Leghorn
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Leghorn. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a walled city and seaport Italy of on the Mediterranean Sea. Leghorn has an outer and inner harbor and a good roadstead. A lighthouse, 170 feet above sea-level, commands the harbor. Among the chief articles of manufacturing industry are woolen caps, straw hats, glass, paper, soap, starch, rope, leather, etc. Shipbuilding is extensively engaged in. It has besides a large export and import trade. Leghorn was made a free port about the middle of the 16th century, and owes much of its eminence and prosperity to the fostering care of the Medici family and the subsequent rulers of Tuscany. Pop. about 110,000.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a kind of plait of the straw of bearded wheat cut green and bleached, and used for bonnets and hats. It derives its name from being imported from Leghorn. (A hat made of the plait described is called a Leghorn.) The of a S kind of wheat in question is about 18 tives. inches high. It is grown on poor sandy are soil on the banks of the Arno, between Leghorn and Florence, expressly for tho manufacture into hats.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
in rank, the third seaport of Italy. It is situated on the Mediterranean coast, midway between Genoa and Rome. About 4,000 ships clear annually. The trade is chiefly with the Levant. Raw silk, olive oil, soap, candied fruits, wine, glass, paper, straw braid, coral ornaments, hemp, hides, marble, borax, and quicksilver are exports. The city is the original port of shipment for the famous leghorn hats. Foodstuffs, coal, spirits, and petroleum are bought abroad. The city is prosperous. Its ancient walls still stand. A fine light-house guides the way into a safe harbor. The warehouses are built along canals. Attractive suburbs make the city a popular summer resort. The population at the beginning of the century was returned at 98,321. See Milan ; Millinery
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Both accounts describe a prosperous walled port of about 100,000 people known abroad by its English name; today the city is called Livorno in English as often as Leghorn, and the older name survives mainly in the Leghorn breed of chicken and the straw hats the entries describe, an industry that has since vanished. Allied bombing in 1943 and 1944, followed by the German demolitions of 1944, wrecked much of the historic centre that Aiton's called prosperous, including the 17th-century synagogue of what had been one of Italy's most important Jewish communities; a modern synagogue replaced it in 1962. The port still ranks among Italy's busiest, but on container traffic, cruise passengers and ferries to Corsica and Sardinia rather than the Levant trade in coral, borax and quicksilver. The population, about 110,000 when Collier's wrote in 1921, peaked near 180,000 in the 1970s and has fallen back to roughly 155,000.
Written for this edition, 2026.