Primo Carnera - boxer

Heavyweight’s career dogged by ‘fix’ rumours

Primo Carnera became world heavyweight
champion in New York in 1933

The boxer Primo Carnera, who was world heavyweight champion between 1933 and 1934, was born on this day in 1906 in a village in Friuli-Venezia Giulia.

After launching his professional career in Paris in 1928, Carnera moved to the United States in 1930 and spent many years there, returning from time to time to Italy, where he had a house built for himself and his family, but not permanently until he was in declining health and decided he would like to spend his final years in his home country.

He won 89 of his 103 fights, 72 by a knockout, although there were suspicions that many of his fights were fixed by the New York mobsters who made up his management team, even including the victory over the American Jack Sharkey that earned him the world title.

Physically, he was a freak.  Said to have weighed 22lbs at birth he had grown to the size of an adult man by the time he was eight. By adulthood, he was a veritable giant, by Italian standards, standing 6ft 6ins tall when the average Italian man was 5ft 5ins.  His fighting weight was as high at times as 275lb (125kg).

Born into a peasant family in the village of Sequals, around 45km (28 miles) west of Udine, at the northern edge of a plain bordering the Friulian preAlps, Carnera had little option but to leave the area as soon as he was strong enough to work.

Primo Carnera, who stood 6ft 6ins tall, towered above
the average man of his day, as this news cutting shows

In the aftermath of the First World War, Sequals was a place of devastation and deprivation, with no prospect of finding employment.

Carnera left at the age of 12, finding his way to France where he did labourer's work, carrying bags of cement, laying bricks or cutting stones. At 17, he joined a travelling circus, where he was variously paraded as a freakshow giant, a strongman, and a wrestler.

He entered the fight business after a journeyman French heavyweight came across him in a park and recommended him to a boxing manager called Leon See.  Within two weeks, he was in the ring and within less than 18 months had a wins to losses record of 16-2.

Even then, given Carnera’s lack of technique, there were suspicions that See’s underworld connections were playing a big part in his success. His physical size made him a money-spinner in terms of tickets sales and it was in the interests of both his own camp and his opponents’ for his reputation to grow.

Vincent 'Mad Dog' Coll, an Irish villain who
was part of Carnera's management team

See took him to the United States, where it was not long before his management team was populated by characters with such dubious names as Vincent ‘Mad Dog’ Coll and Owney ‘The Killer’ Madden, both of whom were involved in organised crime.

In his United States debut at Madison Square Garden, Carnera’s opponent fell in unlikely fashion only a minute into the fight and over the next four years Carnera’s bouts followed a similar pattern.

The press nicknamed him ‘the Ambling Alp’ because of his slow movement around the ring and his poor technique yet he remained a major draw. It has been suggested that he even believed his own publicity, convincing himself that his fists somehow packed superpowers.

His winning of the world title came as a major surprise because Sharkey had beaten him comprehensively only a year before.  However, when it was not in the interests of his mobster connections for him to win, Carnera often took a heavy beating.

For example, when he defended his world title against Max Baer in June 1934 he was knocked to the canvas 13 times before losing on a technical knock-out.

Yet he was allowed to continue his career and retired only when a combination of kidney failure and diabetes made it impossible for him to continue.

Carnera ahead of his 1935 fight with future
world champion Joe Louis, who knocked him out

His post-retirement life was carefully planned, Carnera announcing in 1930 that he wanted to build a luxurious house in Sequals to which he intended to retire.  The project was completed in 1932, when architect Mariano Pittana unveiled a cutting edge design featuring Anglo-Saxon and Art Nouveau features. Carnera remained in the United States but returned to Italy for holidays.

Carnera holds the second-most victories of all heavyweight champions with 88. His 71 career knockouts is the most of any world heavyweight champion, yet his legacy will be forever tarnished by the accusation that many of his fights had pre-arranged outcomes.

In addition to boxing, Carnera enjoyed an acting career in which he appeared in more than 10 films, and wrestled professionally as well.

His story entered popular culture in several ways, with his life depicted in a number of books and films, notably Budd Schulberg’s 1947 novel, The Harder They Fall, which was about a giant boxer whose fights are fixed.

