10 March

Giuseppe Mazzini - hero of the Risorgimento

Revolutionary was ideological inspiration for Italian unification

Giuseppe Mazzini, the journalist and revolutionary who was one of the driving forces behind the Risorgimento, the political and social movement aimed at unifying Italy in the 19th century, died on this day in 1872 in Pisa. Mazzini is considered to be one of the heroes of the movement, whose memory is preserved in the names of streets and squares all over Italy. Where Giuseppe Garibaldi was the conquering soldier, Vittorio Emanuele the unifying king and Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour the statesman who would become Italy's first prime minister, Mazzini is perhaps best described as the movement's ideological inspiration. Numerous uprisings he organised were crushed, yet his mission was to free Italy of oppressive foreign powers eventually was fulfilled, even though at time of his death he considered himself to have failed, because the unified Italy was not the democratic republic he had envisaged, but a monarchy. Read more…

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Lorenzo Da Ponte - writer and impresario

Colourful life of Mozart's librettist

The librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte, who could be described on two counts as a figure of considerable significance in the story of opera, was born on this day in 1749 in Ceneda - since renamed Vittorio Veneto - about 42km (26 miles) north of Treviso in the Veneto region. Da Ponte wrote the words for 28 operas by 11 composers, including three of Mozart's greatest successes, Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro and Così fan tutte. He also opened New York City's first opera house in 1833 at the age of 84 and is credited with introducing the United States both to Mozart and Gioachino Rossini. He led a colourful life, living in Vienna, Lonson, Pennsylvania and New York City. Read more…

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Corrado Parnucci – architectural sculptor

Prolific artist whose work adorns cities of Michigan


The architectural sculptor Corrado Giuseppe Parnucci, who left his artistic mark on more than 600 buildings in Detroit and other cities in the US state of Michigan, was born on this day in 1900 in Buti, a Tuscan village about 15km (9 miles) east of Pisa. Taken to live in America at the age of four, Parnucci – generally known as Joe – settled in Detroit after accepting some work there in 1924. Among the Detroit landmarks with architectural embellishments by Parnucci are the Buhl Building, The Players, the Guardian Building, the David Stott Building, the Detroit Masonic Temple, the Detroit Historical Museum and the Wilson Theater.  Most of those buildings went up during the 1920s as the city’s skyline underwent huge change. Read more…

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9 March

Bettino Ricasoli - statesman and winemaker

Prime minister and inventor of modern Chianti wine

The politician and winemaker Barone Bettino Ricasoli was born on this day in 1809 in Florence. Ricasoli, who is considered one of the driving forces of the Risorgimento alongside Giuseppe Mazzini, Count Camillo Benso of Cavour, Giuseppe Garibaldi and others, succeeded Cavour as prime minister in 1861, the second person to hold the office in the new Kingdom of Italy. After withdrawing from politics, he concentrated on the family vineyards around the Castello di Brolio in the Tuscan hills between Siena and Arezzo, seat of the Ricasoli family since the early 12th century. It was there is 1872, seeking to create a wine with universal appeal, that he developed the formula for Chianti wine that is still used today, made up of 70 per cent Sangiovese grapes, 15 per cent Canaiolo and 15 per cent Malvasia bianca. Read more...

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Internazionale - football superpower

Famous club that broke away from rivals AC Milan

Internazionale, one of Italy's most successful football clubs, came into being on this day in 1908. The winner 18 times of lo scudetto - the Italian championship - the club known often as Inter or Inter-Milan was born after a split within the membership of the Milan Cricket and Football Club, forerunner of the club known now as A C Milan. The original club was established by expatriate British football enthusiasts with a membership restricted to Italian and British players. It was after a dispute over whether foreign players should be signed that a breakaway group formed. Plans for a new club were drawn up at a meeting at the Ristorante L'Orologio in Via Giuseppe Mengoni in Milan, a short distance from the opera house, Teatro alla Scala.  Read more…

