August Almanac 

 

 Aug 1 – In 1938, Italian cyclist Gino Bartali wins the 32nd edition of the Tour de France.

            – Roman Emperor Claudius I, who made Britain a province, was born in 10 B.C.

            – Scholar Lorenzo Valla dies in 1457.  He proved that the “Donation of Emperor Constantine,” the Pope’s claim to the ownership of Italy, was a forgery.

            – Julius Caesar sends the message Veni Vedi Vici (“I came I saw I conquered”) after his victory in Asia Minor in 47 BC.

           – Christopher Columbus sets sail on his first voyage from Spain in 1492.

Aug 2 – In 1914, the Royal Italian Government declares its position of neutrality at the onset of the First World War .

Aug 3 – In 1778, the first performance is given at the newly opened Teatro alla Scala in Milan.  The season opens with Antonio Salieri’s Europa Riconosciuta.

           – Vocalist Tony Bennett (nee` Anthony Benedetto) is born in 1926.

Aug 4 – In 1957, Italo-Argentine Juan Manuel Fangio wins his fifth Formula One race at the German Grand Prix.

Aug 5 – In 1898, Pope Leo XII reinforces the Church’s opposition to the Royal Italian Government by forbidding Italian Catholics to run for political office or vote in elections.

Aug 6 – Niccolo Salvi, the sculptor of Rome’s Fountain of Trevi, is born in 1762.

Aug 7 – In 1941, Bruno Mussolini, the second son of the Italian prime minister, is killed when the military aircraft he was test flying crashes near Pisa.

Aug 8– Hadrian becomes Emperor at the death of Trajan in A.D. 117; Imperial Italy was at its greatest expanse.

           – Film Director Dino DeLaurentis is born in 1919

Aug 9 – In 1483, the first mass is celebrated in the then still-unfinished Sistine Chapel in Rome by Pope Sixtus IV as part of the celebrations of the Feast of the Assumption.

           – In 1173, construction begins on a new 185-foot bell tower in Pisa.  Within four years, the structure starts to inexplicably tilt to one side, forecasting its future as an Italian icon and one of the world’s most popular tourist attractions.

Aug 10 – In 1907, an Italian team wins the historic Peking-to-Paris Auto Race as the Itala motorcar manned by Scipione Borghese, Luigi Barzini, and Ettore Guizzardi, having completed two months and over 7,000 miles of driving across largely unpaved terrain.

             – Camillo Benso (Conte di Cavour), statesman and an architect of Italy’s reunification, is born in Torino in 1810.

Aug 11 – Professional wrestler and actor Hulk Hogan is born as Terry Eugene Bollea in 1953.

Aug 12 – In 1480, in Otranto, Italy, invading Ottoman Turks behead 800 Christians for refusing to convert to Islam

 Aug 13 – In 1926, Enrique Tirabocchi of Argentina becomes the first to swim the English Channel from France to England in 16 hours, 33 minutes)

 Aug 14 – In 1831, Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini organizes Giovane Italia (“Young Italy”), a secret society of revolutionaries committed to achieving the reunification of the Italian peninsula as an independent republic.

              – Federal Judge John J. Sirica, who presided over the Watergate trials in the 1970s, dies in 1992 at age 88.

Aug 15 – In 1832, in his encyclical Mirari Vos, arch-conservative Pope Gregory XVI delivers a stern warning against the dangers of free speech, freedom of the press, constitutional government, and other progressive ideas that are taking root among the Italian people.

              – Napoleone Buonaparte was born in 1769 in Corsica. His mother’s surname was Ramolino.

Aug 16 – In 1892, the Italian Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Italiano) is founded in Genova.

Aug 17 – The first transatlantic balloon flight is completed by Ben Abruzzo and partners in 1978.

Aug 18 – Composer Antonio Salieri is born in 1750, made “infamous” in the 1984 movie Amadeus

Aug 19 – Emperor Caius Julius Octavius Augustus, founder of the Roman Empire, dies peacefully after a 40-year reign, at Nola, Italy in A.D. 14.

