Who knows what the weather was like at 8:45 p.m. on that Friday, March 12, 1909, in Palermo? A few people stood at the tram terminus in Piazza Marina when the sudden crack of four gunshots shattered the evening calm. Panic swept over them. Some ran, others froze in place.

Only one man — a sailor from Ancona named Alberto Cardella, who had just disembarked from the Regina Nave Calabria — rushed toward Villa Garibaldi, the source of the shots. He arrived just in time to see a man collapse to the ground as two shadowy figures disappeared into the darkness.