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Emma Bonino – politician

Leading Radical learnt Arabic to understand Middle East press

Veteran politician Emma Bonino, who most recently served as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Government of Enrico Letta, was born on this day in 1948 in Bra in Piedmont. A leading member of the Italian Radicals, Bonino has throughout her career been an activist for reform policies and a campaigner for women's and human rights, leading the campaign that led to the legalisation of abortion in Italy.  She pushed for a referendum against nuclear energy, which led to the rejection of a civil nuclear energy programme in Italy. Bonino was elected to the European parliament in 1979 and re-elected twice afterwards. In 2001 she moved to Cairo to learn Arabic and in 2003 she started a daily review of the Arabic press on Radical Radio.  Read more…

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Amerigo Vespucci – explorer

Medici clerk who discovered a new world

Explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci was born on this day in 1454 in Florence. Vespucci was the first to discover the ‘new world’, which later came to be called the Americas, taking the Latin version of his first name. The son of a notary in Florence and a cousin of the husband of the beautiful artist’s model, Simonetta Vespucci, he was educated by his uncle, Fra Giorgio Antonio Vespucci, a Dominican friar, and he was later hired as a clerk by the Medici family. As the executor of an Italian merchant who had died in Seville, Vespucci fulfilled the deceased’s contract with Castile to provide 12 vessels to sail to the Indies. Vespucci is known to have taken an active part in at least two real voyages of exploration. Read more...

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Bettino Ricasoli - statesman and winemaker

Prime minister and inventor of modern Chianti wine

While not tending to his ancient vineyards,
Bettino Ricasoli was twice prime minister

The politician and winemaker Barone Bettino Ricasoli was born on this day in 1809 in Florence.

Ricasoli, who is considered one of the driving forces of the Risorgimento alongside Giuseppe Mazzini, Count Camillo Benso of Cavour, Giuseppe Garibaldi and others, succeeded Cavour as prime minister in 1861, the second person to hold the office in the new Kingdom of Italy.

After withdrawing from politics, he concentrated on the family vineyards around the Castello di Brolio in the Tuscan hills between Siena and Arezzo, seat of the Ricasoli family since the early 12th century.

It was there is 1872, seeking to create a wine with universal appeal, that he developed the formula for Chianti wine that is still used today, made up of 70 per cent Sangiovese grapes, 15 per cent Canaiolo and 15 per cent Malvasia bianca.

Today Barone Ricasoli - the oldest wine producer in Italy and the second oldest in the world - is the largest winery in the Chianti Classico area, with 235 hectares of vines and 26 hectares of olive groves in the area around Gaiole and Castelnuovo Berardenga.

Bettino was the son of Baron Luigi Ricasolo and Elisabetta Peruzzi, who came from a family of Tuscan bankers. He attended the Collegio Cicognini, the oldest school in Prato, and spent two years travelling around Europe with his personal tutor. He was orphaned by the age of 18 following the deaths of both his parents, inheriting the castle and the estate but finding it to be heavily in debt.

Vines fill most of the slopes surrounding the ancient Ricasoli
family seat at Castello di Brolio in Tuscany

Decreed to be of age by the Duke of Tuscany, and therefore the legal owner of the castle and its vineyards, he quickly enrolled at the Accademia dei Georgofili in Florence in order to acquire the agrarian and financial skills he needed to run the business successfully. He managed to save it from collapse, helped by his marriage to Anna Bonaccorsi, the daughter of a noble landowner from Tredozio in the Tuscan Romagna, who brought with her a considerable dowry.

A follower of patriotic political philosophers such as Cesare Balbo and Massimo d’Azeglio, Ricasoli he became politically active in 1846, urging Leopold II, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, to make various liberal reforms. The following year, he founded a newspaper, La Patria, with a mission to define “the constitution of Italian nationality”.

In 1848 he was elected gonfalonier (mayor) of Florence after Leopold authorised the establishment of a Tuscan constitution. He encouraged support for Piedmont-Sardinia against Austria in the First Italian War of Independence.

