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A. P. GianniniBanker for the Little GuyA. P. was the first to challenge the unwritten rule that banks should only lend money to people who don’t need it. Amadeo Pietro (Peter) Giannini was born on a small farm in San Jose, California in 1870, the son of Italian immigrants. He was only seven years old when he saw his father killed in a fight with another man over a dollar. His mother remarried, and his new stepfather was in the produce business. A. P. quit school at the age of 14 to help his stepfather, and soon impressed the stepfather so much that he was made a partner in the business.In 1928, he purchased Bank of America, an old and very respected institution in New York City, and consolidated all of his banks under that name. He continued to open branches all over the United States, making Bank of America the first nationwide bank and by 1945, Bank of America was the largest bank in the United States.All of his innovations like loans to ordinary people and installment payments, were sound business decisions that revolutionized the banking business and generated substantial profits for his shareholders. He also helped large and small businesses that were down on their luck or out of favor. His financial backing of the California wine and movie industries was instrumental in their growth.He was very generous with his employees, and instituted profit-sharing and stock ownership plans. He understood that sharing profits with his employees would guarantee their loyalty and his success.A. P. once said, "It's no use to decide what's going to happen unless you have the courage of your convictions. Many a brilliant idea has been lost because the man who dreamed it lacked the spunk or the spine to put it across. It doesn't matter if you don't always hit the exact bulls-eye, the other rings in the targets score points, too.“
Antonio Meucci (April 13, 1808 – October 18, 1889) was an Italian inventor, who developed a form of voice communication apparatus in 1857. Many credit him with the invention of the telephone; for example, the Encyclopedia Italiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti (Italian Encyclopedia of Science, Literature and Art) calls him the "inventore del telefono" (inventor of the telephone). In 2002 the U. S. House of Representatives passed a resolution recognizing Meucci's accomplishment and stating that "if Meucci had been able to pay the $10 fee to maintain the caveat after 1874, no patent could have been issued to Bell."The resolution's sponsor described it as "a message that rings loud and clear recognizing the true inventor of the telephone, Antonio Meucci.“ Meucci set up a form of voice communication link in his Staten Island home that connected the basement with the first floor. He filed a patent caveat for his device in 1871, which was not renewed after 1874. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell patented the electro-magnetic transmission of vocal sound by adulatory electric current.
Joe DiMaggio was born in Martinez, California, the eighth of nine children born to immigrants from Italy, Giuseppe (1872–1949) and Rosalia (Mercurio) DiMaggio (1878–1951). "Paolo" was in honor of Giuseppe's favorite saint, Saint Paul. The family moved to San Francisco, California when Joe was one year old. • It was Giuseppe's hope that his five sons would become fishermen.[3] DiMaggio recalled that he would do anything to get out of cleaning his father's boat, as the smell of dead fish nauseated him. Giuseppe called him "lazy" and "good for nothing;" Giuseppe's opposition was due to not understanding how baseball could help DiMaggio "get away from the poverty" and make something of himself. • Joseph Paul "Joe" DiMaggio (November 25, 1914 – March 8, 1999), • A member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, DiMaggio was a 3-time MVP winner and 13-time All-Star (the only player to be selected for the All-Star Game in every season he played). At the time of his retirement, he had the fifth-most career home runs (361) and sixth-highest slugging percentage (.579) in history. He is perhaps best known for his 56-game hitting streak (May 15–July 16, 1941), a record that still stands.
Mario Lanza (January 31, 1921 – October 7, 1959) was an Italian Americantenor and Hollywoodmovie star who enjoyed success in the late 1940s and 1950s. • His lirico spintotenor voice was considered by his admirers to rival that of Enrico Caruso, whom Lanza portrayed in the 1951 film The Great Caruso. Compared with Caruso, however, his operatic career was negligible. Lanza sang a wide variety of music throughout his career, ranging from operatic arias to the popular songs of the day. While his highly emotional style was not universally praised by critics, he was immensely popular and his many recordings are still prized today. • In April 1959, Lanza suffered a minor heart attack, followed by double pneumonia in August. He died in Rome in October of that year at the age of 38 from a pulmonary embolism after undergoing a controversial weight loss program colloquially known as "the twilight sleep treatment," which required its patients to be kept immobile and sedated for prolonged periods. • Lanza's widow, Betty, moved back to Hollywood with their four children, but died five months later at the age of 37. Biographer Armando Cesari writes that the apparent cause of death, according to the coroner, was "asphyxiation resulting from a respiratory ailment for which she had been receiving medication". In 1991, Marc, the younger of their two sons, died of a heart attack at the age of 37; six years later, Colleen, their eldest daughter, was killed at the age of 48 when she was struck by two passing vehicles on a highway. Damon Lanza, the couple's eldest son, died in August 2008 of a heart attack at the age of 55.
