29 September

Enrico Fermi – nuclear physicist

Scientist from Rome who created world’s first nuclear reactor

Enrico Fermi, who has been called the architect of the nuclear age and even the father of the atomic bomb, was born on this day in 1901 in Rome.  Fermi, who won a Nobel Prize in 1938, created the world’s first nuclear reactor, the so-called Chicago Pile-1, after he had settled in the United States, and also worked on the Manhattan Project, which was the code name for the secret US research project aimed at developing nuclear weapons in the Second World War.  The third child of Alberto Fermi, an official in Italy’s Ministry of Railways, and Ida de Gattis, a school teacher, Fermi took an interest in science from an early age, inspired by a book about physics he had discovered in the local market in Campo de’ Fiori in Rome, written in Latin by a Jesuit priest in about 1840.  He read avidly as he was growing up, conducting many experiments. After high school, he was granted a place at the prestigious Scuola Normale Superiore, part of the University of Pisa, where it became clear the depth of knowledge he had already acquired was greater than that of many of his professors. It was not long before they began asking him to organise seminars in quantum physics. He graduated with honours in 1922.  Read more…

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Silvio Piola - footballer

Modest star who remains Italy’s greatest goalscorer

Silvio Piola, a forward whose career tally of 364 goals between 1930 and 1954 remains the most scored by any professional player in the history of football in Italy, was born on this day in 1913 in Robbio Lomellina, a small town about 50km (31 miles) southwest of Milan.  Of those goals, 274 were scored in Serie A and 30 for the Italian national team, with whom he was a World Cup winner in 1938, scoring twice in the final against Hungary.  No other player has scored so many goals in the top flight of Italian football and only two others - Gigi Riva and Giuseppe Meazza - have scored more while wearing the azzurri shirt.  Other records still held by Piola include all-time highest Serie A goalscorer for three different clubs - his hometown club Pro Vercelli, Lazio, and Novara - and one of only two players to have scored six goals in a single match.  Until recently, Piola held a unique double record of being both the youngest player to score two goals in a Serie A match and the oldest, having scored twice for Pro Vercelli in a 5-4 win away to Alessandria in 1931 when he was 17 years and 104 days and twice for Novara against Lazio in a match in 1953, at the age of 39 years and 127 days.  Read more…

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Silvio Berlusconi - entrepreneur and politician

Businessman who was four times PM

Silvio Berlusconi, who has served as prime minister of Italy in four Governments, was born on this day in 1936 in Milan.  Head of a large media empire and owner of the football club AC Milan, Berlusconi was prime minister for a total of nine years, making him the longest-serving post-war prime minister and the third longest-serving since Italian unification.  Berlusconi was the eldest of three children born to a bank employee and his wife and, after completing his secondary school education, he studied Law at the Università Statale in Milan, graduating with honours in 1961.  While at University he played the double bass in a group and occasionally performed as a cruise ship crooner. In later life he was to co-write both AC Milan’s and Forza Italia’s anthems and, in collaboration with Mariano Apicella, a Neapolitan singer and musician, he wrote the lyrics for two albums of Neapolitan-style songs, which Apicella put to music.  In the late 1960s, Berlusconi’s company, Edilnord, built 4,000 residential apartments in a new 'town' he called Milano Due and he was able to use the profits to fund his future businesses.  Read more…

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Giorgio Frassineti - politician

Mayor who proposed museum of Fascism

Giorgio Frassineti, the politician famous for proposing a museum dedicated to Fascism in Predappio, the birthplace of Benito Mussolini, was born on this day in 1964 in Forlì in Emilia-Romagna.  A member of the centre-left Partito Democratico, Frassineti served as mayor of Predappio from 2009 to 2019.  Predappio, around 18km (11 miles) south of Forlì, has a population of less than 6,500 and is not on the tourist trail.  Apart from by private car, it is accessible only by bus from Forlì, which is a pleasant small city but one that tourists mainly pass through on the way to Rimini and the Adriatic coast.  Yet 50,000 visitors a year descend on Predappio, mainly to visit the house where Mussolini was born in 1883, or the family mausoleum where his body was laid to rest following his execution by Italian partisans in 1945. Despite his World War Two alliance with the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, Mussolini is still admired by some Italians and Predappio’s main street has shops that openly sell Fascist memorabilia, in part a cynical exploitation of the village’s evolution as a place of pilgrimage for Mussolini supporters, but in part also a reflection of the country’s more ambivalent attitude towards his memory.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Last Man Who Knew Everything: The Life and Times of Enrico Fermi, Father of the Nuclear Age, by David N Schwartz

