13 October

Claudius - Roman emperor

Suspicious death of leader who conquered Britain

The Roman emperor Claudius, whose reign was notable among other things for turning Britain into a province of the Empire, died on this day in 54 AD.  It is a widely held view that he was murdered, by poisoning, on the orders of his scheming fourth wife, Julia Agrippina, the mother of his successor, Nero, in one of the power struggles that at the time were ever present.  It is thought he ingested some poisonous mushrooms that his taster, the eunuch Halotus, had assured him were safe to eat, either at an official banquet on the evening of October 12 or at his first meal of the following day.  When Claudius began to show signs of distress, one version of the story is that his physician, Xenophon, pushed a feather into his throat, ostensibly to make him vomit, but actually to ensure that he did not recover by administering more poison, with which he had coated the feather.  There have been arguments that the poisoning story was nonsense and that, at 63, Claudius died from natural causes related to ageing. Yet Agrippina - sometimes referred to as Agrippina the Younger - seemed to have had a clear motive.  Read more…

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Execution of former King of Naples

Joachim Murat, key aide of Napoleon, shot by firing squad

Joachim Murat, the French cavalry leader who was a key military strategist in Napoleon's rise to power in France and his subsequent creation of an empire in continental Europe, was executed on this day in 1815 in Pizzo in Calabria.  The charismatic Marshal was captured by Bourbon forces in the coastal town in Italy's deep south as he tried to gather support for an attempt to regain control of Naples, where he had been King until the fall of Napoleon saw the throne returned to the Bourbon king Ferdinand IV in May 1815.  Murat was held prisoner in the Castello di Pizzo before a tribunal found him guilty of insurrection and sentenced him to death by firing squad.  The 48-year-old soldier from Lot in south-west France had been an important figure in the French Revolutionary Wars and gained recognition from Napoleon as one of his best generals, his influence vital in the success of Napoleon's campaigns in Egypt and Italy and in victories against the numerically superior Prussians and Russians.  He was a flamboyant dresser, going into battle with his uniform bedecked in medals, gold tassels, feathers and shiny buttons.  Yet for all his peacock tendencies, he was renowned as a bold, brave and decisive leader.  Read more…

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Piero Dusio - sportsman and entrepreneur

His Cisitalia company revolutionised automobile design

The footballer, racing driver and businessman Piero Dusio was born on this day in 1899 in Scurzolengo, a village in the hills above Asti, in Piedmont.  Dusio made his fortune in textiles but it is for his postwar venture into car production that he is most remembered. Dusio’s Cisitalia firm survived for less than 20 years before going bankrupt in the mid-1960s but in its short life produced a revolutionary car - the Cisitalia 202 - that was a gamechanger for the whole automobile industry.  Dusio played football for the Turin club Juventus, joining the club at 17 years old, and was there for seven years before a knee injury forced him to retire at the age of only 24, having made 15 appearances for the senior team, four of them in Serie A matches.  He kept his connection with the club and from 1942 to 1948 was Juventus president. In the short term, though, he was forced to find a new career. He took a job with a Swiss-backed textile firm in Turin as a salesman. He took to the job immediately and made an instant impression on his new employers, selling more fabric in his first week than his predecessor had in a year.  Within a short time he had been placed in charge of sales for the whole of Italy.  Read more…


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12 October

Luciano Pavarotti - tenor

Singer who became known as ‘King of the High Cs’

Luciano Pavarotti, one of the greatest operatic tenors of all time, was born on this day in 1935 in Modena in Emilia-Romagna.  Pavarotti made many stage appearances and recordings of arias from opera throughout his career. He also crossed over into popular music, gaining fame for the superb quality of his voice.  Towards the end of his career, as one of the legendary Three Tenors, he became known to an even wider audience because of his concerts and television appearances.  Pavarotti began his professional career on stage in Italy in 1961 and gave his final performance, singing the Puccini aria, Nessun Dorma, at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin. He died the following year as a result of pancreatic cancer, aged 71.  The young Pavarotti had dreamt of becoming a goalkeeper for a football team but he later turned his attention to training as a singer.  His earliest influences were his father’s recordings of the Italian tenors, Beniamino Gigli, Tito Schipa and Enrico Caruso. But Pavarotti has said that his own favourite tenor was the Sicilian, Giuseppe di Stefano. Pavarotti experienced his first singing success as a member of a male voice choir from Modena, in which his father also sang.  Read more…

