NEW - Vincenzo Lancia - racing driver and engineer
Founder of ground-breaking car maker
Vincenzo Lancia, the founder of one of the most important car manufacturers in the history of Italy’s automobile industry, died on this day in 1937 in Turin. He was only 55 years old and had suffered a heart attack, his unexpected death coming just as the aerodynamic Lancia Aprilia, second only to the 1922 Lambda among Lancia cars to have a profound impact on auto design across the world, was going into full production. Vincenzo, who worked with the brilliant designer Battista Pinin Farina in the later part of his career, is regarded as one of the three foundational figures of Italian car making, alongside Fiat founder Giovanni Agnelli, who was the first to manufacture cars on an industrial scale, and Enzo Ferrari, who led the way in Italy’s sports car culture. Italy has a long tradition of stylish high-performance cars, with Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, Alfa Romeo and Lancia recognised as the standard bearers. Read more…
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Totò – comic actor
60 years on, remembered still as Italy’s funniest performer
The comic actor Antonio De Curtis, universally known as Totò and who was still winning polls as the most popular Italian comedian of all time more than a half-century after his death, was born on this day in 1898 in Naples. Totò had a distinguished career in theatre, wrote poetry and sang, but is best remembered for the 97 films in which he appeared between 1937 and his death in 1967, many of which were made simply as a platform for his inimitable talent. Although he worked in dramatic roles for some of Italy’s most respected directors, it was for his comedy that he was most appreciated. His characters were typically eccentric, his acting style sometimes almost extravagantly expressive both physically and vocally. In his humour, he drew on his body and his face to maximum effect but also possessed an inherent sense of timing in the way he delivered his lines. Read more…
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Destruction of Monte Cassino Abbey
Historic monastery flattened in Allied bombing raid
The Abbey of Monte Cassino, established in 529 and the oldest Benedictine monastery in the world, was destroyed by Allied bombers on this day in 1944 in what is now acknowledged as one of the biggest strategic errors of the Second World War on the Allied side. The Abbey was attacked despite an agreement signed by both sides with the Vatican that the historic building would be respected as occupying neutral territory. But Allied commanders, who had seen their infantrymen suffer heavy casualties in trying to advance along the Liri valley, the route of the main highway between Naples and Rome, were convinced that the Germans were using the Abbey, which commands sweeping views of the valley, at least as a point from which to direct operations. This perception was reinforced by a radio intercept, subsequently alleged to have been wrongly translated. Read more…
Charlie Cairoli - circus clown
Milan-born performer who became a Blackpool legend
The circus clown Charlie Cairoli, who would at his peak set a world record by appearing at the Blackpool Tower Circus in England for 40 consecutive seasons, was born in Affori, now a suburb of Milan but then a town in its own right, on this day in 1910. Cairoli performed at the Tower for the first time in 1939 and returned every year until 1979, quitting only when his health began to fail him. The run was not broken even by the outbreak of the Second World War, which Britain entered soon after he arrived, or his own arrest as a suspected ‘enemy alien’. He was the Tower’s most popular attraction for almost all of those years. Cairoli, though born in Italy, was actually from a French family, albeit one of Italian descent, who christened him Hubert Jean Charles Cairoli. His father, Jean-Marie, was also a clown; his mother, Eugenie, came from another French circus family with Italian heritage. Read more…
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Galileo Galilei – astronomer and physicist
Scholar has been judged to be the founder of modern science
Renaissance scientist Galileo Galilei was born on this day in 1564 in Pisa. His astronomical observations confirmed the phases of Venus, discovered the four largest satellites of Jupiter and analysed sunspots. Also among his inventions was a military compass. Galileo was educated at a monastery near Florence and considered entering the priesthood but he enrolled instead at the University of Pisa to study medicine. In 1581 he noticed a swinging chandelier being moved to swing in larger and smaller arcs by air currents. He experimented with two swinging pendulums and found they kept time together although he started one with a large sweep and the other with a smaller sweep. It was almost 100 years before a swinging pendulum was used to create an accurate timepiece. He talked his father into letting him study mathematics and natural philosophy instead of medicine. Read more…
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Carlo Maria Martini – Cardinal
Liberal leanings prevented scholar’s elevation to the papacy
Carlo Maria Martini, who was once a candidate to become Pope, was born on this day in 1927 in Orbassano in the province of Turin. As Cardinal Martini, he was known to be tolerant in areas of sexuality and strong on ecumenism, and he was the leader of the liberal opposition to Pope John Paul II. He published more than 50 books, which sold millions of copies worldwide. Martini was a contender for the Papacy in the 2005 conclave and, according to Vatican sources at the time, he received more votes than Joseph Ratzinger in the first round But Ratzinger, who was considered the more conservative of the candidates, ended up with a higher number of votes in subsequent rounds and was elected Pope Benedict XVI. Martini had entered the Jesuit order in 1944 when he was 17 and he was ordained at the age of 25, which was considered unusually early. Read more…
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Book of the Day: Lancia and De Virgilio: At the Centre, by Geoffrey Goldberg
Geoffrey Goldberg is a Chicago-based architect and a long-standing Lancia enthusiast, the owner of a Lancia Aurelia. Having been granted full access to the De Virgilio family archives, he uses original documents, technical drawings, and photographs to explain the ideas and personalities at Lancia and profile De Virgilio himself.
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