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Show 0TRANT0 AND ITS STRAITS Italian City and Expanse of Water Have Seen Many Important Historical Events. Across the Straits of Otranto, where an Austrian cruiser is reported to have sunk several armored British patrol boats recently, have sailed some of the greatest history-making expeditions expedi-tions of ancient and medieval times, says a bulletin issued by the National Geographic society. This 50-mile expanse ex-panse of water, which joins the Adriatic Adri-atic and Ionian seas, separates the southeastern extremity or heel of the Italian peninsula from that part of Albania which was known in ancient times as Eplrus. It is 60 miles from Otranto, the beautifully situated Italian fishing village vil-lage which gives its name to the straits, to Avlona, the nearest port in Albania. Four hundred miles to the northwest are Venice and Trieste, at the head of the Adriatic, while three hundred and fifty miles to the northwest, north-west, beyond the Ionian sea, is the British possession, Malta. At the beginning of the war Otranto was a town of scarcely more than 2,000 inhabitants, but of some importance as the Italian terminus of the cable and telegraph line to Constantinople, via Avlona. It also had cable connection connec-tion with the island of Corfu. The town's historical associations date back to Greco-Roman times, for It occupies oc-cupies the site of the ancient Hydrus and was one of Rome's ports of embarkation em-barkation for Apolhmia, the famous Greek center of culture and city in which the future emperor, Augustus, was completing his education at the time that he was summoned to the capital following the assassination of Julius Caesar. Otranto was one of the Calabriun towns captured in 1008 by Robert Guis-card Guis-card (the sly), that resourceful Norman Nor-man adventurer who, at the high tide of his career, gave promise of duplicating dupli-cating in southern Italy and in Greece the triumphs won by his fellow countryman, coun-tryman, William the Conqueror, who during the same decade was subduing England. Four hundred years later the seaport was again raided and this time fell under the hands of the Turks. From this set-back it never recovered. Among the points of interest in-terest in the village today tire the castle, cas-tle, built by Alphonso of Aragon, and the cathedral, which dates back to the eleventh century and in which are to be found some of the columns that once graced the temple of Minerva at San Nicola, neur by. |