Ancient Rome
This torture method used by the ancient king of Sicily involved putting people in a metal container and lighting a fire underneath until the victims roasted to death.
What is the Brazen Bull/Sicilian Bull?
This natural disaster is said to be caused by the Orcolat, a giant monster that dwells beneath the Friulian mountains.
What is an earthquake?
According to the 16th century legend of the Butcher of Venice, this body part was found in a bowl of ‘sguazeto' (meat stew) made by Biasio Cargnio, a butcher who was found guilty of kidnapping children and using them in his sausages.
What is finger?
This mafia group, whose name translates to "our thing", operates in Sicily.
What is Cosa Nostra?
This many Europeans died over the course of 6 years during the Black Plague.
What is 50 million?
This gesture, meaning fig hand, was used by ancient Romans as a sign to ward off evil after having removed their sandals.
What is mano fico?
An effigy of the Giubiana, a long-legged witch with red stockings, is burnt annually to commemorate the end of this season.
What is winter?
Tourists reportedly see the mummies do this when they visit the Capuchin Catacombs, a burial crypt in Palermo Sicily containing 8000 bodies.
What is changing positions?
The 1980s proved a turning point in Italy’s fight against the mafia. These two prominent leaders in the anti-mafia movement, a judge and prosecutor, were both murdered by the mafia in 1992.
What is Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino?
This Italian form of torture includes the victim's hands being tied behind his back and the victim being suspended by a rope attached to the wrists, typically resulting in dislocated shoulders.
What is strappado?
This many people are estimated to have died in the Flavian Amphitheater (the Roman Colosseum).
What is 400,000?
The Benandanti, a cult whose members claimed to fight witches while dreamwalking, were condemned by the Inquisition for this crime.
What is heresy?
This percentage of human ash due to burning plague victim bodies makes up the first layer of dirt on the haunted island of Poveglia, Venice
What is 60%?
Leonarda Cianciulli, an Italian female serial killer and cannibal in the late 1930s, turned her victims' bodies into these two materials.
What is soap and cake?
The Black Plague first arrived in Europe in October 1347 when 12 trading ships docked in the Italian port of this city after crossing the Black Sea. People greeting these ships found the crews dead or dying, covered in boils and with high fevers. The ships were immediately ordered to leave the harbor, but it was too late.
What is Messina?
In Roman numerals, this unlucky number for Italians is a Latin anagram for “I have lived,” the implication being that now I am dead.
What is 17?
This monster carries off misbehaving children and wears a heavy black coat.
What is Babau?
In Scogna Sottana (close to Calabria), a musician died of a long and painful disease, and his house was uninhabited for decades. Visitors who have stayed there claim to have heard disturbing cries and screams accompanied by this instrument.
What is violin?
This quantity is the number of members of the mafia in Italy today.
What is about 25,000 members? (Just about the same amount of church members in Italy!)
Milan’s relatively low mortality rate during the Black Plague was attributed to this method.
What is bricking up the houses of infected people with the residents still inside?
This Roman festival celebrated in May came to be after the ghost of Remus appeared to his brother Romulus after being murdered by him during the founding of Rome.
What is Remuria?
If you hear the Erchitu, a man cursed to transform into an ox on the full moon, do this outside your door three times, or you will die within a year.
What is moo?
The haunted house of Ca’ Dario in Venice has caused accidents, bankrupted, and mysteriously claimed the lives of this number of people over the years after the original owner’s daughter and son-in-law died by murder and suicide in 1479.
What is 13?
The Mafia in America: Al Capone made this much money a year through his activities with the mafia.
What is $105 million/year? (which is valued at $1.3 billion/year in today’s dollars!)
Archaeologists discovered the 800-year old remains of a woman believed to be a witch along with seven nails found driven through her jaw bone. She was likely punished for illegally committing this crime due to the objects being buried nearby.
What is playing with dice?