Barone Ricasoli's
chianti is renowned

However, after Leopold was overthrown by the radical democrats Giuseppe Montanelli and Francesco Guerrazzi, who proclaimed a new republic, he reclaimed power only after turning to the Austrians for help, which so disgusted Ricasoli he abandoned his political career and exiled himself to Switzerland.

When he returned to the Castello di Brolio he took a circuitous route to avoid Florence, so that he would not have to set eyes on the occupying Austrian troops.

Ricasoli stayed out of politics until 1859, after the Second Italian War of Independence achieved its goal, when he was appointed minister of the interior in Cavour’s government of Tuscany, promoting the union of Tuscany with Piedmont, which took place in March 1860.

Elected to the Chamber of Deputies of the new Italian government in February 1861, he succeeded Cavour in the premiership in June.

As prime minister he admitted the Garibaldian volunteers to the regular army, revoked the 30-year exile of Mazzini for his membership of an illegal political group, and attempted - unsuccessfully - a reconciliation with the Vatican, with whom the new kingdom was still at odds.

He resigned in 1862 but returned to power in 1866. On this occasion he refused Napoleon III's offer to cede Venetia to Italy on condition that Italy gave up their Prussian alliance, and reached a compromise with the Vatican only for the Chamber to reject it, upon which he resigned again and withdrew from politics for good.

He died at the Castello di Brolio in October 1880.

The Ricasoli name was sold to a multinational conglomerate in the early 1970s but reacquired by the Barone’s grandson, also called Bettino. The business is now run by his great-grandson, Francesco.

Bettino Ricasoli turned the Castello di Brolio into a kind
of English-style neo-Gothic manor house

Travel tip:

The impressive Castello di Brolio, which sits on top of a hill 11km (7 miles) south of Gaiole in Chianti, dominates the surrounding countryside. Even though it is closer to Siena, just 20 km away and visible on a clear day, the castle has always been under the influence of Florence and was for many years used as a strategic outposts. As a result, it has been destroyed several times. The castle of today is partly the reconstruction ordered by Bettino Ricasoli in 1835, when he commissioned the architect Pietro Marchetti to modify the castle according to the taste of the Gothic revival, a romantic movement originating in England, transforming it from a fortress into something closer to an English manor house, with Tudor-style windows and crenellated turrets. Parts of the house, the Renaissance gardens and the English woods are open to the public. Inside the castle, it is possible to visit the Chapel of San Jacopo and the crypt with the family tombs and a small museum housing the Ricasoli collection.

Hotels in Gaiole in Chianti by Booking.com

The Via Bettino Ricasole is a broad street, almost a
piazza, in the centre of Gaiole in Chianti

Travel tip:

The beautiful small town of Gaiole in Chianti, about 40km (25 miles) southeast of Florence, basks in the enviable accolade of being named at number one in a list of "Europe's Most Idyllic Places To Live" by Forbes magazine. The town is a perfect base for visiting the many castles in the area, such as the Castello di Meleto, the Castello di Spaltenna and the Badia Coltibuono, a fortified monastery. The town hosts many events connected with the wine industry plus, every March, a professional bicycle race is held, known as Strade Bianche.

More reading:

Carlo Cattaneo, the intellectual force behind the Five Days of Milan

Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, the new Italy's first political figurehead

Luigi Einaudi, the politician and winemaker who became president

Also on this day:

1454: The birth of explorer Amerigo Vespucci

1908: The founding of the football club Internazionale

1948: The birth of radical politician Emma Bonino

Selected books:

Risorgimento: The History of Italy from Napoleon to Nation State, by Lucy Riall

The Force of Destiny: A History of Italy Since 1796, by Christopher Duggan 

(Picture credits: Ricasoli vines by RiverBerlin; Castello by Sailko; Gaiole street by Tubantia; all via Wikimedia Commons)