In 1942, a team at the University of Chicago achieved what no one had before: a nuclear chain reaction. At the forefront of this breakthrough stood Enrico Fermi. Straddling the ages of classical physics and quantum mechanics, equally at ease with theory and experiment, Fermi truly was the last man who knew everything-at least about physics. But he was also a complex figure who was a part of both the Italian Fascist Party and the Manhattan Project, and a less-than-ideal father and husband who nevertheless remained one of history's greatest mentors. Based on new archival material and exclusive interviews, The Last Man Who Knew Everything lays bare the enigmatic life of a colossus of twentieth century physics.

David N Schwartz has worked at the US Department of State, the Brookings Institution, and Goldman Sachs in both London and New York. He has published widely on US strategic nuclear weapons policy, NATO, and foreign policy. His father, Melvin Schwartz, shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the muon neutrino.

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28 September

NEW - Alessandro Tassoni – poet

Writer famed for legendary bucket in a belfry

The writer Alessandro Tassoni, who became famous for a poem about an historic battle which included a story about a stolen bucket, was born on this day in 1565 in Modena in Emilia Romagna.  Tassoni’s bucket, which inspired his mock-heroic poem La secchia rapita (The Rape of the Bucket), is still on public display to this day in the belfry of Modena Cathedral. According to some critics, his poem was one of the earliest - and best - Italian poems of its type, and it became very popular in Italy and abroad.  Tassoni, who also wrote about politics and was a literary critic, was born into a noble family. He lost both of his parents at an early age and was brought up by his grandfather. He first saw the bucket in Modena Cathedral when he was taken there by his grandfather.  At the age of 13, he was taught Latin and Greek and he went on to study philosophy, law, and rhetoric at the universities of Bologna, Pisa, and Ferrara.  In 1597 he entered the service of Cardinal Ascanio Colonna and went with him to Spain as his first secretary. After his return to Italy, Tassoni went to live in Rome.  Read more…

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Filippo Illuminato - partisan

Teenager who gave his life for his city

The partisan fighter Filippo Illuminato died on this day in 1943 in Naples.  He was among more than 300 Italians killed in an uprising known as the Quattro giornate di Napoli - the Four Days of Naples - which successfully liberated the city from occupying Nazi forces ahead of the arrival of the first Allied forces in the city on 1 October.  Illuminato’s memory has been marked in a number of ways in the southern Italian city, honoured because he was only 13 years old when he was killed by German gunfire in a street battle in the famous Piazza Trieste e Trento, just a few steps from the Royal Palace. His last act had been to blow up a German armoured car.  Born into a poor family, Illuminato was working as an apprentice mechanic when he decided to join the uprising, which was sparked by a brutal crackdown imposed by the Nazis in response to the Italian government’s decision to surrender to the Allies, confirmed in the signing of the Armistice of Cassabile on 3 September on the island of Sicily.  The German forces, which had numbered 20,000, had responded to the news by banning all assemblies and introducing a curfew.  Read more…

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Pietro Badoglio - soldier and politician

Controversial general who turned against Mussolini

Marshal Pietro Badoglio, who was a general in the Italian Army in both World Wars and became Italy’s wartime prime minister after the fall of Mussolini, was born on this day in 1871 in the village of Grazzano Monferrato in Piedmont.  He was Mussolini’s Chief of Staff between 1925 and 1940, although his relationship with the Fascist dictator was fractious.  Indeed, he ultimately played a key part in Mussolini’s downfall in 1943, encouraging the Fascist Grand Council to remove him as leader and advising King Victor Emmanuel III in the lead-up to Mussolini’s arrest and imprisonment in July of that year, after which he was named as head of an emergency government.  It was Badoglio who then conducted the secret negotiations with the Allies that led to an armistice being signed barely five weeks later. However, historians are divided over whether he should be seen as an heroic figure, in part because of his role in the disastrous defeat for Italian forces at the Battle of Caporetto in the First World War, at a cost of 10,000 Italian deaths and 30,000 more wounded.  Badoglio hailed from a middle-class background. His father, Mario, was a small landowner.  Read more…

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Marcello Mastroianni – actor

