We The Italians | Explorers, Emigrants, Citizens #1

Explorers, Emigrants, Citizens #1

Explorers, Emigrants, Citizens #1

  • WTI Magazine #1 Oct 16, 2013
  • 2244

WTI Magazine #1    2013 Oct,18

Author : Paolo Battaglia      Translation by:

October 8, 1887 - Birth of Ping Bodie, major league baseball players of the 1910s
Ping Bodie (October 8, 1887 – December 17, 1961), born Francesco Stefano Pezzolo, was a center fielder in Major League Baseball who played for the Chicago White Sox (1911–1914), Philadelphia Athletics (1917) and New York Yankees (1919–1921). Bodie batted and threw right-handed. He was born in California and his baseball nickname came from "Ping" for the way the ball sounded when it came off his 52-ounce bat, and "Bodie" for a town in California where he once lived.

October 10, 1918 - Premiere of Arturo Giovannitti's play Come era nel principio (Tenebre rosse)
On October 10, 1918 Arturo Giovannitti's play Come era nel principio (Tenebre rosse)—"At the Beginning (Red Shadows)"—premiered in New York's "People's Theatre," starring Mimi Aguglia, who later became a Hollywood actress. Aguglia appeared in The Rose Tattoo, with Anna Magnani and Burt Lancaster, a movie depicting an Italian community in Louisiana.
Arturo Giovannitti was among the labor activists respected by the entire labor movement, they started to approach the local labor organizations, overcoming the distrust of most American activists against Italian laborers.

 

 

 

October 11, 1968 –NASA launches Apollo 7 with astronaut Wally Schirra aboard.
On October 11, 1968, NASA launches Apollo 7, the first successful manned Apollo mission, with astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn F. Eisele and Walter Cunningham aboard. Wally Schirra grew up in Hackensack, New Jersey in a family of Sardinian origin. On April 2, 1959, Schirra was chosen as one of the original seven American astronauts. He entered Project Mercury and was assigned the specialty area involving life support systems.

 

October 12, 1492 - Christopher Columbus lands on San Salvador
On October 12, 1492, after more than 30 days out of sight of land, Christopher Columbus sets foot on the island of San Salvador in what is now the Bahamas.
Christopher Columbus wrote a letter to the Spanish court when he returned from his first voyage, published as Epistola de insulis nuper inventis . In it, he tells his royal patrons that "I will bring them all the money they need . . . and spices and cotton . . . and wood aloe." Seventeen editions of the letter were published between 1493 and 1497. In 1494 one edition was published in Basel and the Library of Congress holds one copy.
It also holds the manuscript by Angelo Trevisan, a secretary to the Venetian ambassador to Spain, who wrote another account of Columbus's first voyages. Trevisan knew Columbus personally, whom he described as "a tall man of distinguished bearing . . . with great intelligence and a long face."

October 14, 1973 - Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets is released in the USA
On October 14, 1974, "Mean Streets", Martin Scorsese's first major movie, is released in the USA. Robert DeNiro and Harvey Keitel play two young Italian Americans growing up in the troubled streets of New York's Little Italy. In 1997, Mean Streets was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

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