NewsTracker Answers for week of Aug. 26, 2024

Q: A $40-million, 184-foot luxury sailboat - described by its builder as “virtually unsinkable” - quickly sank last week during a violent storm about a half-mile from the northern shore of Sicily. Seven people died, while 15 others were rescued. Where is Sicily, the largest and most populous island in the Mediterranean Sea?

Circle the area on this map

Q: Prosecutors near Sicily’s capital opened a manslaughter investigation into what caused the yacht sinking and if any of the 10-person crew was criminally responsible. What is the capital city of Sicily?

A. Catania

B. Messina

C. Palermo

D. Syracuse

C. The 2,758-year-old city of Palermo is the capital and largest city of the Italian autonomous region of Sicily. The investigation is being conducted by the public prosecutor’s office of Termini Imerese, about 20 miles from Palermo.

Q: The Sicilian cities of Catania, Messina, and Syracuse were founded by the ancient Greeks. Palermo was founded by the Phoenicians, an ancient seafaring people from the area of what modern nation on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean?

A. France

B. Lebanon

C. Morocco

D. Tunisia

B. The people from what is now Lebanon sailed across the Mediterranean Sea to dominate trade for about 1,000 years. In what is now Tunisia in North Africa, the Phoenicians established the city-state of Carthage which later fought the ancient Greeks and Romans over control of Sicily.

Q: Before it became part of the new nation of Italy in the 1860s, a long list of conquerors including Normans and Arabs ruled Sicily over thousands of years. But, which of these empires never included the island?

A. British

B. Byzantine

C. Habsburg

D. Roman

A. Britain prevented Napoleon Bonaparte from seizing the island in the 19th century, but it never claimed Sicily as a possession.

Q: What powerful group of Sicilians did the United States enlist to help in the Allied invasion of the island during World War II?

A. Aristocracy

B. Communists

C. Fascists

D. Mafia

D. During World War II, the U.S. Navy first turned to imprisoned Mafia boss Salvatore “Lucky” Luciano for help with security and union peace at American ports. Later, Luciano’s Sicilian associates supplied the United States with intelligence for planning the invasion. Another top Mafia leader served as a trusted interpreter and advisor to the U.S. Army in Sicily.