Film star who immortalised the Trevi Fountain

Marcello Vincenzo Domenico Mastroianni, who grew up to star in some of the most iconic Italian films of the 20th century, was born on this day in 1924 in Fontana Liri, in the province of Frosinone in Lazio.  He was the son of Ida Irolle and Ottone Mastroianni, who ran a carpentry shop. His uncle, Umberto Mastroianni, was a sculptor.  At the age of 14, Marcello Mastroianni made his screen debut as an extra in a 1939 film called Marionette.  His career was interrupted by the Second World War, during which he was interned in a German prison camp until he managed to escape and go into hiding in Venice.  He made several minor film appearances after the war until he landed his first big role in Atto d’accusa, directed by Giacomo Gentilomo, in 1951.  Ten years later, Mastroianni had become an international celebrity, having starred in Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita opposite Anita Ekberg. He played a disillusioned tabloid journalist who spends his days and nights exploring Rome’s high society. The film is most famous for the scene in which Ekberg's character, Sylvia, wades into the Trevi Fountain.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Cambridge Companion to the Italian Renaissance, edited by Michael Wyatt 

The Renaissance in Italy continues to exercise a powerful hold on the popular imagination and on scholarly enquiry. Part of the Cambridge Companions to Culture series, The Italian Renaissance presents a lively, comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and current approach to the period that extends in Italy from the turn of the 14th century through the latter decades of the 16th. Addressed to students, scholars, and non-specialists, it introduces the richly varied materials and phenomena as well as the different methodologies through which the Renaissance is studied today both in the English-speaking world and in Italy. The chapters are organised around axes of humanism, historiography, and cultural production, and cover a wide variety of areas including literature, science, music, religion, technology, artistic production, and economics. The diffusion of the Renaissance throughout Italian territories is emphasised. Overall, the Companion provides an essential overview of a period that witnessed both a significant revalidation of the classical past and the development of new, vernacular, and increasingly secular values.

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Alessandro Tassoni – poet

Writer famed for legendary bucket in a belfry

Alessandro Tassoni was a political
commentator and literary critic

The writer Alessandro Tassoni, who became famous for a poem about an historic battle which included a story about a stolen bucket, was born on this day in 1565 in Modena in Emilia-Romagna.

Tassoni’s bucket, which inspired his mock-heroic poem La secchia rapita (The Rape of the Bucket), is still on public display to this day in the belfry of Modena Cathedral.  

According to some critics, his poem was one of the earliest - and best - Italian poems of its type, and it became very popular in Italy and abroad. 

Tassoni, who also wrote about politics and was a literary critic, was born into a noble family. He lost both of his parents at an early age and was brought up by his grandfather. He first saw the bucket in Modena Cathedral when he was taken there by his grandfather.

At the age of 13, he was taught Latin and Greek and he went on to study philosophy, law, and rhetoric at the universities of Bologna, Pisa, and Ferrara.  

In 1597 he entered the service of Cardinal Ascanio Colonna and went with him to Spain as his first secretary. After his return to Italy, Tassoni went to live in Rome.

He wrote a booklet, le Filippiche, which he published in 1612 anonymously because it attacked the Spanish domination of certain parts of Italy and he was afraid of reprisals. 

But the work became famous enough to attract the attention of Charles Emanuel I Duke of Savoy and in 1618 he hired Tassoni to work for him in Turin and gave him the title of first secretary.

The bucket of Tassoni's famous epic poem today
hangs in the belfry of the Torre della Ghirlandina

Tassoni went to work for Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi in 1626 and then he served under Francesco I d’Este, Duke of Modena. 

The poet died in 1635 in his home town of Modena and a statue of him was later erected in front of the city’s Ghirlandina, the cathedral’s bell tower.

Tassoni is also remembered for his political writing and his works of literary criticism, such as Considerazioni sopra le rime del Petrarca, and Pensieri diversi, an encyclopaedia covering scientific, literary, historical, and philosophical topics, but he is mainly remembered for his satirical poem about the bucket.

La secchia rapita was written by Tassoni between 1614 and 1615 and it was first published in Paris. It couldn’t be published in Italy until Tassoni had modified it to make it comply with the censorship rules imposed by the Catholic Church. 

Tassoni paid to have the first Italian edition bearing his own name published, and the final edition was published in 1630. 

The story related by the poem was loosely based on a war fought between Modena and Bologna in 1325. Most of the events in the poem are fictional, and it refers to a battle that had, in reality, been fought 100 years before the war. But the poem relates what  purports to be an episode when the soldiers from Modena stole a bucket from their Bolognese enemies.

This exploit was not reported by historians from that period. However, a bucket that is claimed to have been the one stolen has been on display in the Torre della Ghirlandina in Modena from Tassoni’s time up to the present day.