It was made into a film by the Canadian producer and director Mark Robson in 1956, starring Humphrey Bogart.  Controversially, it featured Max Baer, playing a fighter the mob could not fix, who destroys the giant in his first fair fight.

There were obvious parallels with the real-life Baer-Carnera fight two decades before. In response, Carnera sued the film company, but was unsuccessful.

Married since 1939 to Giuseppina Kovačič, a post office clerk from Gorizia, Carnera became an American citizen in 1953, when he and his wife opened a restaurant in Los Angeles. They had two children, Umberto and Giovanna Maria.

Carnera died in 1967 in Sequals from a combination of liver disease and diabetes. He was 60 years old.

The Villa Carnera in Sequals is open to visitors

Travel tip:

The Villa Carnera in the pleasant village of Sequals can be found in the Via Roma, set back from the road near the junction with Via San Giovanni.  In what was then a relatively poor community, with simple houses built from local stone, Carnera’s large art Nouveau house, equipped with running water, electric light and heating, seemed like a fantasy palace.  Since 2012, the villa, which was sold by the Carnera family to a private individual in 1972, has been open to the public on Sunday afternoons from May to the end of October, displaying an exhibition about Carnera’s life.

The Corso Vittorio Emanuele II in Pordenone

Travel tip:

Pordenone, in whose province Sequals falls, is an attractive small city of around 50,000 people with a rich history reflected in many beautiful palaces, churches, frescoes and monuments. The city centre has many elegant pedestrianised streets, including the historical Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, linking Piazza Cavour with the Gothic-Romanesque cathedral, which contains among other artworks a painting attributed to the Venetian artist Tintoretto.

More reading:

Vito Antuofermo, the farmer's son who became world champion

How Giuseppe Curreri became Johnny Dundee

The Sicilian boxer whose son was the legendary Frank Sinatra

Also on this day:

1797: The birth of mezzo-soprano Guiditta Pasta

1954: Trieste becomes part of Italy


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Camillo Sivori – virtuoso violinist

Paganini’s successor was also a talented composer

Camillo Sivori was the protégé
of the virtuoso Niccolò Paganini

Ernesto Camillo Sivori, a virtuoso violinist and composer, was born on this day in 1815 in Genoa.

Remembered as the only pupil of the great virtuoso violinist Niccolò Paganini, Sivori began his career as a travelling virtuoso at the age of 12, having by then also studied with other violin teachers.

He was acclaimed as ‘Paganini reincarnated’, or even, ‘Paganini without the flaws’, by music critics during a lengthy tour of Europe that he made between 1841 and 1845.

During his travels he met some of the best-known composers of the day, such as Mendelssohn, Schumann and Berlioz and he took parts in hundreds of concerts.

After being compared to other celebrated violinists, his status as Paganini’s successor was confirmed, even though the great man had died in 1840 and was still remembered in the musical world.

Sivori had met Paganini, who was also from Genoa, when he was seven years old and had made such a favourable impression on him that Paganini gave him lessons between October 1822 and May 1823.

Sivori met Paganini when he was only
seven years old

Paganini also wrote pieces of music for his pupil ‘to shape his spirit’ and even provided guitar accompaniment when Sivori performed these pieces privately.

When Paganini left Genoa he continued to follow Sivori’s progress, writing in 1828 that Sivori was ‘ the only one who may call himself my pupil.’

Shortly before he died, Paganini summoned Sivori and gave him a violin, by Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, Il Cannone, which was a replica of his own favourite violin by Bartolomeo Guarneri del Gesù, a member of one of the great families of luthiers from Cremona.

Sivori was entrusted by Mendelssohn with performing the English premiere of his Violin concerto, Op. 64 in 1846.

Sivori’s fame reached America and he visited many north American cities and also travelled to south America between 1846 and 1850.

A replica of Paganini's Guarneri
 violin is in a Genoa museum

He made a great impression in London and Paris, a city where he lived for a few years, because of his technique and breathtaking displays of virtuosity. As late as 1876 Verdi invited him to perform his E minor quartet at its Paris premiere.

Sivori wrote 60 works of his own that inventively married virtuosity with melodic beauty, including two violin concertos.