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NEW  Ascanio Sobrero - chemist

Professor who discovered nitroglycerine

The chemist Ascanio Sobrero, who discovered of the volatile compound that became known as nitroglycerine, was born on this day in 1812 in Casale Monferrato in Piedmont.  Nitroglycerine has a pharmaceutical use as a vasodilator, improving blood flow in the treatment of angina, but it is more widely known as the key ingredient in explosives such as dynamite and gelignite.  Its commercial potential was exploited not by Sobrero but by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish businessman and philanthropist who gave his name to the annually awarded Nobel Prizes.  Sobrero, aware of how much damage it could cause, had actually warned against nitroglycerine being used outside the laboratory.  Little is known about Sobrero’s early life, apart from being born in Casale Monferrato, a town about 60km (37 miles) east of Turin.  He studied medicine in Turin and Paris and then chemistry at the University of Giessen in Germany, earning his doctorate in 1832. In 1845 he returned to the University of Turin, becoming a professor there.  Sobrero had acquired some knowledge of explosives from the French chemist Théophile-Jules Pelouze, who had taught at the University of Turin while he was a student.  Read more…

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Piero della Francesca - Renaissance painter

Mathematician famous for exploring perspective

Piero della Francesca, recognised as one of the greatest painters of the early Renaissance, died on this day in 1492 in what was then Borgo Santo Sepolcro, near Arezzo.  He was thought to have been around 77 years old – his exact birth date is not known – and it has been popularly theorised that he was blind in the later years of his life, although evidence to support the claim is sketchy.  Della Francesca’s work was characterised by his exploration of perspective and geometric form, which was hardly surprising since in his own time he was as famous among his peers as a mathematician and geometer as well as an artist.  He came to be recognized in the 20th century as having made a major contribution to the Renaissance.  His fresco cycle The History – or Legend – of the True Cross in the Basilica of San Francesco in Arezzo, painted between 1452 and 1466, and his diptych – two-panelled – portraits of Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza - the Dukes of Urbino, dated at between 1465 and 1472, which can be seen in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, are among his best-known works.  Read more…

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Gillo Pontecorvo - film director

Most famous film was banned in France

The film director Gillo Pontecorvo, whose best-known film, La battaglia di Algeri (The Battle of Algiers) won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1966 and was nominated for three Academy Awards, died on this day in 2006 in Rome, aged 86.  A former journalist who had been an Italian Resistance volunteer and a member of the Italian Communist Party, Pontecorvo had been in declining health for some years, although he continued to make documentary films and commercials until shortly before his death.  Although it was made a decade or so after the peak years of the movement, La battaglia di Algeri is in the tradition of Italian neorealism, with newsreel style footage and mainly non-professional actors.  Pontecorvo also won acclaim for his 1960 film Kapò, set in a Second World War concentration camp, and Burn! (1969) - titled Queimada in Italy - which was about the creation of a so-called banana republic on the fictitious Caribbean island of Queimada, starring Marlon Brando and loosely based on the failed slave revolution in Guadeloupe.  Kapò was also was nominated for an Oscar.  Read more…


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Ascanio Sobrero - chemist

Professor who discovered nitroglycerine

Ascanio Sobrero discovered nitroglycerine during
an experiment in his laboratory at Turin University

The chemist Ascanio Sobrero, who discovered of the volatile compound that became known as nitroglycerine, was born on this day in 1812 in Casale Monferrato in Piedmont.

Nitroglycerine has a pharmaceutical use as a vasodilator, improving blood flow in the treatment of angina, but it is more widely known as the key ingredient in explosives such as dynamite and gelignite.

Its commercial potential was exploited not by Sobrero but by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish businessman and philanthropist who gave his name to the annually awarded Nobel Prizes.

Sobrero, aware of how much damage it could cause, had actually warned against nitroglycerine being used outside the laboratory.

Little is known about Sobrero’s early life, apart from his being born in Casale Monferrato, a town about 60km (37 miles) east of Turin.

