and the mighty were buried. The bodies are there today, preserved by some forgotten process, still wearing velvet britches and silver buckles...
...Strait of Messina, a turbulent, six-mile-wide ribbon of water that separates Sicily from the toe of Italy, has never been a popular place for water sports. It was the home of Scylla and Charybdis, the mythological monsters that wrecked ships and snatched unsuspecting seamen from their decks. And if sailors beware, swimmers positively shun the place. Only the very rash-or the very bold-venture into its treacherous currents...
...Sicily. The going was tougher now; her right arm developed a cramp; she swallowed sea water and vomited. Only her legs kept her going. At last, after 5 hrs. and 22 min. in the water, Mary Revell staggered ashore at Grotta, Sicily-the first person ever to swim the Messina Strait both ways. She blew a kiss to the cheering crowd on the beach, then collapsed...
Along the Grand Canal in Venice, a huge, brightly lit red-and-white shield of the Christian Democratic Party gleams in the night; sprouting from Rome's Janiculum Hill, overlooking the Vatican, is the red-white-green flame of the tiny, powerless Fascists. From Messina to Milan last week, wide piazzas and narrow alleyways sprouted in riotous campaign colors, and echoed with the loudspeaker slogans of scudding little Fiat 600s, as Italy's 34,-300,000 voters prepared to go to the polls for the first national election in five years...
...former U.S. Army film director submarined along 15 feet beneath the surface, accompanied by a launch and encased in a steel cage that kept the aqualunged swimmer from drifting off course. Said the feisty Floridian, who prepped for his 22-mile swim by traversing the Straits of Messina's Scylla and Charybdis: "I've given up two years of my life. I'm broke...