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8 March

Antonello Venditti - enduring music star

Roman singer-songwriter's career spans almost 50 years

Singer-songwriter Antonello Venditti, one of Italy's most popular and enduring stars of contemporary music, was born on this day in 1949 in Rome. Famous in the 1970s for the strong political and social content of many of his songs, Venditti can look back on a career spanning half a century, in which he has sold more than 30 million records. His biggest success came with the 1988 album In questo mondo di ladri - In this world of thieves - which sold 1.5 million copies, making it jointly the eighth best-selling album in Italian music history. Venditti's music ranges from folk to soft rock, often with classical overtones. He enjoyed sustained success in the 1980s and 90s. He is still performing today, marking his 70th birthday with a concert in Rome. Read more…

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Carlo Gesualdo – composer

Madrigal writer was also a murderer

Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa, who composed highly experimental music for his time, was born on this day in 1566 in the principality of Venosa, then part of the Kingdom of Naples.  He was to become known both for his extraordinary music and for the brutal killing of his first wife, Donna Maria D’Avalos, and her lover Fabrizio Carafa, Duke of Andria and Count of Ruova after he caught them together, although a court hearing decided he had committed no crime. Gesualdo was the nephew of Carlo Borromeo, who later became Saint Charles Borromeo.  Gesualdo’s most famous works were his six books of madrigals. The Music Conservatory in Potenza is named the Conservatoria di Musica Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa in his honour. Read more…

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La Festa della Donna – Women’s Day

Bright fragrant mimosa signals respect 

Women’s Day - La Festa della Donna - is celebrated in Italy on this day every year and is an occasion for men to show their appreciation for the women in their lives. All over Italy today men will be seen carrying bunches of prettily wrapped mimosa to give to women who are special to them. The flowers might be for their wives, girlfriends, mothers, friends or even employees and are meant as a sign of respect for womanhood. The custom of men giving mimosa to their ladies began in the 1940s after the date 8 March was chosen as the Festa della Donna (Festival of the Woman) in Italy. The date coincides with International Women's Day and also has a political significance. Read more…

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7 March

Baldassare Peruzzi - architect and painter

Pupil of Bramante who left mark on Rome

The architect and painter Baldassare Peruzzi, who trained under Donato Bramante and was a contemporary of Raphael, was born on this day in 1481 in a small town near Siena. Peruzzi worked in his home city and in Rome, where he spent many years as one of the architects of the St Peter’s Basilica project but where he was also responsible for two outstanding buildings in his own right - the Villa Farnesina and the Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne. The Villa Farnesina, a summer house commissioned by the Sienese banker Agostino Chigi in the Trastevere district, is unusual for its U-shaped floor plan, with a five-bay loggia between the arms. The Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne on the present-day Corso Vittorio Emanuele II is still more unusual, featuring a curved facade. Read more...

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Saint Thomas Aquinas - philosopher

Theologian who synthesised Aristotle’s ideas with principles of Christianity

Saint Thomas Aquinas, known in Italian as Tommaso d’Aquino, died on this day in 1274 at Fossanova near Terracina in Lazio. A Dominican friar who became a respected theologian and philosopher, D’Aquino was canonised in 1323, less than 50 years after his death. He was responsible for two masterpieces of theology, Summa theologiae and Summa contra gentiles. The first sought to explain the Christian faith to students setting out to study theology, the second to explain the Christian faith and defend it in the face of hostile attacks. As a poet, D'Aquino wrote some of the most beautiful hymns in the church’s liturgy, which are still sung today. Read more…

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Filippo Juvarra – architect

Baroque designer influenced the look of ‘royal Turin’

The architect Filippo Juvarra was born on this day in 1678 in Messina in Sicily. Some of his best work can be seen in Turin today as he worked for Victor Amadeus II of Savoy from 1714 onwards. The buildings Juvarra designed for Turin made him famous and he was subsequently invited to work in Portugal, Spain, London and Paris. One of his masterpieces was the Basilica of Superga, built in 1731 on a mountain overlooking the city of Turin, which later became a mausoleum for the Savoy family. As chief court architect, Juvarra also designed the Palace of Stupinigi, built as the royal hunting lodge outside Turin, and the façade of the Palazzo Madama in the royal centre of the city. Read more…

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Alessandro Manzoni – novelist

Writer who produced the greatest novel in Italian literature

Italy’s most famous novelist, Alessandro Manzoni, was born on this day in 1785 in Milan. Manzoni was the author of I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed), the first novel to be written in modern Italian, a language that could be understood by everyone. The novel caused a sensation when it was first published in 1825. It looked at Italian history through the eyes of the ordinary citizen and sparked pro-unification feelings in many Italians who read it, becoming a symbol of the Risorgimento movement. I Promessi Sposi is now considered to be the most important novel in Italian literature and is still required reading for many Italian schoolchildren. Read more...

