Showing posts with label sicily. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sicily. Show all posts

Friday, June 16, 2023

Giant underground garden built in Fresno, CA


Land was barren. He dug 10-acre underground village and orchard
(Kirsten Dirksen) June 11, 2023. During the California heat wave of 1906, Italian (Sicilian) immigrant Baldassare Forestiere dug a home underground in Fresno with just a pickax, shovel, and wheelbarrow.

He spent 40 years excavating ten acres of rooms, tunnels, a chapel, an underground aquarium, and courtyards to experiment with underground farming.

With no budget, working as a farmhand by day, he mixed mortar from the dirt he dug out, creating his own concrete and bricks.

Despite continuing to work as a day laborer during the day (mostly digging irrigation ditches), by the 1920s, he had completed about 50 subterranean rooms.

An immigrant in Fresno, California, Forestiere had planned to farm citrus until discovering that his 80 acres of “hardpan” soil were unusable for planting.

Digging as far as 25 feet below the surface, Forestiere reached depths where the soil was good, and his trees were protected from Fresno’s extreme summer heat and winter frosts.

After about 20 years of digging and underground farming, he could quit his day job and live off the fruits of his subterranean orchards.

Despite having just a fourth-grade education and no architectural training, Forestiere -- inspired by the catacombs of Rome -- built arches for support, and to this day, none of his underground construction has collapsed.

In areas where he wanted more natural cooling (like near stoves), he created cone-shaped openings to encourage the venturi effect, pushing the hot air out and sucking cooler air down.

His underground home had a kitchen with a wood-burning stove, an ice box, and a dining room, winter and summer bedrooms, many skylights, a subterranean fishpond, a car garage for guests, and a three-floor aquarium with an underground glass viewing area.

He had plans to open an underground resort to the public as a place to cool off in the summer, but he died before it was completed.

His brother and family took over the site, and today it’s open to the public.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Gov't Report: Aliens visited Sicily

"Aliens caused Sicily fires, say officials"
Nick Pisa in Rome (Telegraph.co.uk)

Aliens were responsible for a series of unexplained fires in fridges, TV’s and mobile phones in an Italian village, according to an Italian government report.

Canneto di Caronia, in northern Sicily, drew attention three years ago after residents reported everyday household objects bursting into flames.

TV news footage at the time showed electrical appliances as well as cookers, a pile of wedding presents and furniture smouldering.

Dozens of experts including scientists, electrical engineers and military boffins, arrived in the village 60 miles east of Palermo to investigate the phenomenon.

Arson was quickly ruled out and at one stage an amazed scientist was interviewed after he described how he saw an unplugged electrical cable burst into flames.

Locals were quick to blame supernatural forces and at the time the Vatican’s chief exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth backed up their fears and said: "I’ve seen things like this before. Demons occupy a house and appear in electrical goods. Let’s not forget that Satan and his followers have immense powers."

Now in an interim leaked report published by several Italian newspapers it has emerged that the Civil Protection Department has concluded the most likely cause was "aliens". More>>