potestas] A deputy appointed to govern a town or community by a superior, e.g., in the 1250s the Hungarian Ban of Dalmatia appointed a podesta in each town to represent him. (Fine, John V.A. Jr. The Late Medieval Balkans, 625)
Podesta is a phantom island reported by the Italian Captain Pinocchio of the vessel Barone Podestà in 1879 claiming it to be just over a kilometre in circumference located 1390 km due west of Valparaiso, Chile. It was originally located 900 miles west of Chile's coast. The island was charted falsely until 1935 when it was removed from charts.