Etna
Etna names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below. 1 of them is described by more than one encyclopedia.
Etna or Aetna, Mount
Described by 2 of the 6 encyclopedias.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
or Aetna, Mount, a volcano situated on the shore of the island of Sicily. It is the largest active volcano in Europe. It is a huge mountain mass rising directly from the coast to a height of 10,835 feet,--a half higher than Mt. Washington. A large number of auxiliary craters are situated like bubbles around the upper part of the cone. The base of the mountain is about thirty miles in diameter. Like other volcanic soils, the slopes are fertile, and are occupied by villages whose inhabitants are engaged in the cultivation of figs, dates, oranges, and olives. A higher belt produces the chestnut, birch, beech, and pine. Not less than 400 eruptions have been recorded, several of them destructive to human life. In 1169, 15,000 persons are said to have been buried beneath the streams of lava. In 1669, 10,000; in 1693, 60,000 lives were lost. In 1755, the year of the Lisbon earthquake, another destructive eruption took place. The years 1852, 1865, 1874, 1879, 1886, and 1892 were marked by eruptions. Among the theories by which the ancients strove to account for the activity of Etna was the legend of Enceladus. According to this legend he was one of the hundred-handed Titans who made war against the gods. Jupiter slew him with a thunderbolt and buried him deep beneath the mountain. According to some legends, Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and the patron of blacksmithing, had a forge in Mt. Etna, where he employed the Cyclops in fashioning thunderbolts for Jove. Tourists are enabled to ascend the mountain by a railway which encircles it like a spiral. The railroad is seventy miles in length.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
or ÆTNA, MOUNT, the greatest volcano in Europe, a mountain in the province of Catania, Sicily; height, 10,874 feet. It rises immediately from the sea, has a circumference of more than 100 miles, and dominates the whole N. E. of Sicily, having a number of towns and villages on its lower slopes. The top is covered with perpetual snow; midway down is the woody or forest region; at the foot is a region of orchards, vineyards, olive groves, etc. A more or less distinct margin of cliff separates the plain; and the whole mass seems formed of a series of superimposed mountains, the terminal volcano being surrounded by a number of cones, all of volcanic origin, and nearly 100 of which are of considerable size. The eruptions of Etna have been numerous, and many of them destructive. That of 1169 overwhelmed Catania and buried 15,000 persons in the ruins. In 1669 the lava spread over the country for 40 days, and 10,000 persons are estimated to have perished. In 1693 there was an earthquake during the eruption, when 60,000 lives were lost. Among more recent eruptions are those of 1852, 1865, 1874, 1879, 1886, 1892, 1909, and 1911.
Etna a borough in Pennsylvania
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a borough in Pennsylvania, in Allegheny co. It is opposite ite Pittsburgh Ohio and the and on the Baltimore and Ohio Pennsylvania railroads. It is an important industrial center and has manufactures of furnaces, steel mills, pipe works, and other manufactures. Pop. (1910) 5,830; (1920) 6,341.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The heights given in these accounts — 10,835 feet in Aiton's 1910 entry, 10,874 in Collier's 1921 — are both out of date, and necessarily so: Etna's summit rises and collapses with each eruption and now stands near 11,000 feet, making it Europe's tallest as well as most active volcano. The list of eruptions ending at 1911 has kept growing: lava destroyed the town of Mascali in 1928, overran the mountain observatory and part of the Circumetnea railway the two writers admired in 1971, and was diverted by earth barriers and explosives during the long 1991-93 flow toward Zafferana. Etna was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2013 and is now one of the most closely monitored volcanoes on earth, with continuous seismic and satellite watch by Italy's INGV. One correction worth making: the 60,000 deaths of 1693 belong to the great Val di Noto earthquake, a tectonic event, rather than to the eruption itself.
Written for this edition, 2026.