The violinist lived for many years in Paris but died in his native Genoa in 1894 at the age of 78.

The bustling port of Genoa, where Sivori was born

Travel tip:

Genoa, where Camillo Sivori was born, is the capital city of Liguria and the sixth largest city in Italy. It has earned the nickname of La Superba because of its proud history as a major port. Part of the old town was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2006 because of the wealth of beautiful 16th century palaces there.

The harbour at Portofino, one of the pretty seaside
villages of the Italian Riviera

Travel tip:

The region of Liguria in northwest Italy is also known as the Italian Riviera. It runs along a section of the Mediterranean coastline between France and Tuscany and is dotted with pretty seaside villages, with houses painted in different pastel colours.

More reading:

Why the violins of Antonio Stradivari are still worth millions

The luthier who set the standard for Stradivari

How Francesco Maria Veracini became one of the great violinists of the 18th century

Also on this day:

1647: The death of Evangelista Torricelli, inventor of the barometer

1902: The birth of Carlo Gnocchi, brave military chaplain


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Sir Moses Montefiore - businessman

Italian-born philanthropist who made his fortune in London

A late 18th century photograph of the
Jewish philanthropist Moses Montefiore

The businessman and philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore, who made his fortune in England and became a prominent supporter of Jewish rights, was born in Livorno on this day in 1784.

Born into a Sephardic Jewish family, his grandfather, Moses Vita (Haim) Montefiore, had emigrated from Livorno to London in the 1740s, but regularly returned to Italy, as did other members of the family.

Moses Montefiore was born while his parents, Joseph Elias and Rachel - whose father, Abraham Mocatta, was a powerful bullion broker in London - were in Livorno on business.

Their son was to amass considerable wealth in his working life, accumulating such a fortune on the London stock exchange he was able to retire at 40, but in his youth his family’s situation was so perilous he had to abandon his education without qualifications in order to find a job.

First apprenticed to a firm of grocers and tea merchants, he left to become one of 12 so-called ‘Jew brokers’ in the City of London.  His early days in the city were not without setbacks, notably when a major fraud in 1806 caused him to lose most of his clients’ money and cost him his broker’s licence.

A drawing from a magazine shows
Moses Montefiore as a young man 

He bought a new licence in 1815 and his big break came after Henriette, the sister of his wife Judith Cohen, married Nathan Rothschild, who engaged Montefiore's firm acted as stockbrokers.

Nathan Rothschild headed the family's banking business in Britain, and Montefiore became his business partner.

In that capacity, Montefiore helped found the Alliance Assurance Company, the Imperial Continental Gas Association (which pioneered gas lighting for homes), and the Provincial Bank of Ireland.

Montefiore retired from his business in 1824, deciding to use his time and fortune for communal and civic responsibilities. He became known as a philanthropist and a zealous fighter for the rights of oppressed Jews all over the world.

Besides visiting such countries as Italy, Russia, and Romania on behalf of the Jewish people, he also made seven journeys to Palestine.

In 1827, he helped secure the release of a number of Damascan Jews who had been falsely accused of using Christian blood for religious rites and persuaded the Turkish sultan to extend to Jews the same privileges enjoyed by aliens.

In Russia he convinced Tsar Nicholas I to rescind a decree of 1844 that had ordered all Jews to withdraw from the western frontier areas of Russia.

Montefiore's London home was at 99 Park
Lane in the Mayfair district

Back in London, he became a governor of Christ's Hospital, an independent educational establishment also known as the Bluecoat School, and in 1837 was elected Sheriff of London. 

He was knighted in the same year by Queen Victoria and received a baronetcy in 1846 in recognition of his services to humanitarian causes on behalf of the Jewish people.

He was president of the British Board of Deputies from 1835-1874, with one brief interruption. Despite his position, he did not play a prominent role in the Jewish emancipation struggle at home, preferring to help oppressed Jewish communities abroad.

In 1831, while keeping his home in Park Lane in London, Montefiore bought a country estate with 24 acres of land on the East Cliff of the then-fashionable seaside town of Ramsgate, previously the home of Queen Caroline, when she was still Princess of Wales.  He purchased some adjoining land and commissioned his cousin, architect David Mocatta, to design a private synagogue, known as the Montefiore Synagogue.

