October Almanac

[The 8th month until the Romans moved New Year’s Day to January from March.]

Oct 1 – In 1839, the first conference of the Congress of Italian Scientists is held at Pisa.

Oct 2 – A plebiscite in Rome annexes the city to the Italian Kingdom in 1870.

Oct 3 – Penology theorist and influence on U.S. Founding Fathers, Cesare Beccaria is born in 1716

           – Prolific writer and pundit Gore Vidal (who claimed Italian descent) is born in 1925.

           – St Francis of Assisi dies in 1226.

Oct 4 – The first Italian railroad begins operation in 1839, covering a five mile stretch between Naples and Portici.

           – Use of the new, more astronomically precise Gregorian Calendar begins in Italy and other Catholic countries in 1582.  Anti-Catholic Protestants countries adopt it later.

           – St Francis of Assisi is born in 1181. 

           – Pro-Ally Italian and Free French troops retake Corsica from the Germans in 1943.

Oct 5 – Maria Beatice D’Este is born in 1658, she became the wife of King James II of the United Kingdom.

Oct 6 – In 1600, the first opera, Euridice, by Jacopo Peri is performed in Florence.

           – World Champion wrestler Bruno Sammartino is born in Pittsburgh in 1936.

           – Regular commercial broadcasting begins on Italian radio in 1924

           – Jesuit Matteo Ricci and missionary extraordinaire to China is born in 1552

Oct 7 – Italian forces advance into Albania in 1918, over which Italy had proclaimed a protectorate in June 1917, during the First World War.

           – The Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro is hijacked by Palestinian extremists in 1985 while sailing off the Egyptian coast.

           – A combined fleet of Italian city-states, papal and allied ships defeat the Turks at the battle of Lepanto in 1571, a major event in world history.

           – Candido Jacuzzi, inventor of the whirlpool bath, dies in 1986 at age 83.

Oct 8 – Argentine dictator Juan Peron (née Peroni) is born in 1895.

Oct 9 – In 1963, several towns in northeastern Italy are literally washed off the map when an Alpine avalanche causes millions of tons of water to spill over the Piave River’s 873 foot high Vaiont Dam.  2,000 lives are lost.

           – Scientist Gabriello Fallopio dies in 1562.  Studied the anatomy of the ear and reproductive system.

Oct 10 – Composer Giuseppe Verdi, of Aida, La Traviata, et al., is born in 1813.

Oct 11 – Astronaut Wally Schirra (Italian-Swiss origin) was among the 3-man crew in the first manned Apollo 7 space mission.

Oct 12 – In 1492, Genovese explorer Cristoforo Colombo lands in the New World.  His voyage was partly financed by Italian merchants in Spain as well as the Spanish government.

             – In 1946, Inno di Mameli officially replaces Marcia Reale as the Italian national anthem.

             – Tenor Luciano Pavarotti is born in 1935

Oct 13 – The Kingdom of Italy declares war against Germany in 1943.

             – French actor Yves Montand (née Yvo Livi) is born in Italy in 1921.

Oct 14 – In 1940, Italy’s armed forces chief, Pietro Badoglio advises Mussolini that any invasion of Greece will require 40 regiments and 3 months to succeed.  Mussolini launches the attack from Albania two weeks later in torrential rain using only 16 regiments, with disastrous results.

Oct 15 – In 1764, standing amid the ruins of ancient Rome, the English historian Edward Gibbon is inspired to begin writing The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

             – Italian astronaut Roberto Vittori is born in 1964, at Viterbo,

             – Automobile manufacturing icon Lee Iacocca is born in 1924

             – Evangelista Torricelli, inventor of the barometer, is born in 1608.

             – Ancient Italian poet Vigilius Maro (Virgil) is born in 70 BC.

Oct 16 – Philip Vasallo, a Grumman engineer who led the team that saved Skylab on its maiden voyage with an improvised heat shield, dies in 1986 at age 51.

Oct 17 – Amadeo Giannini, son of Italian immigrants to the US, founds the Bank of America (first named Bank of Italy) in a converted saloon in San Francisco in 1904.

             – French premier Leon Gambetta evacuates Paris by balloon during the Franco-Prussian War in 1871.

Oct 18 – Military leader Eugene of Savoy is born in Paris in 1663.

             – Inventor of the telettrofono (an electro-mechanical telephone) Antonio Meucci dies in Staten Island, NY in 1889.  He lost his patent suit against Alexander Bell.

Oct 19 – Joseph Petrosino becomes the first Italian American police officer in New York City.  He forms the Italian Squad to fight crime in Little Italy and rises to the rank of lieutenant, also founded NYPD Bomb Squad.

Oct 20 – Renaissance sculptor and master of enameled reliefs, Andrea Della Robbia, is born in Florence in 1435.

Oct 21 – The silent film The Sheik premieres in 1921.  It solidifies Rudolph Valentino’s image as the “Latin Lover.”   

Oct 22 – Original Disney Mouseketeer, and later actress, Annette Funicello is born in 1942

             – Col. Marco Pezzi sets the world attitude record of 58,046-feet in 1938

Oct 23 – In 1933, Royal Italian Air Force test pilot Francesco Agello tries for a new speed record in a propeller plane. He reached the amazing speed of 709 km/h and comes close to breaking the sound barrier.

              – Captain Carlo Piazza becomes the first aviator to fly a combat mission during the Italo-Turk war of 1911-12.

Oct 24 – Italian troops with Napoleon win their first victory in Russia in 1812 at the battle of Malo Jaroslavetz.

Oct 25 – Heavyweight champion of the world (1933-34) Primo Carnera is born in Italy in 1906.  The huge fighter was nicknamed “The Ambling Alp.”  He lost his title to Joe Louis.

Oct 26 – In 1860, upon victory over Bourbon forces, Giuseppe Garibaldi cedes Southern Italy and Sicily to King Vittorio Emanuele II of Savoy with a handshake at a meeting on horseback outside Naples.  Italy is reunified after 1,400 years.        

             – Boxer Rocky Marciano defeats one-time champ Joe Louis in 1951.

             – The Neapolitan ship Girona, part of the Spanish Armada, sinks off the Irish coast in 1588.  Legend has it that shipwrecked Armada crews created the “black Irish.”

Oct 27 – Master violinist Nicolo Paganini is born in 1782

Oct 28 – In 1922, the King of Italy invites Benito Mussolini and his Fascist Party to form a new government to restore order in that strife-torn nation.

             – In 312 AD Emperor Constantine forces win the battle of the Milvian Bridge in Rome for the first time under the banner of the Christian cross.

Oct 29 – In 1908, one of the world’s largest producers of electronic office equipment, Olivetti & Company is founded in Ivrea, near Torino.

             – The six-day battle of Vittorio Veneto ends in 1918.  The Italians have defeated an Austro-Hungarian-German army, killing 30,000 and capturing 427,000.  The loss of Austria severely affects Germany’s morale and contributes to the armistice on the Western front two weeks later.

Oct 30 – Fitness guru and inventor of “dynamic tension” Charles Atlas (born Angelo Siciliano) is born in 1892.

             – Scholar Poggio Bracciolini dies in 1459. He discovered the lost work of Roman ‘scientist’ Lucretius Caro titled The Nature of Things (De Rerum Natura) which outlined the atomic theory and how chaos creates new objects and species.

Oct 31 – In 1922, King Vittorio Emanuele III appoints Benito Mussolini Prime Minister of Italy.

             – Italian physicist Galileo Ferraris is born in Livorno in 1847.  His research made possible the alternating current electric motor.

             – Laura Bassi Born in 1711 in Bologna one of the world’s first female college professors