NEW - Flavius Stilicho - Roman general
Last defender of the Western Empire
The military commander Flavius Stilicho, who for part of his career could be considered the most powerful man and de facto ruler of the Western Roman Empire, was executed on this day in 408 in Ravenna. Stilicho had successfully defended the empire against several barbarian invasions and gained his power through acting as regent when the death of Theodosius I in 395 left the Western Empire in the hands of Honorius, his 10-year-old son. But as a soldier of partly Vandal descent, Stilicho had always aroused suspicion within the Roman court and his failure to deal with the advance across northern Europe of the rebellious Constantine III, leader of the Romans in Britain, combined with rumours that he planned to install his own son, Eucherius, as emperor of the Eastern Empire following the death of Arcadius, sparked a mutiny of the Roman army at Ticinum - modern Pavia - August 13, 408. Stilicho retreated to Ravenna, then capital of the Western Empire, where he was imprisoned on the orders of Honorius and executed, along with Eucherius, on August 22. Born around 359, at a time of political turbulence and rivalries within a Roman Empire in decline, Stilicho is thought to have been the son of a soldier of Vandal origin. Read more…
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History’s first air raid
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Balloon bombs dropped on Venice
Venice suffered the first successful air raid in the history of warfare on this day in 1849. It came six months after Austria had defeated the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia in the First Italian War of Independence as the Austrians sought to regain control of Venice, where the revolutionary leader Daniele Manin had established the Republic of San Marco. The city, over which Manin’s supporters had seized control in March 1848, was under siege by the Austrians, whose victory over the Piedmontese army in March 1849 had enabled them to concentrate more resources on defeating the Venetians. They had regained much of the mainland territory of Manin’s republic towards the end of 1848 and were now closing in on the city itself, having decided that cutting off resources while periodically bombarding the city from the sea would bring Venice’s capitulation. However, because of the shallow lagoons and the strength of Venice’s coastal defences, there were still parts of the city that were out of the range of the Austrian artillery. It was at this point that one of Austrian commander Josef von Radetzky’s artillery officers, Lieutenant Franz von Uchatius, came up with the unlikely idea of attaching bombs to unmanned balloons. Read more…
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Bruno Pontecorvo - nuclear physicist
Defection to Soviet Union sparked unsolved mystery
Bruno Pontecorvo, a nuclear physicist whose defection to the Soviet Union in 1950 led to suspicions of espionage after he had worked on research programmes in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, was born on this day in 1913 in Marina di Pisa. One of eight children born to Massimo Pontecorvo - a Jewish textile manufacturer who owned three factories - Bruno was from a family rich in intellectual talent. One of his brothers was the film director Gillo Pontecorvo, another the geneticist Guido Pontecorvo. After high school, he enrolled at the University of Pisa to study engineering, but after two years switched to physics in 1931. He received a doctorate to study at the University of Rome La Sapienza, where Enrico Fermi had gathered together a group of promising young scientists, whom he dubbed “the Via Panisperna boys” after the name of the street where the Institute of Physics was then situated. Fermi described the 18-year-old Pontecorvo as one of the brightest young men he had met and invited Pontecorvo to work with him on his experiments bombarding atomic nuclei with slow neutrons. Read more…
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Giada De Laurentiis - TV chef
Food Network star who was born in Rome
The TV presenter, chef, author and restaurateur Giada Pamela De Laurentiis was born in Rome on this day in 1970. A classically-trained chef who learned her craft in Paris, she worked in the kitchens of a number of restaurants in Los Angeles before breaking into television. Since 2003 she has been a regular on the Food Network, the American cable channel. Born into a theatre and movie background, De Laurentiis takes her name from her mother, the actress Veronica De Laurentiis, whose parents were the producer Dino De Laurentiis and the actress Silvana Mangano. Her father is the actor-producer Alex De Benedetti. Giada spent her first seven years in Rome, where her mother still has a home near the Spanish Steps, but after her parents divorced she and her sisters moved to Los Angeles. Her grandfather had a home in Hollywood and had by then become a restaurateur and Giada has memories of spending time in the kitchen of his DDL Foodshow delicatessen and restaurant in Los Angeles, where she acquired her interest in cooking. Her own entry into the catering business came via a roundabout route. Read more…
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Giacomo Radini-Tedeschi – bishop
Progressive priest who shaped the destiny of a future Pope
Giacomo Radini-Tedeschi, Bishop of Bergamo, who was a mentor for the future Pope John XXIII, died on this day in 1914 in Bergamo. He was Bishop of the Diocese of Bergamo from 1905 until his death and is remembered with respect because of his strong involvement in social issues at the beginning of the 20th century when he sought to understand the problems of working class Italians. Radini-Tedeschi was born in 1857 into a wealthy, noble family living in Piacenza in Emilia-Romagna. He was ordained as a priest in 1879 and then became professor of Church Law in the seminary of Piacenza. In 1890 he joined the Secretariat of State of the Holy See and was sent on a number of diplomatic missions. In 1905 he was named Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bergamo by Pope Pius X and was consecrated by him in the Sistine Chapel. Radini-Tedeschi was a strong supporter of Catholic trade unions and backed the workers at a textile plant in Ranica, a district of Bergamo Province, during a labour dispute. Working for him as his secretary at the time was a young priest named Angelo Roncalli who had been born at Sotto il Monte just outside Bergamo into a large farming family. Read more…
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Luca Marenzio – composer
Madrigal writer influenced Monteverdi
Luca Marenzio, a prolific composer of madrigals during the late Renaissance period, died on this day in 1599 in the garden of the Villa Medici on Monte Pincio in Rome. Marenzio wrote at least 500 madrigals, some of which are considered to be the most famous examples of the form, and he was an important influence on the composer Claudio Monteverdi. Born at Coccaglio, a small town near Brescia in 1553, Marenzio was one of seven children belonging to a poor family, but he received some early musical training at Brescia Cathedral where he was a choirboy. It is believed he went to Mantua with the maestro di cappella from Brescia to serve the Gonzaga family as a singer. Marenzio was then employed as a singer in Rome by Cardinal Cristoforo Madruzzo and, after the Cardinal’s death, he served at the court of Cardinal Luigi d’Este. He travelled to Ferrara with Luigi d’Este and took part in the wedding festivities for Vincenzo Gonzaga and Margherita Farnese. While he was there he wrote two books of madrigals and dedicated them to Alfonso II and Lucrezia d’Este. Read more…
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Book of the Day: Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire, by Simon Baker
Simon Baker read Classics at Oxford University. In 1999 he joined the BBC's award-winning History Unit where he has worked on Timewatch and a wide range of programmes about the classical world. He was the Development Producer on the BBC One series Ancient Rome - The Rise and Fall of an Empire. This is his second book.
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