Montefiore died at East Cliff in 1885, at the age of 100. He had no known children and his principal heir in both name and property was a nephew, Joseph Sebag Montefiore.  His great, great nephew is the historian, author and TV presenter Simon Sebag Montefiore.

The beautiful Terrazza Mascagni is a feature of the
waterfront in modern Livorno

Travel tip:

The port of Livorno is the second largest city in Tuscany after Florence, with a population of almost 160,000. Although it is a large commercial port with much related industry, it has many attractions, including an elegant sea front – the Terrazza Mascagni - an historic centre – the Venetian quarter – with canals, and a tradition of serving excellent seafood.  The Terrazza Mascagni is named after the composer Pietro Mascagni, famous for the opera Cavalleria rusticana, who was born in Livorno.

The plaque commemorating the life of Sir Moses Montefiore
is near the Jewish synagogue in Liverno 

Travel tip:

A plaque commemorating the life of Sir Moses Montefiore can be found in Piazza Elia Benamozegh in Livorno, the location of the city’s synagogue. Livorno was once home to one of the largest Sephardic communities in Western Europe, second only to Amsterdam. The 16th century Florentine leader Ferdinando I Medici, who governed Livorno, allowed the city’s Jews to govern themselves, without being confined to a ghetto. Although the Jewish settlement in the city had clear parameters, there were few limits imposed on the community, which by the 18th century numbered more than 4,000, almost 15 per cent of the the city’s population.

More reading:

The story of Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi

Salomone Rossi, the leading Jewish musician of the late Renaissance

The good samaritan of Rimini Alberto Marvelli

Also on this day:

1913: The birth of the acclaimed baritone Tito Gobbi

1925: The birth of composer Luciano Berio


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Alex Zanardi - racing driver and Paralympian

Crash victim who refused to be beaten

Ex-motor racing champion Alex Zanardi won his first
 Paralympic gold medals at the 2012 Games in London

Alessandro 'Alex’ Zanardi, a title-winning racing driver who lost both legs in an horrific crash but then reinvented himself as a champion Paralympic athlete, was born on this day in 1966 in the small town of Castel Maggiore, just outside Bologna.

Zanardi was twice winner of the CART series - the forerunner of IndyCar championship of which the marquee event is the Indianapolis 500 - and also had five seasons in Formula One.

But in September 2001, after returning to CART following the loss of his contract with the Williams F1 team, Zanardi was competing in the American Memorial race at the EuroSpeedway Lausitz track in Germany when he lost control of his car emerging from a pit stop and was struck side-on by the car of the Canadian driver Alex Tagliani.

The nose of Zanardi’s car was completely severed as Tagliani's car slammed into Zanardi's cockpit, just behind the front wheel, and the Italian driver suffered catastrophic injuries. Rapid medical intervention saved his life after he lost almost 75 per cent of his blood volume but both legs had to be amputated, one at the thigh and the other at the knee.

Zanardi driving for the Williams F1 team at the 1999
Canada Grand Prix in Montreal

For most drivers, it would have been the end of their career yet Zanardi, although he would never compete in open wheel racing again, fought back from his injuries, learned how to use prosthetic legs he designed himself and, within just 19 months of his accident, was back behind the wheel.

Extraordinarily, he first returned to Lausitz in a gesture of defiance, completing the 13 laps that remained of his fateful 2001 race in a car adapted with hand-operated brake and accelerator controls.

But this was to be no belated farewell to his sport. Noting that his lap times were fast enough to have put him fifth on the grid of the 2003 German 500 event that followed his appearance on the track, Zanardi plotted a comeback.

In a touring car modified to allow the use of prosthetic feet, he made his comeback in a competitive race in October 2003 in a European Touring Car Championship race at Monza and finished seventh. The following season Zanardi returned to racing full-time, driving for Roberto Ravaglia's BMW Team Italy-Spain. 

