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The Sicilian revolution of Independence of 1848 occurred in a year replete with revolutions and popular revolts. The revolution of that year is significant because it was one of the first of numerous ones to occur that year; this one resulted in an independent state surviving for 16 months; the constitution was quite advanced for its time; and was a curtain raiser to the end of the Bourbon kingdom.

The seeds of the revolution 1848 were sown prior to the Congress of Vienna in 1812. Post Congress of Vienna, Ferdinand IV of Naples immediately abolished the constitution upon returning the royal court to Naples. The 1848 revolution was substantially organized from, and centered in, Palermo. The popular nature of the revolt is evident in the fact that posters and notices were being handed out in a full three days before the substantive acts of the revolution occurred.

The Sicilian parliament was never able to control the well fortified city of Messina, which ultimately would be used to take back the island by force. It was the city of Messina that held out the longest against Garibaldi’s attack on the island in 1860. Sicily survived as a quasi-independent state for 16 months, with the Bourbon army taking back full control of the island by force.

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The Battle of Caporetto took place near the present day town of Kobarid, on the Austro-Italian front of World War I. Austro-Hungarian forces, reinforced by German units, were able to break into the Italian front line and rout the Italian army, which had practically no mobile reserves.

The battle was a demonstration of the effectiveness of the use of stormtroopers and the infiltration tactics developed in part by Oskar von Hutier. Italian losses were massive: 11,000 were killed, 20,000 wounded and 275,000 were taken prisoner. Also, 2,500 guns were captured by the Austrians. Austro-Hungarian and German forces advanced more than 100 km in the direction of Venice, but they were not able to cross the Piave River, where the Italians established a new defensive line.

This line was held during the subsequent Battle of the Piave River and later served as a springboard for the Battle of Vittorio Veneto. The battle led to the conference at Rapallo and the creation of the Supreme War Council, with the aim of improving Allied military co-operation and developing a unified strategy. The commander in charge of the Italian forces was forced to resign after the defeat.

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The Battle of Zama was fought around October 19, 202 BC and marked the final and decisive end of the Second Punic War. A Roman army led by Scipio Africanus defeated a Carthaginian force led by Hannibal. Soon after this defeat on their home ground, the Carthaginian senate sued for peace, ending the 17-year war.

Despite nearly two years of constant victories, much of it on Italian soil, the Carthaginian commander Hannibal was still in Italy, although confined to the south of the peninsula. Scipio led an army of Roman legionnaires, with Hannibal leading an army composed of local citizens and veterans from his Italian campaigns. Hannibal’s army consisted of 50,000 infantry, 80 war elephants, and 4,000 cavalry, while Scipio had a total of 34,000 infantry and 8,700 cavalry. Putting his inexperienced cavalry on the flanks, Hannibal aligned his troops in three straight lines behind 80 war elephants.

Hannibal hoped that the combination of war elephants and the depth of the first two lines would weaken and disorganize the Roman advance. He would then complete a victory with his reserves in the third line and overlap Scipio’s lines. Though this formation was indeed well-conceived, it failed to produce a Carthaginian victory. In total, as many as 20,000 men of Hannibal’s army were killed in Zama, while 11,000 were wounded. The Romans lost as few as 1,500 dead and 5,000 wounded.

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Galileo Galilei was a Tuscan physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the scientific revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations, and support for Copernicanism. Galileo has been called the “father of modern observational astronomy,” the “father of modern physics,” the “father of science,” and the “Father of Modern Science.”

His contributions to observational astronomy include the telescopic confirmation of the phases of Venus, the discovery of the four largest satellites of Jupiter, named the Galilean moons in his honor, and the observation and analysis of sunspots. Based only on uncertain descriptions of the telescope, invented in the Netherlands in 1608, Galileo, in that same year, made a telescope with about 3x magnification, and later made others with up to about 32x magnification. With this improved device, he could see magnified, upright images on the Earth – it was what is known as a terrestrial telescope, or spyglass.