In the poem, the theft of the bucket results in a war, in which the Olympian Gods take part, in the tradition of Homer’s Iliad. The war is only resolved when the Pope intervenes to bring it to an end.

The poem references contemporary events and people who were alive at the same time as the author, and its primary purpose was to entertain readers.

For the last 20 years, Tassoni has been remembered in Modena when the city gives out the annual Alessandro Tassoni Literary Award.

The Ducal Palace in Modena, designed by Luigi
Bartolomeo Avanzini, dates back to 1635

Travel tip:

Modena is a city on the south side of the Po Valley in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, known for its car industry, because Ferrari, De Tomaso, Lamborghini, Pagani and Maserati have all been located there. The city is also well-known for its balsamic vinegar. Operatic tenor Luciano Pavarotti and soprano Mirella Freni were both born in Modena. One of the main sights in Modena is the huge, Baroque Ducal Palace, begun by Francesco I on the site of a former castle in 1635. His architect, Luigi Bartolomeo Avanzini, created a home for him that few European princes could match at the time. In the Galleria Estense, on the upper floor of the Palazzo dei Musei in Modena, is a one-metre high bust of Francesco I d’Este, Duke of Modena, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

Tassoni's statue

Travel tip:

The Cathedral of Modena and its bell tower, Torre della Ghirlandina, are both UNESCO World heritage sites. The tower stands more than 89 metres (292ft) tall and can be seen outside the city from all directions. Inside, there is the Sala della Secchia room, which has 15th century frescoes, and the tower also houses a copy of the oaken bucket, from the War of the Bucket referred to by Tassoni in his poem, which was fought between Modena and Bologna in 1325. The tower was built in 1179, with five floors, and was initially called Torre di San Geminiano. It was renamed after the top of the tower was decorated with two ghirlande - marble railings - during a later renovation. The statue of Alessandro Tassoni, which stands at the foot of the tower, was sculpted by Antonio Cavazza and erected in 1860.

Also on this day:

1871: The birth of soldier and politician Pietro Badoglio

1924: The birth of actor Marcello Mastroianni

1943: The death of 13-year-old partisan Filippo Illuminato

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27 September

Grazia Deledda - Nobel Prize winner

First Italian woman to be honoured

The novelist Grazia Deledda, who was the first of only two Italian women to be made a Nobel laureate when she won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1926, was born on this day in 1871 in the city of Nuoro in Sardinia.  A prolific writer from the age of 13, she published around 50 novels or story collections over the course of her career, most of them drawing on her own experience of life in the rugged Sardinian countryside.  The Nobel prize was awarded "for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general."  Deledda’s success came at the 11th time of asking, having been first nominated in 1913. The successful nomination came from Henrik Schuck, a literature historian at the Swedish Academy.  Born into a middle-class family - her father, Giovanni, was in her own words a “well-to-do landowner” - Deledda drew inspiration for her characters from the stream of friends and business acquaintances her father insisted must stay at their home whenever they were in Nuoro.  She was not allowed to attend school beyond the age of 11 apart from private tuition in Italian.  Read more…

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Gracie Fields - actress and singer

English-born performer who made Capri her home 

The English actress, singer and comedian Gracie Fields died on this day in 1979 at her home on Capri, the island on the south side of the Gulf of Naples.  The 81-year-old former forces sweetheart had been in hospital following a bout of pneumonia but appeared to be regaining her health.  The previous day she had walked with her husband, Boris, to the post office on the island to collect her mail.  Some English newspapers reported that Gracie had died in the arms of her husband but that version of events was later corrected. It is now accepted that Boris had already left La Canzone del Mare, the singer's original Capri home overlooking the island's landmark Faraglioni rocks, to work on the central heating at a second property they had bought in Anacapri, on the opposite side of the island, and that Gracie was with her housekeeper, Irena, when she passed away suddenly.  Fields, born Grace Stansfield in Rochdale, England, in 1898, had visited Capri for the first time in the late 1920s or early 30s, with two artists she had befriended in London, where she was becoming an established star in the revue format.  Read more…

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Cosimo de’ Medici – banker and politician

