On this day: an assassination attempt in Belgium

Italian anarchist Gennaro Rubino tried – and failed to assassinate Belgian King Leopold II in Brussels on the 15th of November, 1902.

The would-be assassin in 1894.

The King, who was returning from a service to honour his wife Marie Henriette, who had died two months earlier, was not hit by any of the three bullets Rubino fired. However, Grand Marshall, Count Charles John d’Oultremont was nearly killed.

Rubino, who had fled Italy to avoid a lengthy prison sentence there, died in prison in 1918. Prior to the failed assassination, he had been working in Britain as a spy on Italian anarchists – a position he lost when it was discovered he sympathised with them.

At the time of the attempt on his life, the King – in his late sixties – had been estranged from his wife for some time, and had taken a teenage girl as his mistress. He died in December, 1909.

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On this day: Italian Prisoners of War

6th January 1941: A column of Italian soldiers, captured after their defeat by combined Australian and British forces, are marched to an army base after the Battle of Bardia in Libya.

Bardia was the first battle planned and commanded by Australians in the Second World War. Italy was aligned with Nazi Germany in the war.

On this day: December 1944

From the collection of the Imperial War Museum

7th December 1944: A British jeep passes a sign on the side of the road in Ravenna in Northern Italy warning people not to loot. It optimistically suggests the Second World War would end soon.

The Allies had many reasons to believe this to be true. Italy’s fascist dictator Benito Mussolini had been arrested and dismissed the year before, and the Allies had worked their way through the country, defeating Axis powers.

The war would end a few months after this photograph was taken.

On this day: Anti-Semitism in Italy

This is the cover of Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera from the 11th of November, 1938. The headline announces the country’s fascist government approving Italian Racial Laws, which discriminated against a number of groups and stripped Jews of their citizenship, barring them from many institutions.

While Italy didn’t have the significant Jewish population of some other areas of Europe, dictator Benito Mussolini fell into line with Adolf Hitler on racial policies. Italy aligned itself with Nazi Germany in the Second World War.

100 Years Ago: the end of a war

2nd November 1918: Nine days before the end of the First World War, British and Italian convoys pass abandoned Austro-Hungarian artillery on a mountain road.

The photograph was taken during the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, in Italy’s north.

The battle concluded the following day, marking both an Italian victory and the end of the war on the Italian front.

On this day: Dressing a Communist

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26th October 1957: Italian fashion designer Angelo Litrico is photographed cutting fabric for a jacket for Nikita Khrushchev. Khrushchev held the title of General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 until 1964.

The designer, born the eldest of twelve children in Sicily in 1927, found international fame dressing political figures on both sides of the Cold War standoff.

On this day: Leonardo da Vinci

The first-known dated work by Leonardo da Vinci is from the 5th of August, 1473. The drawing – Landscape drawing for Santa Maria della Neve – was created during da Vinci’s time in Italy’s Arno valley in Tuscany.

Today the pen and ink work is located in the world-famous Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

On this day: the death of Pope Pius IX

Pope Pius IX, head of the Catholic Church, died in the Apostolic Palace in Rome on the 7th of February, 1878.

Photographed in the 1860s

Born Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti in 1792, the Italian port town of Senigallia, Pius IX became the longest-running elected Pope in the history of the Catholic Church, with a papacy that lasted for over thirty-one years, from the 16th of June, 1846 until his death.

The Pope was beatified on the 3rd of September, 2000.

On this day: Italian sailors arrive in Libya

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This photograph shows Italian sailors arriving in Tripoli, the capital of the North African land of Libya, on the 5th of October, 1911.

Italy and Turkey fought a war in the region from late September, 1911 until October, 1912. The conflict resulted in an Italian victory, and the Kingdom of Italy captured what was to become known as Italian Libya.

Italy lost control of Libya in 1943, when losing ground to the Allies in the Second World War.

The aftermath of a battle.

The region of Nervesa della Battaglia in northern Italy was retaken from the Austro-Hungarians in June of 1918.

This photograph was taken as Italian forces returned to the region to survey the destruction.