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Baldassare Peruzzi - architect and painter

Pupil of Bramante who left mark on Rome

The portrait of Baldassare Peruzzi in
Giorgio Vasari's 1568 book Lives of the Most
 Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects

The architect and painter Baldassare Peruzzi, who trained under Donato Bramante and was a contemporary of Raphael, was born on this day in 1481 in a small town near Siena.

Peruzzi worked in his home city and in Rome, where he spent many years as one of the architects of the St Peter’s Basilica project but where he was also responsible for two outstanding buildings in his own right - the Villa Farnesina and the Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne.

The Villa Farnesina, a summer house commissioned by the Sienese banker Agostino Chigi in the Trastevere district, is unusual for its U-shaped floor plan, with a five-bay loggia between the arms.

Raphael and Sebastiano del Piombo were among those who helped decorate the villa with frescoes, but Peruzzi is acknowledged as the chief designer, possibly aided by Giuliano da Sangallo. He was relatively inexperienced at the time but was personally selected by Chigi despite the huge array of talent on offer in the city at the time.

Some of the frescoed paintings on the walls of the interior rooms are also by Peruzzi. One example is the Sala delle Prospettive, in which the walls are painted to create the illusion of standing in an open-air terrace, lined by pillars, looking out over a continuous landscape.

Peruzzi's brilliant Sala delle Prospettive, with its illusion
of an open-air terrace, inside the Villa Farnesina

Originally known as the Villa Chigi, the house in 1577 became the property of the Farnese family after whom it was renamed. Michelangelo at one time proposed linking the villa with Palazzo Farnese on the other side of the Tiber. The project was never completed, although there are remnants of a few arches still visible in the back of Palazzo Farnese.

The Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne on the present-day Corso Vittorio Emanuele II is still more unusual, featuring a curved facade, dictated by the shape of the foundations of the building that had previously stood on the site - destroyed during the 1527 Sack of Rome by mutinous troops of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V - which had owed their pattern to the semi-circular Odeon of Domitian, an ancient Roman theatre.

Commissioned by Pietro Massimo, descendent of one of the oldest noble families in Rome, the palace has an entrance characterised by a central portico with six Doric columns. Inside, a courtyard and a loggia feature more Doric columns, hence the palace’s name.

The monument to
Peruzzi at the Pantheon

Peruzzi, born in the town of Sovicille, about 10km (6 miles) southwest of Siena, began his career as a painter of frescoes in the Cappella San Giovanni in Siena’s cathedral. He moved to Rome in his 20s, receiving the commission for the Villa Farnesina in 1509.

With the death of Raphael, in 1520 he was appointed as one of the architects engaged on the massive programme to build a new St Peter’s Basilica.

However, he fled Rome following the events of 1527 and returned to Siena, where he was employed as architect to the Republic. He built new fortifications for the city, remodelled the Church of San Domenico and designed a remarkable dam on the Bruna river near Giuncarico.

From 1531 he was back in Rome and again working at St Peter's, where he was appointed the principal architect to the basilica in 1534.

Other works attributed to Peruzzi include a mosaic ceiling for the church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, paintings in the churches of Sant'Onofrio and San Pietro in Montorio and in Santa Maria in Portico a Fontegiusta in Siena.

Peruzzi’s son, Giovanni Sallustio, was also an architect. Another son, Onorio, learned painting from his father but then became a Dominican priest in the convent of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva in Rome.