He studied medicine in Turin and Paris and then chemistry at the University of Giessen in Germany, earning his doctorate in 1832. In 1845 he returned to the University of Turin, becoming a professor there.

Alfred Nobel, pictured at around the time he met
Sobrero in Paris in 1850

Sobrero had acquired some knowledge of explosives from the French chemist Théophile-Jules Pelouze, who had taught at the University of Turin while he was a student.

Around 1846 or 1847, during research, Sobrero experimented by adding glycerol to a mixture of concentrated nitric and sulfuric acids. The result was a colorless, oily liquid with a sweet, burning taste.

When he tried heating a drop in a test tube, it exploded. The fragments of glass scarred Sobrero’s face and hands. The liquid’s volatility frightened Sobrero so much that he told no one about it for more than a year. After he did finally announce his discovery, which he called pyroglycerine, he wrote to fellow chemists warning against its use, expanding on his misgivings in academic journals.

Nobel, whose family owned an armaments business in St Petersburg, had been, like Sobrero, a student at the University of Turin, albeit somewhat later.  They happened to meet in Paris in 1850.  On learning about Sobrero’s discovery, Nobel became interested in finding a way to control nitroglycerine’s explosive qualities.

It took him many years to achieve that ambition and there were mishaps along the way, not least in 1864, after the family had returned to Sweden from Russia, when an explosion at their factory in Heleneborg, Stockholm, killed five people, including Nobel's younger brother Emil. Undaunted, Nobel continued his work and in 1867 he obtained a patent as the inventor of dynamite. He went on to invent gelignite and ballistite, a predecessor of cordite.

The Nobel family business was still producing dynamite
to Alfred's patented formula in the 1930s

The inventions made Nobel’s fortune. He unfailingly acknowledged Sobrero as the man who had discovered nitroglycerine, although Sobrero sometimes claimed he was not given sufficient recognition.

At other times, by contrast, he gave the impression he would rather Nobel did not mention his name at all.  He was on record as saying: “When I think of all the victims killed during nitroglycerine explosions, and the terrible havoc that has been wreaked, which in all probability will continue to occur in the future, I am almost ashamed to admit to be its discoverer.”

Sobrero died in Turin in 1888, at the age of 75.  He is buried at the cemetery of Cavallermaggiore, about 40km (25 miles) south of Turin.

Piazza Mazzini in Casale Monferrato, which is named
after the revolutionary hero Giuseppe Mazzini

Travel tip:

Situated on the south bank of the Po river, Casale Monferrato is a town of some 36,000 inhabitants based on a former Roman city, later turned into a major citadel by the Gonzaga family. The historic centre is itself centred on Piazza Mazzini, the site of the Roman forum. The square is dominated by an 1843 equestrian statue by Abbondio Sangiorgio of King Charles Albert of Piedmont-Sardinia.  To the east of the square is the Lombard Romanesque cathedral of Sant'Evasio, founded in 742 and rebuilt in the early 12th century, occupying the site of a Roman temple dedicated to Jupiter.  See also the castle on Piazza Castello, a fortress that probably dates from 1000, built to a quadrilateral plan with corner towers and a moat.

An internal quadrangle at the University of Turin, where
Sobrero was a student and later a professor

Travel tip:

The University of Turin, where Sobrero studied and taught, is one of the oldest universities in Europe, founded in 1406 by Prince Ludovico di Savoia. It consistently ranks among the top five universities in Italy and is an important centre for research. The university departments are spread around 13 facilities, with the main university buildings in Via Giuseppe Verdi, close to Turin’s famous Mole Antonelliana.

