X-Nico

26 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.

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.

Double clarinet

In Italy, the Sicilian zampogna bagpipe, also called a ciaramedda, is additionally referred to as a "doppio clarinetto" (double clarinet), because of its two equal length single reed chanters.

Frank Interlandi

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

Grevillea alpina

In 2003, it was reported that the fungal disease Phytophthora palmivora had been detected in plant nurseries in Sicily, leading to root rot and death of potted Grevillea cultivars.

Joe Culmone

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

Kamarina

Kamarina, Sicily, an ancient city of Sicily, founded by Syracuse in 599 BC

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.

Lancia 3 RO

In North Africa and Sicily with the top of the cab cut away and lower sideboards the Lancia 3 Ro became well suited for desert warfare serving as a self-propelled gun porting the Cannone da 90/53 as well as the 100/17 howitzer.

Lucy Tyler-Sharman

In 1994 she won an Australian Institute of Sport scholarship as a sprinter and represented Australia in the World Championships in Sicily finishing fourth.

Ludwig Heilmann

His battalion fought near Francoforte and Centuripe near Regalbuto, Bronte and Maletto.

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.

Roman Catholic Diocese of Patti

Count Ruggiero founded at Patti a Benedictine abbey, and in 1131 the antipope Anacletus II made Patti an episcopal see, uniting it with the Abbey of Lipari.

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 Candida

Empire Candida joined the convoy at Algiers and left it at Augusta, Italy.

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.

Veit Hanns Schnorr von Carolsfeld

He was a friend of the poet Johann Gottfried Seume, whom he set out to accompany in 1801 on a journey to Syracuse, Sicily, but separated from him after travelling no further than Vienna.

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.

Agrippina of Mineo

Her body was said to have been taken to Mineo, Sicily, by three devout Christian women named Bassa, Paula, and Agathonice (Agatonica).

Ancient Greek sculpture

The territories of ancient Greece, except for Sicily and southern Italy, contained abundant supplies of fine marble, with Pentelic and Parian marble the most highly prized, along with that from modern Prilep in Macedonia, and various sources in modern Turkey.

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.

Battle of Calatafimi

Francesco Crispi, among others, landed before the Mille on Sicily to raise support among the locals for the Mille.

Benedict T. Viviano

In a city of French foundation but mainly German population with a strong African American minority, his family belonged to the city's community of Italian people, itself divided into Lombards and Sicilians.

Besana

Initially with almonds from Puglia and Sicily region (Italy) and in the early 60’s with Brazil nuts, Pecan nuts, dried fruit, seeds, pistachios, pine kernels, Macadamia nuts and finally the snack lines.

Calliostoma conulus

This marine species occurs in European waters, off Spain and Portugal and in the Mediterranean Sea off Greece and Sicily; in the Atlantic Ocean off the Canary Islands, Madeira and the Azores.

Ċensu Tabone

His paternal grandmother, Giuseppina De Gaetani, had settled in Valletta in the mid-19th century from Riposto, Sicily.

Cuccìa

Cuccìa is a traditional, primarily Sicilian dish containing boiled wheatberries and sugar, which is eaten on December 13, the feast day of Saint Lucy, the patron saint of Siracusa (Syracuse).

Danilo Dolci

He was helped out from time to time, predominantly by English families whose fortunes had been made with the sweet Marsala wine manufactured in 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.

Enna

In the time of Agathocles we find Enna for a time subject to that tyrant, but when the Agrigentines under Xenodicus began to proclaim the restoration of the other cities of Sicily to freedom, the Ennaeans were the first to join their standard, and opened their gates to Xenodicus, 309 BC.

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.

Filarete of Calabria

Saint Filarete of Calabria (also the gardener) (c. 1020 – 1070) 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 Notarbartolo di Sciara

Honorary citizenship of the town of Sciara, in Sicily, founded in 1670 by Filippo Notarbartolo (the grandfather of the great-grandfather of Giuseppe’s great-grandfather), received from the Mayor of Sciara on 12 December 1999.

Hauteville-la-Guichard

It is famous as the original stronghold of the Hauteville family who made their fortunes in southern Italy and Sicily as the Norman kings of Sicily, beginning with the modest Norman seigneur Tancred of Hauteville, who is commemorated by a simple exhibit housed in the former presbytère.

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.

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Thus, when the Greeks under Agathocles (361-289) of Sicily landed at Cape Bon and threatened Carthage (in 310), there were Berbers under Ailymas who went over to the invading Greeks.

History of Thessaloniki

However, after the death of the emperor Manuel I Komnenos in 1180, the fortunes of the Byzantine Empire began to decline and in 1185, Norman rulers of Sicily, under the leadership of Count Baldwin and Riccardo d'Acerra, attacked and occupied the city, resulting in considerable destruction.

Ibn Hamdis

"Abd, al-Jabbar Ibn Hamdis left his native Sicily in 1078 at the age of twenty-four, and for the rest of his long life wandered in al-Andalus and North Africa as a court poet, singing the praises of his Arab hosts and lamenting the loss of his home and the demise of Muslim culture in the wake of the Norman invasion of Sicily and the Reconquista in Spain." (Gabriel Levin, To These Dark Steps, 2012, p.77)

Illyrius

The children of Polyphemus all migrated from Sicily and ruled over the peoples named after them, the Celts, the Illyrians, and the Galatians.

James II of Aragon

Napoleón (b. Sicily, 1288 – m. 1338), Lord of Joyosa Guarda (Gioiosaguardia) and Acquafredda (in Sardinia); married a daughter of a Majorcan named Guillermo Robert.

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.

Limits of the Five Patriarchates

Christians ever crowd until Ravenna, Lombardy, and Thessalonika, Slavic, and Scythians, and Avars until Danube river, the ecclesiastical border, and Sardinia, Megara, Carthage, and part of Balearic Islands, and part of Sicily and Calabria, where the winds blow nasty, from the north, from the south, from the west-south, and from the east-south.

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.

Military of ancient Carthage

Beginning with the reign of King Hanno the Navigator in 480 BC, Carthage began regularly employing Iberian infantry and Balearic slingers to support Carthaginian spearmen in Sicily, a practice which would continue until the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC.

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.

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.

Reggiane Re.2001

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

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Finally, on 4 May 1942 it moved to Caltagirone in Sicily, with 18 Reggiane under command of Colonnello Bajlon.

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.

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).

Sebastián Raval

In Sicily, he again challenged a musician, Achille Falcone, to a contest; it was first decided in Falcone's favour but, after some appeals, in Raval's.

Selinunte

The Halycus, which was established as the eastern boundary of the Carthaginian dominion in Sicily by the treaty of 383 BCE, seems to have generally continued to be so recognized, notwithstanding temporary interruptions; and was again fixed as their limit by the treaty with Agathocles in 314 BCE.

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.

Tancred, King of Sicily

At Gravina (June 1192) he reinforced his papal support by surrendering the royal legateship over Sicily.

The Ruby in her Navel

Writing in the Guardian, John Julius Norwich said that the novel made him feel what it felt like to live, work and travel in the Sicily of that time.

Treaty of Benevento

One of the chief authors of the treaty as it stands was a young notary named Matthew of Ajello, later of much fame in Sicily.

Villafranca Tirrena

In fact it offers a wide artistic and architectonic wealth and the possibility to effect trekking routes on the Peloritani or trips towards other towns of Eastern Sicily: Taormina, Catania, Etna, Siracusa, Eolie Isles, Messina, Tindari and Nebrodi Park.

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.

William Steger

He flew fifty-six combat missions piloting British Spitfire aircraft in the Tunisian, Sicilian, and Italian campaigns.