Zanardi in action for the Italian team at the 2016 Paralympics
in Rio de Janeiro, where he won two gold medals

The series evolved into the World Touring Car Championship in 2005 and Zanardi was to race for BMW for five seasons. Incredibly, he won four races, his first coming in August 2005 at Oschersleben in Germany, no more than 220km (137 miles) from Lausitz.

If that were not enough proof of his extraordinary and undiminished zest for competition, halfway through his five seasons with BMW, Zanardi took up handcycling, a Paralympic sport in which paraplegic athletes race one another in a kind of high-tech tricycle.

He finished fourth in the handcycle category at the New York Marathon of 2007 after just four weeks of training

In 2009 he won the Venice Marathon in the category for the disabled, riding his wheelchair in 1hr 13 mins 56 secs and the 2010 Rome City Marathon in 1:15.53. In 2011, at his fourth attempt, Zanardi won the New York Marathon in his handcycling class.

Zanardi drove in the World Touring Car
Championships for BMW after his crash

Selected for the Italian team at the 2012 London Paralympics, Zanardi won gold in the men's road time trial H4 by a margin of 27.14 seconds as well as the individual H4 road race, plus a silver medal for Italy in the mixed team relay H1-4.  These events took place at Brands Hatch, a motor racing circuit where Zanardi had previously competed in a car.

Zanardi has won an impressive 10 gold medals at four World Championships and picked up two more golds - in the H5 road time trial and the H2-5 mixed team replay - at the Rio Paralympics in 2016.

He has also become a major force in Ironman events and only last month set a world record for a disabled athlete en route to an amazing fifth place overall at the Ironman Italy Emilia-Romagna.  Taking on 2700 mainly able-bodied athletes, he completed the course - made up of a 3.8km (2.4 miles) sea swim, 180km (112 miles) of handcycling and a 42.2km (26.2 miles) wheelchair marathon - a time of 08:26.06, smashing his own world record, set in Barcelona, by more than half an hour.

His Barcelona time of 08:58.59 had made him the first disabled athlete to complete an Ironman triathlon in less than nine hours.

Born into a working class family in Castel Maggiore, Zanardi began racing go-karts at the age of 13, his father, Dino, having been persuaded it was safer than allowing him to ride a motorcycle on public roads.

He stepped up to Formula Three car racing in 1988 and won his first important title in 1990, moving into F1 the following year. His F1 career was the least successful of all his ventures, yielding just one point from his sole podium finish in 41 starts.

Zanardi, who suffered tragedy as a child when his sister, Cristina, died in a road accident, has been married since 1996 to Daniela. They have a son, Niccolò, who was born three years before his accident. He has co-written two books about his life -  Alex Zanardi: My Story (2004) and Alex Zanardi: My Sweetest Victory (2004).

The Villa Zarri, in Castel Maggiore, is now the home
to a distillery producing some of Italy's finest brandy

Travel tip:

Castel Maggiore, where Zanardi was born, is a municipality of more than 18,000 inhabitants that was formerly known as Castaniolo. Its origins are Roman and it did not become Castel Maggiore until the early 1800s, when workshops opened to make agricultural machinery and tools.  The surrounding countryside is notable for a number of beautiful private villas built for the ancient noble families of the area, including Villa Zarri, now a renowned brandy distillery.

Bologna's Piazza Maggiore with the Basilica San Petronio

Travel Tip:

The history of Bologna itself can be traced back to 1,000BC or possibly earlier, with a settlement that was developed into an urban area by the Etruscans, the Celts and the Romans.  The University of Bologna, the oldest in the world, was founded in 1088.  Bologna's city centre, which has undergone substantial restoration since the 1970s, is one of the largest and best preserved historical centres in Italy, characterised by 38km (24 miles) of walkways protected by porticoes.  At the heart of the city is the beautiful Piazza Maggiore, dominated by the Gothic Basilica of San Petronio, the largest brick built church in the world.

More reading:

How Riccardo Patrese became a key figure in the glory years of Williams F1

The brilliance of Mario Andretti, conqueror of F1 and IndyCar

Elio de Angelis - the last of the 'gentleman racers'

Also on this day:

The Feast Day of St John of Capistrano

1457: The Doge of Venice, Francesco Foscari, is thrown out of office


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