Father of Florence used his wealth to encourage great architecture

Today is the date Cosimo di Giovanni de’ Medici, the founder of the Medici dynasty, celebrated his birthday.  Cosimo and his twin brother, Damiano, were born to Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici and Piccarda Bueri in April 1389, but Damiano survived for only a short time.  The twins were named after the saints Cosmas and Damian, whose feast day in those days was celebrated on 27 September. Cosimo later decided to celebrate his birthday on 27 September, his ‘name day’, rather than on the actual date of his birth.  Cosimo’s father came from a wealthy family and after making even more money he married well. A supporter of the arts in Florence, he was one of the financial backers for the magnificent doors of the Baptistery by Ghiberti, although they were not completed until after his death.  By the time his father died, Cosimo was 40 and had become a rich banker himself, which gave him great power. He had also become a patron of the arts, learning and architecture.  The Abizzi family, who ruled Florence, feared his power and also coveted his wealth, so they had Cosimo arrested on the capital charge of having tried to raise himself up higher than others.  Read more…

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Vittorio Vidali - communist revolutionary 

One-time Russian agent ultimately elected Italian deputy and senator

The revolutionary Vittorio Vidali, who operated as a secret agent of the Russian communists in the United States, Mexico and Spain, was born on this day in 1900 in the coastal town of Muggia, near Trieste.  Known at various times by at least five different names, he was implicated in the murder of a fellow agent and in an attempt to assassinate Leon Trotsky, although in neither case could his involvement be proved. After returning to Italy at the end of World War Two, he served as a deputy and then a senator in the Italian parliament.  Vidali was politically active from an early age, joining the Socialist Youth movement in Trieste at the age of 16. At 20 he was one of the founders of the youth federation of the Italian Communist Party (Pci). In the same year - 1921 - he was arrested for his part in rioting at the San Marco shipyards where his father worked.  He became a target for Mussolini’s Blackshirts after organising, with others, an anti-fascist paramilitary group, and fled Italy in 1922, to Germany and then New York, where he met the Italian anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.  From New York he travelled to Russia. Read more…

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Jovanotti - musician

Former rapper an important figure in Italian pop culture

The singer-songwriter Lorenzo Cherubini – better known as Jovanotti – was born on this day in 1966 in Rome.  Famous in his early days as Italy’s first rap star, Jovanotti has evolved into one of Italian pop music’s most significant figures, his work progressing from hip hop to funk and introducing ska and other strands of world music to Italian audiences, his increasingly sophisticated compositions even showing classical influences.  He has come to match Ligabue in terms of the ability to attract massive audiences, while his international record sales in the mid-90s were on a par with Eros Ramazzotti and Laura Pausini.  Since his recording debut in 1988 he has sold more than seven million albums.  Although born in Rome, Cherubini came from a Tuscan family and spent much of his childhood and adolescence in Cortona in the province of Arezzo, where he now has a home.  He began to work as a DJ at venues in and around Cortona, mainly playing dance music and hip hop, which at the time was scarcely known in Italy. After finishing high school he went back to Rome because he felt he had a better chance of launching a musical career via the capital’s club scene.  Read more…

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Flaminio Scala - Renaissance writer and actor

Influential figure in growth of commedia dell’arte

The writer, actor and director Flaminio Scala, who is recognised as one of the most important figures in Renaissance theatre, was born on this day in 1552 in Rome.  Commonly known by his stage name Flavio, Scala was the author of the first published collection of scenarios - sketches - from the commedia dell’arte genre.  These scenarios, brought together under the title Il Teatro delle Favole Rappresentative, were short comic plays said to have provided inspiration to playwrights such William Shakespeare and Molière.  They were unusual because the theatre companies were so worried about rival troupes stealing their ideas that publishing them was considered too risky.  Commedia dell’arte was a theatrical form that used improvised dialogue and a cast of masked, colourful stock characters such as Arlecchino, Colombina and Pulcinella. The characters tended to be exaggerated versions of social stereotypes. Figures of authority, such as doctors or city officials, were often portrayed as buffoons, while the servants were much more lovable and sympathetic.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Grazia Deledda: A Legendary Life, by Martha King

What made a young Sardinian woman in the 19th century think that she could become a famous writer, especially considering the time and her position, her gender and lack of education? Yet Grazia Deledda achieved such status in the literary world that publishers in Italy vied for her fiction. Nearly seventy years after her death, her novels continue to be reprinted and translated, and critical appreciation of her work continues to grow. This - the first full length biography of Deledda in English for an adult audience - is the story of a woman who overcame obstacles that would discourage most people, and went on to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926. Grazia Deledda: A Legendary Life, part of the Troubador Italian Studies series, charts her life and work from her childhood in Sardinia to her death in Rome.

Martha King went to Italy from Austin, Texas, with a grant to finish a translation of Leopardi's Libaldone. She thought that she might stay "a year or two", but never left. She has published extensively on Italian literature since the late 1970s.

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