He died in Rome in January 1536, aged 54.

The Villa Farnesina is one of Baldassare Peruzzi's two
masterpieces from his time working in Rome

Travel tip:

The Villa Farnesina can be found on Via della Lungara in the Trastevere district of Rome.  After the Farnese family, the villa belonged to the Bourbons of Naples and in 1861 to the Spanish Ambassador in Rome, Bermudez de Castro, Duke of Ripalta. Today, it is owned by the Italian State and accommodates the Accademia dei Lincei, a long-standing academy of sciences. The main rooms of the villa, including the Loggia, are open to visitors from 9am to 2pm on Monday to Saturday, and on every second Sunday of the month from 9am to 5pm. For more details, visit http://www.villafarnesina.it

The beautiful Romanesque-Gothic
cathedral in Siena

Travel tip:

Siena’s Duomo - the Cathedral of St Mary of the Assumption - was designed and completed between 1215 and 1263 on the site of an earlier structure. It has a beautiful façade built in Tuscan Romanesque style using polychrome marble. There had been plans to build an enormous basilica, which would have been the largest in the world, but the idea was abandoned because of lack of funds due to war and the plague. Nonetheless, the cathedral built in its place to plans drawn up by Giovanni di Agostino, with a pulpit designed by Nicola Pisani, is considered a masterpiece of Italian Romanesque-Gothic architecture.

Siena hotels from Booking.com


More reading:

Raphael, the precocious genius who became one of the Renaissance greats

How Agostino Chigi became one of Europe's richest men

The mutinous army that laid waste to Rome

Also on this day:

1274: The death of the philosopher Saint Thomas Aquinas

1678: The birth of Turin architect Filippo Juvarra

1785: The birth of novelist Alessandro Manzoni

Selected books:

Giorgio Vasari's The Lives of the Artists (Oxford World's Classics)

(Picture credits: Peruzzi monument by cmholm;Villa Farnesina by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra; Siena cathedral by Myrabella; all via Wikimedia Commons)


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6 March

La Traviata - the world's favourite opera

Verdi's masterpiece performed for the first time

Giuseppe Verdi's opera La Traviata was performed in front of a paying audience for the first time on this day in 1853. The premiere took place at Teatro La Fenice, the opera house in Venice with which Verdi had a long relationship, one that saw him establish his fame as a composer.  La Traviata would ultimately cement his reputation as a master of opera after the success of Rigoletto and Il Trovatore. La Traviata has become the world's favourite opera. No work has been performed more often, yet the reception for the opening performance was mixed, with applause from a demanding audience at the end of the first act but jeers after the second. Read more…

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Francesco Guicciardini - writer and diplomat

Friend of Machiavelli among first to record history in context

The historian and statesman Francesco Guicciardini, best known for writing Storia d'Italia, a book that came to be regarded as a classic history of Italy, was born on this day in 1483 in Florence. Along with his contemporary Niccolò Machiavelli, Guicciardini is considered one of the major political writers of the Italian Renaissance. Guicciardini was an adviser and confidant to three popes, the governor of several central Italian states, ambassador, administrator and military captain.  Storia d'Italia - originally titled 'La Historia di Italia' - was notable for Guicciardini's skilful analysis of interrelating political movements in different states and his ability to set events in context and with objectivity. Read more…

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Augusto Odone – medical pioneer

Father who invented ‘Lorenzo’s Oil’ for sick son

Augusto Odone, the father who invented a medicine to treat his incurably ill son despite having no medical training, was born on this day in 1933 in Rome.  Odone’s son, Lorenzo, was diagnosed with a rare metabolic condition at the age of six and his parents were told he would suffer increasing paralysis and probably die within two years. Refusing simply to do nothing, the Odones, who lived in Washington, contacted every doctor, biologist and researcher they could find who had researched the condition, eventually coming up with a medicine that combined extracts of olive oil and rapeseed oil. The medicine soon became known as Lorenzo’s Oil. Against all odds, Lorenzo survived more than 20 years longer than had been forecast by doctors. Read more…

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