On May 16

On this day in ...
... 1882 (or, perhaps, 1880), a daughter, Elizabeth Anne, was born in England to American parents. Educated in Ohio, she married an engineer/importer, whom she accompanied on many overseas trips. Eventually she "timidly" asked a New York Times editor whether she might send dispatches during a 1921 trip; her consequent reports got Anne O'Hare McCormick a job:

She ... impressed him, particularly with her judgment of Mussolini, when she wrote: 'Italy is hearing the master's voice.' Other correspondents were then giving him the brush-off as a posturing lout. She was hired.

(A 1921 dispatch on Italy by her is here.) Thus was launched a journalism career in which O'Hare McCormick (above right) (credit) wrote about leading world events and became, in 1936, the 1st woman on The Times' editorial board. She was a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, and a U.S. delegate to the 1946 and 1948 UNESCO conferences. O'Hare McCormick died in New York in 1954, at age 72.

(Prior May 16 posts are here, here, and here)

On April 14

On this day in ...
... 1935 (75 years ago today), an international meeting ended at Stresa, a town at Lake Maggiore (below left), with the Final Declaration of the Stresa Conference. By this pact Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, along with leaders of France and Britain, aimed "to resist further German breaches" of the post-World War I Versailles Treaty "and German actions likely to endanger the peace of Europe." Among other things, the independence of Austria was deemed "common policy." Within years the parties would fight against one another in World War II.

(Prior April 14 posts are here, here, and here)

On March 23

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)

(Prior March 23 posts are here and here.)

On October 13

On this day in ...
... 1943 (65 years ago today), by notice given to an ambassador in Madrid, Spain, years after it had helped to form the Axis Powers in World War II, Italy reversed course and declared war on Nazi Germany. The New York Times commented:

Thus the defeated nation led into war by Benito Mussolini re-entered it against its former ally through a curt diplomatic exchange in the capital of the country in which they had first collaborated on a military basis seven years ago.

(credit for image of 1943-45 war flag of the Italian Socialist Republic)

... 1705, a textile mill was opened in Montréal (below left; map credit), in the French colony of Québec, by 48-year-old Agathe de Saint-Père. Orphaned at age 15 -- many of the men in her

family having been killed in clashes with the indigenous Iroquois -- Saint-Père took on the task of caring for her 10 siblings and half-siblings. Her textile career began early, as she installed weaving looms in houses, and her career continued even after her marriage at age 28. On

matters of business she

outsh[o]ne her husband frequently. She signed contracts, made profits on fur-trading licences, bought and sold land, made loans, and settled her accounts as well as the debts of her husband and brother-in-law.

After retirement Saint-Père devoted herself to work at a Québec hospital. She is believed to have died about 1747; her last will and testament, in French, is here.

On October 7

On this day in ...

... 1935, 4 days after troops from Benito Mussolini-led Italy "swept into Ethiopia from Eritrea and Italian Somaliland and overwhelmed the Ethiopian army," the Council of the League of Nations "declared that Italy was the aggressor nation in the Ethiopian affair and made preparations to apply sanctions against the Italians." In fact League members did nothing, however, and within a year Ethiopia (known then as Abyssinia) accepted Italian rule. "This incident was not a minor one and has been regarded by history to be one of the thorns that led to the outbreak of World War II." (map credit)

... 1955, at the Six Gallery in San Francisco's Fillmore district, a 29-year-old "unknown poet from the East Coast," Allen Ginsberg, gave the 1st public reading of "Howl." He began:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness

and then continued with a poetic rant (full text here) that, in the words of an NPR retrospective, "gave voice to an undercurrent of dissatisfaction and alienation in Eisenhower's America." Lawrence Ferlinghetti, whose City Lights press would publish the poem amid controversy, described the impact of this literary icon of the Beat Generation with more punch: "'Howl' knocked the sides out of things."

On September 30

On this day in ...
... 1938 (70 years ago today), in Germany, leaders of that country as well as Britain, France, and Italy concluded the Munich Pact, which took the Sudetenland (below right, in red) from Czechoslovakia and gave it to Germany. Though applauded by some at the time, the effort to avert further German aggression failed so miserably that critics' contemporary description of the Pact -- "appeasement" -- retains pejorative power to this day. (credit for German postcard above, which depicts Pact signers, left to right, Neville Chamberlain of Britain, Édouard Daladier of France, Benito Mussolini of Italy, and Adolf Hitler of Germany)
... 1938 (70 years ago today), the League of Nations unanimously approved a resolution on the Protection of Civilian Populations Against Bombing From the Air in Case of War, which maintained that:
► "The intentional bombing of civilian populations is illegal";
► "Objectives aimed at from the air must be legitimate military objectives and must be identifiable"; and
► "Any attack on legitimate military objectives must be carried out in such a way that civilian populations in the neighbourhood are not bombed through negligence".
As was the case with many other acts by the League, this did little to deter massive aerial bombardment of civilians, by both Allied and Axis Powers, in the World War II years that followed.