Galileo could also use it to observe the sky and for a time he was one of very few who could construct telescopes good enough for that purpose. On August 25, 1609, he demonstrated his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers. His work on the device made for a profitable sideline with merchants who found it useful for their shipping businesses and trading issues.

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The Leaning Tower of Pisa is the campanile, or freestanding bell tower of the cathedral of the Italian city of Pisa. Although, intended to stand vertically, the tower began leaning to the southeast soon after the onset of construction in 1173 due to a poorly laid foundation and loose substrate that has allowed the foundation to shift direction. Its weight is estimated at 14,500 tons and has 296 or 294 steps.

The Tower of Pisa was a work of art, performed in three stages over a period of about 177 years. Construction of the first floor of the white marble campanile began on August 9, 1173, a period of military success and prosperity. The first floor is surrounded by pillars with classical capitals, leaning against blind arches. The tower began to sink after construction progressed to the third floor in 1778. This was due to a mere three-meter foundation, set in weak, unstable subsoil. This means the design was flawed from the beginning.

Construction was subsequently halted for almost a century because the Pisans were almost continually engaged in battles with Genoa, Lucca and Florence. This allowed time for the underlying soil to settle. Otherwise, the tower would almost certainly have toppled. In 1272, construction resumed and in an effort to compensate for the tilt, engineers built higher floors with one side taller than the other. This made the tower begin to lean in the other direction.

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15 Eunomia is a very large asteroid in the inner main asteroid belt. It is the largest of the stony asteroids, and somewhere between the 8^th to the 12^th largest Main Belt asteroid overall. It is also the largest member of the Eunomia family of asteroids.

Eunomia was discovered by Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis on July 29, 1851, and named after one of the Horae, a personification of order and law in Greek mythology. As the largest S-type asteroid, Eunomia has attracted a moderate amount of scientific attention. It contains slightly over one percent of the mass of the entire main belt. Eunomia appears to be an elongated but fairly regularly shaped body, with what appears to be four sides of differing curvature.

Its surface is composed of silicates and some nickel-iron and is quite bright. Its composition indicates that the parent body was likely subject to magmatic processes, and became at least partially differentiated under the influence of internal heating in the early period of the Solar System. The largest remaining fragment should have about 70% of the mass of the parent body.

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The Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls is one of four churches considered to be the great ancient basilicas of Rome. Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo, named in 2005, is the current archpriest of this basilica. The basilica was founded by the Roman Emperor Constantine I over what was believed to be the burial place of Saint Paul, where it was said, that after the Apostle’s execution, his followers erected a memorial over his grave.

In 386, began the erection of a much larger basilica with a nave and four aisles with a transept. In the 5^th century, it was even larger than the Old St. Peter’s Basilica. The basilica was damaged during the Saracen invasion in the 9^th century and as a result Pope John VIII fortified it and the monastery.

On July 15, 1823, a fire started through the negligence of a workman who was replacing the lead of the roof, resulting in the almost total destruction of the basilica. The whole world contributed to its reconstruction with contributions from Egypt and Russia. The basilica was reopened in 1840.

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The Seveso Disaster was an industrial accident that occurred on July 10, 1976 in a small chemical manufacturing plant approximately 25 km north of Milan in the Lombardy region in Italy. It resulted in the highest known exposure to TCDD in residential populations which gave rise to numerous scientific studies and standardized industrial safety regulations.

The Seveso Disaster was so named because Seveso was the community most affected. It is a small town with the population of 17,000 in 1976. Other affected communities were Meda, Desio, Cesano, Maderno, and, to a lesser extent, Barlassina and Bovisio-Masciago. The industrial plant was built many years ago and the local population did not perceive it as a potential source of danger.

Within days a total of 3,300 animals were found dead, mostly poultry and rabbits. Emergency slaughtering commenced to prevent TCDD from entering the food chain. By 1978, 80,000 animals had been slaughtered. 1,600 people of all ages had been examined and 447 were found to suffer from skin lesions or chloracne.

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