One hundred years ago this morning, the life of my grandfather Lorenzo took a tragic and extraordinary turn.

Dec. 28 marks the Feast of the Slaughter of the Innocents on the Catholic calendar. Once the final day of the Christmas season, it instead signaled, by 1908, a return to normal life, as children were headed back to school and parents to work for the first time in weeks.

Alarm clocks were set the night before, at the end of a Sunday that had been uncommonly cold and gloomy across southern Italy, so much so that people forsook the traditional visits to friends and family and stayed home.

My grandfather’s family would not have ventured out in any event, because that night they welcomed a new addition, another sister for 10-year-old Lorenzo — his sixth — to go along with his little brother, Giuseppe.

My grandfather lived in Pellaro, a small town just south of Reggio di Calabria on the Strait of Messina. His family lived alongside that of his uncle, aunt and five cousins in the Via Madonella, a road that dead-ended into a sandy beach. His childhood was idyllic: the sea right outside his door to play in, Mount Etna rising fantastically across the blue-black waters.

That late-December morning, Pellaro smelled strongly of perfume; it was harvest time for the bergamot, the small citrus fruit that is the principal ingredient in all manner of cologne and grown only on this narrow strip of the Calabrian coast.

Lorenzo was awakened shortly before the dawn, not by his alarm but by the loud low rumble of the earth and the awful crashing that followed. Living in an area recently wracked by earthquakes, most people immediately knew what was happening. During seismic events the majority of deaths are caused by people’s homes collapsing in on them — a fate suffered by few in Pellaro, which was a sparsely built farming community.

People gathered near the water, thinking it the safest place to be, but 10 minutes after the main shock the sea began to recede from shore. Boats at anchor tottered and hit bottom. There were two words in Italian to describe what was happening, one native (maremoto) the other borrowed from Japanese (tsunami).

There was no time to outrun the water, but someone pushed my grandfather up into an olive tree along with his little brother, whom Lorenzo held onto with all his strength. The roar of the sea was deafening — the tidal wave crested at more than 40 feet — and fight though Lorenzo did, the impact broke his clutch on Giuseppe.

No one will ever know how long my grandfather wandered the ruined coast, calling out the names of his brother, of his family. Everything Lorenzo had ever known was destroyed. The land beneath his neighborhood collapsed and fell, Atlantis-like, into the sea. The Church of the Madonella was open to the sky, a boat docked in its altar. Farther up the beach, a crack in the earth revealed ancient Greco-Roman tombs, still intact.

Across the straits, Messina — one of the most ancient cities in Europe — had been annihilated. More than 50,000 were dead. It took only a few hours for civilization to break down among the survivors. Looting ran rampant; thieves cut fingers from the dead rather than waste time prying their rings off. Marconi’s new radio transmitter at the mouth of the strait had gone silent, and many believed themselves to be the only people left alive, anywhere.

The 1908 earthquake stands as the most lethal natural disaster in recorded European history. (And only the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 has dwarfed it recently.) Nearly 100,000 people perished, including all 16 of my grandfather’s relatives in Via Madonella.

The response of the royal Italian government makes FEMA’s effort in New Orleans look like a model of efficiency. Most disgracefully, the shacks built as temporary shelter for the homeless would remain occupied for 30 years while the reconstruction dragged on. My grandfather himself was shuffled among relatives in Calabria before boarding the steamer Europa in 1921 to seek a better life in America.

Grampa, who died in 1990, always said he had been born under a lucky star. I assumed this belief was the sign of an earlier, more stoic generation. In fact, it was not. People went insane with grief over the events of Dec. 28, 1908. But a few survivors came away from the experience with the knowledge that they had stared apocalypse in the face and found the strength to come through it. And, having done so, they could endure anything — including arriving in America with little money and even less English, and raising eight children through a Depression and a war against their home country.

Grampa’s lucky star was in fact mine, and my brothers’, and all our cousins’.

VENICE, Italy -- Lance Armstrong's first Giro d'Italia will begin with a team trial in Venice and finish with an individual race against the clock alongside Rome's ancient ruins.

Organizers unveiled a highlight-filled route for the 100th anniversary edition of the race Saturday inside Venice's opera house, La Fenice.

Armstrong, a specialist at time trials, returns to cycling in 2009 after three years of retirement. The seven-time Tour de France winner is planning to the race the Giro and Tour de France for the first time in his career. Armstrong, in a video statement released by organizers, said the course has "a lot of dynamics."

The route of the May 9-31 event includes five mountain stages and a 38.3-mile individual time trial for stage 12 along the Cinque Terre on the Ligurian coast, a popular destination among American tourists.

"An exciting first week, already in the fourth and fifth stages the Alps could play a factor, especially if the weather is bad," Armstrong said. "The second week, I think, is highlighted by a long time trial. For me, a professional, I've never done a 62-kilometer time trial. That's going to be a critical day." The team time trial in Venice will be run on a mostly straight course of 12.7 miles.

The first mountainous stage will come in the fifth leg from San Martino di Castrozza to Alpe di Siusi. Stage six will end in Brixen Mayrhofen, Austria, and the stage seven will start in Innsbruck before heading back across the border to Chiavenna.

The Giro usually finishes in Milan, but organizers wanted something special for the centennial race, and the final pink jersey will be handed out after a 9.5-mile time trial around the Colosseum and Roman Forum. Milan will host the finish of the ninth stage and Mount Vesuvius in Naples will be the site of a mountain stage two days before the finish in Rome.

The route will pass through several points connected with the Giro's history, and include many of Italy's biggest cities _ Venice, Milan, Florence, Bologna and Naples. It will venture into the French Alps during the 10th stage, which will begin and end in Italy. "The final week the stage to Vesuvius will be a challenge for all of us," Armstrong said. "And the finish, Rome is a magical city, a city that I never knew until last year when I visited as a tourist."Armstrong has identified 2006 Giro winner Ivan Basso, who is returning from a two-year doping ban, as his top challenger. "I know there has been a lot of talk about the pink jersey, and I'm excited to race, but Ivan Basso is my favorite," Armstrong said.