1908 in Italy

See also: 1907 in Italy, other events of 1908, 1909 in Italy.

Events from the year 1908 in Italy.

Kingdom of Italy

• Monarch – Victor Emmanuel III (1900–1946)
• Prime Minister – Giovanni Giolitti (1906–1909)
• Population – 34,198,000

Events

Italian nationalism flourishes after 1908 in an uncertain and unstable international environment such as the Bosnian crisis and the First Moroccan Crisis in which colonial rivalry became intense and when alliances, such as the Triple Alliance to which Italy belonged and the Triple Entente that courted the Italians, became more fluid.^[1]

• April 5 – The Italian Parliament enacts a basic law to unite all of the parts of southern Somalia into an area called Somalia Italiana.
• October 29 – The Italian business machine manufacturer Olivetti is founded in Ivrea, producing typewriters.
• December 28 – A 7.1 magnitude earthquake hits in Sicily and Calabria, southern Italy. The cities of Messina and Reggio Calabria were almost completely destroyed and between 75,000 and 200,000 lives were lost.

Sports

• March 8 – Juventus wins the 1908 Italian Football Championship.
• April 5 – Cyrille Van Hauwaert from Belgium wins the 2nd Milan–San Remo.
• September 6 – Vincenzo Trucco wins the 1907 Targa Florio endurance automobile race on Sicily.
• November 8 – François Faber from Luxembourg wins the 4th Giro di Lombardia.

Births

• March 7 – Anna Magnani, Italian actress (d. 1973)
• November 3 – Giovanni Leone, former Prime Minister of Italy (d. 2001)
• December 21 – Luigi Barzini, Jr., Italian journalist, writer and politician most famous for his 1964 book The Italians (d. 1984)

Deaths

• March 11 – Edmondo De Amicis, Italian novelist, journalist, poet and short-story writer (b. 1846)
• August 7 – Antonio di Rudinì, former Prime Minister of Italy (b. 1839)
• August 14 – Anton Giulio Barrili, Italian novelist (b. 1836)

References

• Clark, Martin (2008). Modern Italy: 1871 to the present, Harlow: Pearson Education, ISBN 1-4058-2352-6