Mountain in southern France, altitude 1961m, known journalistically as "le géant de Provence". Petrarch wrote sonnets about it in the 1400s, but latterly its main claim to fame is as an astronomical observatory and an extremely hard climb featuring in various cycle races; in the 1967 Tour de France British rider Tommy Simpson died on the climb from a combination of heatstroke, amphetamines, possibly brandy from a drink handed up by a spectator, and the folly of his team crew in putting him back on his bike when he asked them to.