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11 October

Cesare Andrea Bixio - composer and lyricist

Pioneer of Italian film music left catalogue of classic songs

Cesare Andrea Bixio, the composer behind such classic Italian songs as Vivere, Mamma, La mia canzone al vento and Parlami d'amore Mariù, was born in Naples on this day in 1896.   Bixio enjoyed many years of popularity during which his compositions were performed by some of Italy's finest voices, including Beniamino Gigli, Tito Schipa and Carlo Buti, and later became staples for Giuseppe Di Stefano and Luciano Pavarotti.  He was also a pioneer of film soundtrack music, having been invited to compose a score for the first Italian movie with sound, La Canzone dell'Amore, in 1930. As well as writing more than 1,000 songs in his career, Bixio penned the soundtracks for more than 60 films.  Bixio's father, Carlo, was an engineer from Genoa; his grandfather was General Nino Bixio, a prominent military figure in the drive for Italian Unification and one of the organisers of Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand.  Carlo, who died when Cesare was only six years old, married a Neapolitan, Anna Vilone, who wanted him to pursue a career in engineering, like his father. However, after developing an interest in music at an early age he had other ideas.  Read more…

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Anita Cerquetti – soprano

Performer with a powerful voice had brief moment in the spotlight

Anita Cerquetti, the singer whose remarkable voice received widespread praise when she stood in for a temperamental Maria Callas in Rome, died on this day in 2014 in Perugia.  Cerquetti had been singing the title role in Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma at Teatro San Carlo in Naples in 1958 when Callas, who had been singing the same part in Rome, walked out after the first act on the opening night.  Despite Callas claiming that her voice was troubling her, the incident, in front of Italian President Giovanni Gronchi, created a major scandal.  Fortunately the performances in Rome and Naples were on alternate days and so for several weeks Cerquetti travelled back and forth between the two opera houses, which were 225km (140 miles) apart. The achievement left her exhausted and three years later she retired from singing and her magnificent voice was heard no more.  Cerquetti was born in Montecosaro near Macerata in the Marche. She studied the violin, but after a music professor heard her singing at a wedding she was persuaded to switch to vocal studies. After just one year she made her debut singing Aida in Spoleto in 1951.  Read more…

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Pierre-Napoleon Bonaparte – adventurer

Colourful life of Italian-born prince

Prince Pierre-Napoleon Bonaparte, a nephew of the Emperor Napoleon, was born on this day in 1815 in Rome.  He was to become notorious for shooting dead a journalist after his family was criticised in a newspaper article.  Bonaparte was the son of Napoleon’s brother, Lucien, and his second wife, Alexandrine de Bleschamp. He grew up with his nine siblings on the family estate at Canino, about 40km (25 miles) north of Rome.  The young Bonaparte helped to keep bandits at bay, spending a lot of time with the local shepherds who were armed and had dogs to protect them.  He set out on a career of adventure, joining bands of insurgents in the Romagna region as a teenager.  In 1831 he spent time in prison for a minor offence and was banished from the Papal States.  He went to the United States to join his uncle, Joseph Bonaparte, in New Jersey. He spent some time in New York before going to serve in the army of the President of Columbia. At the age of 17 he became the President’s aide and was given the rank of Commander.  Read more…


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10 October

Andrea Zanzotto - poet

Writer drew inspiration from landscapes of Veneto

Andrea Zanzotto, who was regarded as one of Italy’s greatest 20th century poets, was born on this day in 1921 in Pieve di Soligo, the village near Treviso where he lived almost all of his life.  Zanzotto, who spent 40 years as a secondary school teacher, wrote 15 books of poetry, two prose works, two volumes of critical articles and translations of French philosophers such as Michaux, Leiris and Bataille.  His first book of poetry, Dietro il paesaggio (1951), won a literary award judged by several noteworthy Italian poets. Critics reserved their greatest acclaim for his sixth volume, La beltà (1968), in which he questioned the ability of words to reflect truth.  Zanzotto, whose verse was consistently erudite and creative, was known for his innovative engagement with language and his fascination with the rugged landscapes of the Veneto, from which he drew inspiration and provided him with much symbolism.  His upbringing was difficult at times because his father, Giovanni Zanzotto, a painter who has trained at the Bologna Academy of Fine Arts, was a committed supporter of the Socialist politician Giacomo Matteotti, who was murdered by Fascist thugs in 1924 a few days after accusing Mussolini’s party of electoral fraud.  Read more…