Aug 20 – In 1933, Prime Minister Benito Mussolini announces that Italy will guarantee Austria’s independence from Nazi Germany by any and all means, including force of arms.

             – Composer of the very first opera Jacopo Peri is born in 1561.

             – In 1860, the liberation of southern Italy from Bourbon rule begins with Giuseppe Garibaldi’s triumphant crossing from liberated Sicily to Reggio Calabria.

Aug 21 – Italy declares war on Turkey in 1915, during the First World War

Aug 22 – In 1968, Pope Paul VI (Giovanni Montini) is the first pope to visit South America, arriving in Bogota` Columbia for a Eucharistic congress.  He had visited North America (New York City) in 1965, also a first.  He was known as the “Traveling Pope.”

 Aug 23 – Italian-Americans Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in 1927 by the State of Massachusetts after a travesty of a trial and despite international appeals.

              – In 1977, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, to exonerate them, proclaims “Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti Day” on the fiftieth anniversary of their executions.

             – In 1982, in the first overseas deployment of Italian troops since World War II, the 2nd Bersaglieri Battalion arrives in the Middle East as part of a multinational peacekeeping force in war and terrorist-plagued Lebanon.

              – The last cavalry charge of WWII was successfully undertaken by the Savoia Cavalry in 1942 against a Soviet brigade of 2,000 infantrymen on the Russian front.

             – Silent film star Rudolf Valentino dies in New York in 1926 at age 31.

Aug 24 – Pompeii, Herculaneum, and other sites around the Bay of Naples are buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in A.D. 79.

Aug 25 – In 1960, the XVII Summer Olympics begin in Rome and the first to be completely televised.

             – Andy Varipapi, who developed bowling into a professional sport, dies at age 93 in 1984.

 Aug 26 – In 44 BC, Julius Caesar crosses the English Channel with an invasion force of 10,000 legionnaries to explore Britannia.  It is later conquered by Emperor Claudius in A.D. 50.

Aug 27 – In 1901, the first edition of the Giro Automobilistico d’Italia is launched at Torino, with 27 motorists participating in a 1,000-mile speed and endurance competition across the Italian countryside.

             – In 1911, in one of the most sensational art heists in history, Vincenzo Peruggia steals the Mona Lisa from the Louvre and secrets it back home to Italy, citing “patriotism” as his motive.

             – Duke Alessandro Farnese, Italian general in the Spanish Army, is born in 1545. He was scheduled to land and complete the conquest of England with the ill-fated Spanish Armada in 1588.

Aug 28 – In 1934, Italy’s three leading airlines: Societá Aera Mediterranea, Societá Area Navigazione Aerea, and Societá Italiana Servizi Aerei  merge to form Ala Littoria.  This new national airline is ranked as the third largest in the world, at the time.

             – In 1823, Giacomo Beltrami announces finding the source of the Mississippi River in northern Minnesota.  His explorations were done as a private traveler but his name survives in Beltrami County, MN.

Aug 29 – In 1916, Italy, already at war with Austro-Hungary, declares war on Germany and sends troops to help the Allies on the Western Front.

Aug 30 – The second Jewish temple in Jerusalem is destroyed in A.D. 70 by Roman general Titus Flavius in crushing the Zealot rebellion.  This event led to the Jewish Diaspora.  The center of Christianity would shift to Rome and become Westernized, a momentous change.

Aug 31 – In 1923, Italian forces seized the Island of Corfù in response to the murder of a delegation of five Italian League of Nation inspectors in Greece.

             – Educator Maria Montessori is born in 1870.

             – Opera composer Amilcare Ponchielli is born in 1834.  Known for the opera La Gioconda (“The Joyful Girl”)

             – World Champion boxer Rocky Marciano dies in 1969 at age 45 in a plane crash.