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Mount Etna
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synonyms: Mongibello ???
tags: [geography]
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Definition:an active stratovolcano on the east coast of Sicily, Italy, in the Metropolitan City of Catania, between the cities of Messina and Catania. It lies above the convergent plate margin between the African Plate and the Eurasian Plate. It is the highest active volcano in Europe outside the Caucasus.[It] is one of the world’s most active volcanoes and is in an almost constant state of activity. The fertile volcanic soils support extensive agriculture, with vineyards and orchards spread across the lower slopes of the mountain and the broad Plain of Catania to the south.[...]Mediaevalist Roger Sherman Loomis quotes passages from the works of Gervase of Tilbury and Caesarius of Heisterbach (dating from the late twelfth century) featuring accounts of Arthur's returning of a lost horse which had strayed into his subterranean kingdom beneath Etna. Caesarius quotes as his authority for the story a certain canon Godescalcus of Bonn, who considered it a matter of historic fact of the time of Emperor Henry's conquest of Sicily circa 1194.text from Wikipedia, licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike
map: by OpenStreetMap®, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 licensephoto: By BenAveling - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3350813
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Uses:
Yossarian pulled back from Orr adamantly, gazing with some concern and bewilderment at Mt. Etna instead of Mt. Vesuvius and wondering what they were doing in Sicily instead of Naples
Joseph Heller. Catch-22 (1961)
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"Why, elevate your own servants, for a specimen," said Alfred, with a half-scornful smile.
"You might as well set Mount Ætna on them flat, and tell them to stand up under it, as tell me to elevate my servants under all the superincumbent mass of society upon them. One man can do nothing, against the whole action of a community. Education, to do anything, must be a state education; or there must be enough agreed in it to make a current."
Harriet Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom's Cabin
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POLYPHEMUS, in Homeric legend a son of Neptune, the most celebrated of the Cyclops, a huge monster with one eye, who dwelt in Sicily in a cave near Ætna, and whose eye, after making him drunk, Ulysses burnt out, lest he should circumvent him and devour him, as he had done some of his companions.
Rev. James Wood. The Nuttall Encyclopaedia (1907)
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