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Stefano Magaddino - mafioso

Longest-ruling Mafia boss in US history

Stefano Magaddino, the Sicilian mafioso who went on to enjoy the longest period of power enjoyed by any crime boss in the history of the American Mafia, was born on this day in 1891 in Castellammare del Golfo.  Known as ‘The Undertaker’ or ‘Don Stefano’, Magaddino controlled a crime empire radiating outwards from Buffalo, on the shores of Lake Erie in New York State.  Geographically, it was a vast area, stretching from the eastern fringe of  New York State to its western outposts in Ohio and extending north-east almost as far as Montreal in Canada, its tentacles reaching across the Canadian border from Buffalo even into Toronto.  One of the original members of The Commission, the committee of seven crime bosses set up in 1931 to control Mafia activity across the whole of the United States, Magaddino was head of the Buffalo Family for more than half a century.  He died in 1974 at the age of 82, having survived all the other Commission members, including the founder Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano and Chicago boss Al Capone, with the exception of his cousin from Castellammare, Joseph Bonanno, who along with Luciano headed one of the Five Families of the New York underworld.  Read more…

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Daniele Comboni – Saint

Missionary who worked miracles after his death

The Feast Day - festa - of Saint Daniel Comboni - San Daniele - is held on this day every year in Italy.  Saint Daniel, who was a Roman Catholic missionary to Africa, died on this day at the age of 50 in 1881 in Khartoum in the Sudan. He was canonised in 2003 by Pope John Paul II in recognition of two miracle cures claimed to have been brought about by his intercession.  Comboni was born in 1831 at Limone sul Garda in the province of Brescia in Lombardy in northern Italy.  His parents were poor and he was the only one of their eight children to live to become an adult.  Comboni was sent away to school in Verona and after completing his studies prepared to become a priest.  He met and was profoundly influenced by missionaries who had come back from Central Africa and three years after his ordination set off with five other priests to continue their work.  After they reached Khartoum some of his fellow missionaries became ill and died because of the climate, sickness and poverty they encountered, but Comboni remained determined to continue with his mission.  On his return to Italy, while praying for guidance at the tomb of Saint Peter in Rome, Comboni came up with the idea of a missionary project to save Africa.  Read more…


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9 October

Gabriele Falloppio – anatomist and physician

Professor made key discoveries about human reproduction   

Gabriele Falloppio, one of the most important physicians and anatomists of the 16th century, died on this day in 1562 in Padua.  Often known by his Latin name Fallopius, he lived only 39 years yet made his mark with a series of discoveries that expanded medical knowledge significantly.  He worked mainly on the anatomy of the head and the reproductive organs in both sexes and is best known for identifying the tubes that connect the ovaries to the uterus, which are known even today as Fallopian tubes.  He also discovered several major nerves of the head and face, and identified many of the components of the hearing and balance systems.  Falloppio described all of the findings of his research in a book published a year before he died, entitled Observationes anatomicae.  Educated initially in the classics, the death of his father plunged his family – noble but not wealthy – into financial difficulties, prompting him to pursue the security of a career in the church, becoming a priest in 1542. Falloppio retained an ambition to study medicine, however, and when the family’s finances had improved sufficiently he enrolled at the University of Ferrara. Read more…

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Vajont Dam Disaster

Catastrophic flood may have killed 2,500

Prone to earthquakes because of its unfortunate geology, Italy has suffered many natural disasters over the centuries, yet the horrific catastrophe that took place on this day in 1963 in an Alpine valley about 100km north of Venice, killing perhaps as many as 2,500 people, was to a significant extent man-made.  The Vajont Dam Disaster happened when a section of a mountain straddling the border of the Veneto and Fruili-Venezia Giulia regions in the Fruilian Dolomites collapsed in a massive landslide, dumping 260 million cubic metres of forest, earth and rock into a deep, narrow reservoir created to generate hydroelectric power for Italy's industrial northern cities.  The chunk of Monte Toc that came away after days of heavy rain was the size of a small town yet within moments it was moving towards the water at 100km per hour (62mph) and hit the surface of the reservoir in less than a minute.  The effect was almost unimaginable.  Within seconds, 50 million cubic metres of water was displaced, creating a tsunami that rose to 250m high.  The dam held, but the colossal volume of water had nowhere to go but over the top and into the Piave valley below.  Read more…

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Salimbene di Adam – historian

