Home > Gran Sasso

Gran Sasso (Italian for great stone), located in the Abruzzo region of central Italy, is the highest of the Apennines and the centerpiece of a national park (established 1991). The nearest city is L'Aquila. Gran Sasso has two peaks, Corno Grande and Corno Piccolo (respectively, "great horn" and "small horn"). Between them is nestled the southernmost glacier in EuropeFor the band of the same name, see Europe (band . Europe is a continent forming the westermost part of the Eurasian supercontinent. Europe is bounded to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the west by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the Mediterranean Se, the Calderone. Corno Grande was first ascended in 1573 by the BologneseBologna (from Latin Bononia Bulaggna in the local dialect) is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna in northern Italy, between the Po River and the Apennines. History Bologna was founded by the Etruscans with the name Felsina''. Next the city was the Roman c captain Francesco De Marchi together with Francesco Di Domenico; nowadays, the tops of both peaks can be reached by hiking strenuous trails or rock climbing.

At the base of the peaks is the extensive Campo Imperatore plateau, connected to the ski villages of Prati di Tivo and Fonte Cerreto via both ski lifts and roads (the latter closed in winter). A hotel on Campo Imperatore itself is the famous locale where Italian dictator Mussolini was imprisoned for months in summer 19431943 is the common year starting on Friday. Events January January 4 End of term for Culbert Olson, 29th Governor of California. He is succeeded by Earl Warren. January 11 The United States and United Kingdom give up territorial rights in China. January 1 until his rescue by Otto SkorzenyOtto Skorzeny ( June 12, 1908 July 5, 1975) was a colonel in the German Waffen-SS during World War II. He was the most effective German commando of WWII. Born into a middle-class Austrian family with a long history of military service, Skorzeny was a note and German hang gliders on September 12. The plateau is also the site of a branch of the Rome Observatory from which the Campo Imperatore Near-Earth Objects Survey and other astronomical studies are carried out.

In the early 1980s two major tunnels, 10 km in length, were bored through Gran Sasso in order to construct a four-lane highway connecting L'Aquila with Teramo. Although the tunnel borers struck a natural aquifer, releasing a flood that killed seven workers, the tunnels opened in 1984. A side project was the construction of an underground physics laboratory, the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, along the westbound highway tunnel. Several experiments based here study neutrinos or search for dark matter, projects made possible by the bulk of the mountain shielding them from cosmic rays. Both tunnel and laboratory face strong opposition from local environmental groups due to their interference with the aquifer, presence within a national park, and a small-scale chemical spill at the lab in 2002.