On this day in ...... 1919 (90 years ago today), at a gathering in the Piazza San Sepoloro in Milan, Italy, Benito Mussolini launched the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, or Italian Combat Fascists. Mussolini (right) formed paramilitary squads of arditi that brought harm to his political enemies. The groups would evolve into the Fascist Party, which would take over Italian government and ally with Nazi Germany and with Japan during World War II.
... 1983, U.S. President Ronald Reagan announced a plan to take the "Cold War into space," as the BBC put it, by setting up a "defensive shield" that would use lasers "to 'intercept and destroy'
incoming missiles as they travel through the stars." The plan, known officially as the Strategic Defense Initiative or SDI but colloquially as Star Wars, would spur controversy and be abandoned in 1993. (image credit)
