The C1 Ariete is the main battle tank of the Italian Army, developed by a consortium formed by Iveco-Fiat and Oto Melara (aka CIO, Consorzio Iveco Oto Melara). The chassis and engine were produced by Iveco, while the turret and fire-control system were produced by Oto Melara. The vehicle carries the latest optical and digital-imaging and fire-control systems, enabling it to fight day and night and to fire on the move. The first deliveries were in 1995, and the last occurred 8 years later in August 2002.

The Ariete is mounted with a 120 mm smoothbore Oto Melara cannon, autofrettaged and stress-hardened to increase durability over extended periods of fire, allowing the use of APFSDS and (HEAT) rounds.

Secondary armament consists of a 7.62 mm coaxial machine gun and another 7.62 mm anti-aircraft machine gun manned by the tank commander.

The Ariete's armour is a steel and composite blend, similar to the British Challenger 2 and the American M1 Abrams.

The Ariete features two side-mounted, electronically fired grenade launchers. Each launcher consists of four barrels which can be intermixed with either smoke or chaff grenades. The smoke grenades are capable of shrouding the tank from visual or thermal detection, while the chaff grenades disperse the tank's radar cross section. The tank is fully NBC protected.

Lisa Morpurgo Dordoni (Soncino (CR), 19 May 1923 - Milan, 9 May 1998) was a writer and astrologer.

Lisa gained a degree in literature at the Università Statale di Milano. She started to be interested in astrology while working as a translator for book publishers. Lisa was first intrigued by astrology while translating the French book " Lo Zodiaco - Segreti e sortilegi " by François-Régis Bastide The translation of this book about zodiacal signs peculiarities awakened her curiosity for astrology, a matter up to that moment so distant from her cultural background. Thanks to her thorough study of this new form of knowledge she had been able to sketch the zodiacal map of some of her remarkable friends - mostly writers, such as Eugenio Montale, Dino Buzzati, Guido Piovene, Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa - an interesting work that considerably improved her knowledge and urged her to unveil the reasons why zodiacal mechanisms seemed to effectively work.

From this starting point on, an impressive amount of discoveries took place: she could no longer accept the obsolete and fideistic dogmas of traditional astrology. Therefore she set on the search for those astrological mechanisms – based both on observation and science - which lay under each phenomenon. Her unprecedented practice meant a real revolution in astrology as it had been considered up to that time and opened new roads to research, applied with seriousness and thoughtness. She was the starter of a new current of thought both through her lessons and her books, the real milestone for astrologers and for those interested in the zodiac.