This is an historic day (even more than usual)

In 413 BC, troops from Syracuse (no, not New York - the one on what is now Sicily) defeated the Athenians, which made Syracuse (Siragusa) briefly the center of the Hellenic empire. If you go to Siragusa, eat at the Medusa restaurant on the island of Ortygia. Those folks were really nice to us.

On this date in 1896, British troops battled some overmatched rebels in Zanzibar. The British had installed a territorial governor on the island a few years earlier, but some picky Zanzibarians objected. When they mounted a coup and took down the British-appointed government, the British decided the Zanzibarians had misbehaved badly, so they blasted the bloody hell out of the capital and took back the territory. The battle lasted 45 minutes (although some accounts put it closer to 30 minutes). Zanzibar is now a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania.

Then, on August 27, 1908, Lyndon Baines Johnson was born. Long story short: war cost him his job.

St. Paul's own Dave Frishberg wrote a song about Zanzibar.

Zanzibar was also the name of a funky little bistro in Red Wing, Minnesota. Alas, it closed a few years ago. Such is the march of history.

Natural Disasters, part I

Vesuvius is a volcano near Naples, Italy. As every school child knows, it has been active on and off for many centuries. On this day in 79 AD (that would be 1,940 years ago) Vesuvius erupted. I mean really erupted, like cataclysmically. One prosperous city to the south, Pompeii, was buried under hot ash. Another more modest city, Herculaneum (or Ercolano as the locals call it), west of the summit, nearer the Bay of Naples, was overrun by molten lava.  Parts of both cities have been excavated and are worth visiting.

I prefer Ercolano because it's far less crowded than Pompeii and there are a couple very nice little bars just outside the old city. One can enjoy a cold beer and lovely views of the bay while contemplating the power of nature and other heavy topics.

I once rode the gondola up the side of Vesuvius, but couldn't get to the summit that day because of fog. We've visited the volcanoes in Hawaii and Washington and of course Sicily. We got lost driving from Taormina to Calascibetta. Trying to get back to the highway, we went through Paterno, on the flank of Etna, a city that seemed to have more than its share of dead end streets.

Some of the oldest exposed volcanic rocks on earth can be found along the north shore of Lake Superior. The photo below was taken at the Cascade River gorge near Schroeder, MN. Those are volcanic rocks tens of millions of years old. Up on the bridge, you can spy Daniel, Christy, and Kathy.

There are few volcanoes near New York City, but that didn't deter the New York Dolls.

...and the crowd erupts in applause!

Bye bye, Il Duce. Thank you, cousin Paolo

My mother's birth name is Vigneri. Her roots are in Sicily, with the Vigneri, DeLuca, and Buccheri clans. We visited some relatives in Taormina almost 10 years ago and they pointed out one photo among many family photos on their living room wall. “That’s cousin Paolo. Surely you’ve heard of him?” We hadn’t, so they told us the story. On July 25, 1943 (76 years ago today), cousin Paolo, a captain in the carabinieri, headed a small cadre that arrested Benito Mussolini, on orders from King Vittorio Immanuel. When we got home, we did some research and, sure enough, Paolo Vigneri was the one who took the dictator into custody. Mussolini later escaped in a raid orchestrated by Hitler, but it was too late. The Axis had lost the war and in 1945 Mussolini met a very violent end at the hands of an angry mob.

There is a huge monument to Vittorio Immanuel in Rome. One can climb to the top of it for a commanding view of the city (which we did not realize when we were wandering around the piazza in front of the monument).

 Here's a song that talks about fate and how the dice sometimes seem loaded. Ray Bonneville is from Texas but records for Red House Records in St. Paul.

From the hills of Palermo

Giuseppe Piazzi was born on this day in 1746.

 
Giuseppe built an observatory at Palermo and mapped the positions of more than 7,000 stars. He is also credited with discovering the first asteroid, in 1801, which he named Ceres, after Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture and motherly love. Within the next few years, astronomers discovered three more asteroids: Pallas, Juno, and Vesta. The thousandth asteroid discovered was named Piazzi in his honor. The popular musical "The Light in the Piazzi" wasn't named for him.

With his powerful telescope, he also enjoyed watching bathers frolic on the Mondello beach outside Palermo.

Coincidentally, today is also the anniversary (1969)  of the launch of Apollo 11, a mission that used a big rocket to propel three humans into space, two of whom had a brief picnic on the moon. They didn't even bother to clean up after themselves before coming home.