December Almanac
[The 10th month of the year before the Romans moved New Year’s Day to January from March.]
Dec 1 – In 1914, the six Maserati brothers (Carlo, Bindo, Alfieri, Mario, Ettore, and Ernesto) open their automobile shop in Bologna.
Dec 2 – Scientist Enrico Fermi supervises the first controlled nuclear chain reaction in 1942 in Chicago. News of the historic event is sent in code to President Roosevelt: “The Italian navigator has landed in the New World.”
– Napoleone Buonaparte is crowned Emperor of France in 1804.
Dec 3 – Considered the most beautiful printed book in the world, Polia’s Lover was published by Aldus Manutius in 1499. It was the first to harmonize word and picture.
Dec 4 – Actress Marisa Tomei (My Cousin Vinny) is born in 1964.
Dec 5 – Italian scientist Giovanni Battista Morgagni dies in 1771. He made pathological anatomy an exact science.
Dec 6 – Renaissance author Baldassare Castiglione is born in 1475. His book Il Cortegiano (The Courtier) defined gentlemanly behavior for European nobility.
Dec 7 – Architect & sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini is born in 1598.
– Composer of the opera Cavalleria rusticana, Pietro Mascagni, is born in 1863.
– Roman senator Marcus Tullius Cicero is executed at Formia, Italy on orders of Mark Anthony in 43 BC.
Dec 8 – In 1816, southern Italy and Sicily are once again merged as “The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies” under the rule of the restored Bourbon monarchy after a period of separation while under Napoleon’s control.
Dec 9 – In A.D. 536 Roman General Belisarius enters Rome while the Ostrogoth invaders peacefully leave the city, returning the old capital to the Empire, which is now headquartered in Constantinople.
Dec 10 – The first Metric system is adopted during the French Revolution in 1799. The system was developed by a commission headed by Italian mathematician Giuseppe Luigi Lagrangia.
Dec 11 – Italy formally withdraws from the League of Nations in 1937, having remained only long enough to see its claims on Ethiopia formally recognized in the general assembly.
– New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia is born in 1882.
– Film Director Carlo Ponti (late husband of Sophia Loren) is born in 1913.
Dec 12 – In 1901, Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi sends the first wireless radio transmission across the Atlantic. He is universally recognized during his lifetime, bringing him fame, wealth, a title of nobility and the Nobel Prize. Of his invention of the wireless, Marconi said “It was unbelievable to me that no one had ever thought of it before!”
– Singer Frank Sinatra is born in 1915.
– Singer Connie Francis (Concetta Franconero) is born in 1938.
Dec 13 – Italo Marcioni of New Jersey patents the ice cream cone in 1903.
Dec 14 – Napoleon Buonaparte’s retreat after his disastrous invasion of Russia is completed in 1812.
Dec 15 – Italy enters the space age when the first Italian satellite, San Marco I, is launched off the coast of Somalia in 1964.
– In 2001, the Leaning Tower of Pisa is reopened to the public after 11 years of stabilization and repair work.
Dec 16 – In 1631, Mount Vesuvius erupts again, burying many villages. An estimated 3,000 people are killed. The summit of Mount Vesuvius is shortened by 1,500 feet.
Dec 17 – Composer Domenico Cimarosa is born in 1749.
– U.S. Brig. General James Dozier is kidnapped by Red Brigade terrorists. He is later rescued by Italian police and military.
– Gyorgy Martinuzzi, Hungarian cardinal and statesman, dies in 1551
Dec 18 – Master violin maker Antonio Stradivari dies in 1737.
Dec 19 – In 1897, after a three year occupation, Italian expeditionary forces withdraws from the African city of Kassala as the Kingdom of Italy abandons attempts at colonial expansion into the Sudan.
– Italian frogmen sink the British fleet at Alexandria Harbor in 1941.
Dec 20 – Frank Capra’s Christmas classic film, It’s a Wonderful Life, premieres in New York in 1946.
Dec 21 – The Roman Senate proclaims General Flavius Vespasianus emperor upon the death of Nero in AD 69. Vespasian had just subdued the Judean revolt and later built the Colosseum.
Dec 22 – Composer Giacomo Puccini (Madama Butterfly, Turandot) is born in 1858
Dec 23 – In 1871, inventor Antonio Meucci files a caveat with the U.S. Patent Office for his newly-invented telephone. When the caveat expires, the penniless Italian cannot afford the $10 renewal fee, allowing Alexander Graham Bell to file a similar patent two years later.
– Author Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (The Leopard) is born in 1896.
– Master of Spanish dance, Jose Greco, is born in Italy in 1918.
Dec 24 – In 1933, Benito Mussolini institutes a new holiday called “Mother and Child Day” on which Italian women who have borne fourteen or more children receive national recognition and honors.
– Verdi’s Aida, with an ancient Egyptian plot, premieres in 1871 in Cairo.
– Songwriter Salvatore Guaragna (Henry Warren) is born in 1893. One of the most prolific composers in American history. His songs included the score for the musical 42nd Street, At Last, That’s Amore, I Only Have Eyes for You, You’ll Never Know, The More I See You, You Must have been a Beautiful Baby, and many more featured in some 300 Hollywood films.
– Long-time director of the National Infective Disease Institute Anthony Fauci is born in 1940.
Dec 25 – The first edition of Socialist newspaper Avanti (“Forward”) is published in 1896. At one time, Mussolini was its editor.
– Filippo Mazzei is born in 1730 in Poggio a Caiano (Italy). He was a neighbor of Thomas Jefferson in Virginia and introduced Italian agriculture and cuisine there. He inspired the line “All men are created equal.”
Dec 26 – The newly created Italian Republic adopted its constitution in 1946 after a general referendum banned the Savoy monarchy.
Dec 27 – Industrialist (vehicle tires) Giovanni Battista Pirelli is born in 1848
Dec 28 – Exiled King Vittorio Emanuele III dies in Egypt in 1947.
Dec 29 – English poet Christina Rossetti dies in 1894.
Dec 30 – Writer Giambattista Giraldi dies in 1573, inspired Shakespeare’s Othello and Measure for Measure.
Dec 31 – In A.D. 535, Roman General Belisarius completes the reconquest of Sicily, defeating the barbarian Ostrogoths, returning the island to the Empire now headquartered in Constantinople.