This date in 1883 saw the birth of Benito Mussolini, Italian Dictator during the second world war. 10 facts about him:
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He was born in Verano di Costa, about 40 miles south-east of Bologna. His father was a blacksmith and a devout socialist and his mother was a devout Catholic schoolteacher. He was named after a socialist figure – Mexican President Benito Juárez. His middle names were Amilcare and Andrea, which both came from Italian socialists – Amilcare Cipriani and Andrea Costa.
He was a difficult child and was expelled from school at the age of ten for stabbing a classmate with a penknife. He is said to have pinched people at church to make them cry, led gangs of boys on raids of local farmsteads and was even violent towards a girlfriend.
In spite of all that, his grades were good and he qualified as an elementary schoolmaster in 1901.
He moved to Switzerland in 1902, partly to find work, partly to avoid having to do national service. He worked briefly as a stonemason in Geneva and got involved in socialist politics. In 1904, Mussolini returned to Italy to take advantage of an amnesty for avoiding military service. A condition for being pardoned was serving in the army, so he joined the corps of the Bersaglieri in Forlì and served two years and then returned to teaching.
He was kicked out of the socialist party for supporting Italy’s entry into the first world war.
He wrote a novel. It was called The Cardinal’s Mistress and was a work of historical fiction set in 17th-century Italy. He was also said to be a huge fan of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.
He was claustrophobic, so refused to enter the Blue Grotto (a sea cave on the coast of Capri), and preferred large rooms. His office at the Palazzo Venezia was 18 by 12 by 12 m (60 by 40 by 40 feet).
Mussolini was married twice. His first wife was Ida Dalser, with whom he had a son. The marriage was short lived and when Mussolini married his mistress Rachele Guidi, his first wife and son were kept under constant surveillance. Eventually Ida was exiled on an island near Venice and the son was admitted to an asylum where he died aged 26. He remained married to Rachele until he died and had five children with her.
Hitler admired him a great deal. The Nazi salute is actually a copy of the one instituted by Mussolini. Mussolini told his mistress, Claretta Petacci, in 1938 that Hitler “had tears in his eyes” when the two met.
At the end of the second world war, Mussolini tried to sneak over the Swiss border disguised as a German. An Italian partisan recognised him, though and he was executed the following day.
The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.
The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.
Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.
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