Friar's records provided important information on history of Italy

Salimbene di Adam, a Franciscan friar, whose yearly chronicles became a valued source for historians, was born on this day in 1221 in Parma in Emilia-Romagna.  Sometimes also referred to as Salimbene di Parma, he was the son of Guido di Adam, a wealthy Parma citizen. Salimbene entered the Franciscan Order in 1238 and served his novitiate in the Monastery of Fano on the Adriatic coast.  As Fra Salimbene, he led a wandering existence and never held any office in his order. He transferred from one monastery to another, meeting notable people and becoming an eyewitness to historic events.  In the 1240s he travelled to Lucca, Pisa and Cremona, and also visited France.  On his return to Italy in 1248 he went to Ferrarra where he stayed for several years. But he then went on his travels again, staying in Franciscan convents in northern Italy.  Fra Salimbene began to write his Chronicles (Cronica) in 1282 and continued to work on them until his death.  Organised as yearly records, the Chronicles cover the years 1168 to 1288 starting with the founding of the city of Alessandria to the south of Milan by the Lombard league.  Read more…


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8 October

Vincenzo Peruggia – art thief

Gallery worker who stole the Mona Lisa

Vincenzo Peruggia, a handyman who earned notoriety when he pulled off the most famous art theft in history, was born on this day in 1881 in Dumenza in Lombardy, a village on the Swiss border.  Peruggia stole Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa from the Louvre in Paris and evaded detection for more than two years, even though he was questioned by police over the painting’s disappearance.  It was only when he attempted to sell the iconic painting - thought to be of Lisa del Giocondo, the wife of a cloth and silk merchant - to an art dealer in Florence that he was arrested.  Experts accept that, although the Mona Lisa - sometimes known in Italy as La Gioconda - was a notable work, it is open to debate whether it was the best of all the magnificent pieces created by the Tuscan Renaissance genius, whose other masterpieces included The Last Supper and The Virgin of the Rocks and other outstanding portraits, such as The Lady with an Ermine.  Yet it is without question the most famous painting in the world and enjoys that status largely because of Peruggia’s audacious crime.  The theft took place on August 21, 1911, a Monday morning. Read more…

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Antonio Cabrini - World Cup winner

Star of 1982 is a former coach of the Italy women’s team

World Cup winner and former Juventus defender Antonio Cabrini was born on this day in 1957. Cabrini, who until 2017 was head coach of the Italian women's national team, was born on October 8, 1957 in Cremona.  He took his first steps in professional football with his local team, Cremonese, and moved from there to Atalanta of Bergamo, but it was with the Turin club Juventus that he made his mark, forming part of a formidable defence that included goalkeeper Dino Zoff plus the centre-back Claudio Gentile and the sweeper Gaetano Scirea.  During Cabrini's 13 seasons in Turin, the Bianconeri won the Serie A title six times, as well as the 1985 European Cup, plus the Coppa Italia twice, the UEFA Cup and the European Super Cup, and the Intercontinental Cup.  Milan's Paolo Maldini tends to be recognised as the greatest defensive player produced by Italy but Cabrini's abilities put him only just behind.  Known by his fans as Bell'Antonio for his good looks and the elegance of his football, Cabrini's game possessed all the qualities required of a left-back.  His positional sense and speed of thought served him well in defensive duties and he was also exceptional going forward.  Read more...

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Giulio Caccini - composer

16th century singer who helped create opera genre

The singer and composer Giulio Caccini, who was a key figure in the advance of Baroque style in music and wrote musical dramas that would now be recognised as opera, was born on this day in 1551.  The father of the composer composer Francesca Caccini and the singer Settimia Caccini, he served for some years at the court of the Medici family in Florence, by whom he was also employed, as a somewhat unusual sideline, as a spy.  Caccini wrote the music for three operas and published two collections of songs and madrigals.  His songs for solo voice accompanied by one musical instrument gained him particular fame and he is remembered now for one particular song, a madrigal entitled Amarilli, mia bella, which is often sung by voice students.  Caccini is thought to have been born in Tivoli, just outisde Rome, the son of a carpenter, Michelangelo Caccini, from Montopoli, near Pisa.  His younger brother, Giovanni, became a sculptor and architect in Florence.  He developed his voice as a boy soprano in the prestigious Cappella Giulia at St. Peter’s basilica in Rome, studying under maestro di cappella Giovanni Animuccia.  Read more…

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