by John Mancini | Feb 16, 2025 | Uncategorized
Imagine someone so outspoken, so contrary to accepted knowledge that authorities had to gag him during his execution so he wouldn’t have the last word. His name was Giordano Bruno, burned at the stake on February 17, 1600. Before Galileo, there was outlier...
by John Mancini | Feb 9, 2025 | Uncategorized
The yellow areas promised to Italy in 1915 included the Istrian Peninsula (center) On February 10, 1947 a defeated Italy had to surrender nearly 3,000 square miles of the homeland to Yugoslavia. The Istrian peninsula had been added to Italy only three decades...
by John Mancini | Feb 2, 2025 | Uncategorized
Once upon a time, Italians were “Latins.” So were the French, Spanish, Portuguese, and even Romanians – all descended from Roman colonists who mingled with the locals. Screen idol Rudolph Valentino (1895-1926) was the poster boy for the “Latin lover” during the...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Jan 28, 2025 | Uncategorized
A man dies, a city resurrects itself. The man is the late NBA superstar Kobe Bryant and the city is Rome, aka the Eternal City. On January 25th, 2020, basketball superstar Kobe Bryant died in a small plane crash near Calabasas, California. The crash took the life of...
by John Mancini | Jan 26, 2025 | Uncategorized
Two weeks ago, PBS broadcast a new episode of Finding Your Roots with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. hosting. The show traces the roots and DNA of celebrities. Italian Americans Joy Behar (born Josephine Occhiuto) and Michael Imperioli were the guest...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Jan 14, 2025 | Uncategorized
The title of my blog is the title of a 1974 song by Peter Allen (real name: Richard Peter Woolnough, an Australian). There is an Italic connection: Allen was singer Liza Minelli’s first husband. But there’s an even bigger Italic connection: the title...
Recent Comments