Helen Barolini's fiction and non-fiction has created a bridge between the United States, her home land, and Italy, the ancestral land. Awarded a writing grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for her first novel, Umbertina, Barolini is the author of nine other books and many short stories and essays that have been cited in annual editions of BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS. She has received an American Book Award and other honors, has been a Resident fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center on Lake Como, and a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome. Three of her books have appeared in translation in Italy where she has lectured as an invited American author. In 2007 she spoke on her late husband, Antonio Barolini, at a conference in Padua,Italy.
Bandini was born on March 31, 1852, in Forli, which is in the Romagna region of Italy. Little is known about Bandini’s family, described as of the upper class and refined. He is known to have had two older brothers, one of whom was also a priest in the Society of Jesus. • Father Bandini was sent to the Jesuits’ Rocky Mountain Mission in Montana Territory in 1882 as a Jesuit Missionary to the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary Church in Helena, Montana. There, he studied both English and Indian languages. A year later, he was stationed at St. Ignatius Mission, Montana, where he built a church and school and traveled into Indian Villages instructing both Crow and Kootenai Indians in the Catholic faith. • he returned to the United States and established St. Raphael’s Italian Benevolent Society, the purpose of which was to assist Italian immigrants at the Port of New York • In December 1896, Bandini took the first step toward proving his theory that, by placing Italian immigrants in the interior of the United States, on land similar to that of their homeland, they could prosper and become useful citizens. With the approval of his superior, a man named Satolli, he requested that he be assigned as chaplain for a colony of Italian immigrants being enlisted by Austin Corbin • Tontitown prospered and, by 1905, was known as the perfect example of colonization. That same year, the Italian ambassador of Washington DC, Baron E. Mayor des Planches, came for a visit. Surprised by the beauty and prosperity of Tontitown, he asked, “What has done it?” “It’s Father Bandini here and his people,” a local citizen replied.
John Ciardi was born in 1916 in Boston, Massachusetts, the child of Italian immigrants. He attended Bates College and Tufts College (now University) and received his master's degree from the University of Michigan in 1939. He is the author of more than forty volumes of poetry, among them The Collected Poems of John Ciardi (University of Arkansas Press, 1997), The Birds of Pompeii (1985), The Little That Is All (1974), Person to Person (1964), and Other Skies (1947). Ciardi is perhaps best known for How Does a Poem Mean? (1959), which became a standard text for college and high school poetry courses. He also wrote an acclaimed translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, was a regular commentator on National Public Radio, and served as editor of Saturday Review for many years. In 1961, Ciardi broke with the educational establishment to devote himself to his own literary endeavors. He began writing children's poetry as a way of getting his own children interested in reading. These works, especially I Met a Man Who Sang the Sillies (1961), became tremendously popular. Ciardi was a vocal proponent of exposing poetry to mass audiences, and he made a conscientious effort to address the average reader through much of his work without sacrificing complexity or formal intricacy.
Vincent Thomas Lombardi was born on June 11, 1913, in Brooklyn, N.Y. He was the first of Henry and Matilda Lombardi's five children. Vince was raised in the Catholic faith and studied the priesthood for two years before transferring to St. Francis Preparatory High School, where he became a star fullback on the football team. Vince was accepted at New York City's Fordham University in 1933. After a year on the freshman team, varsity football coach "Sleepy" Jim Crowley (a Knute Rockne protégé) made 170-pound Vince a guard in Fordham's steadfast offensive line, which was tagged the "Seven Blocks of Granite." He was also just as successful in the classroom as in the football field, graduating cum laude with a business major in 1937. • Lombardi held the first ever of his notoriously intense training camps to gear up for the 1959 season. "Dancing is a contact sport," he told his Packers, "Football is a hitting sport." He expected obedience, dedication and 110 percent effort from each man, but he also made a promise to them - If they obeyed his rules and used his method, they would be a championship team. • Vince Lombardi was inducted into the Professional Football Hall of Fame in 1971, the same year that the Super Bowl trophy was renamed in his honor. Considered the NFL's most prestigious award, the Vince Lombardi Trophy is coveted by every player and coach in the league.
Frances Cabrini was born in Sant’Angelo Lodigiano in the province of Lombardy, northern Italy, two months prematurely, on July l5, 1850. Her father, Agostino, was a farmer and her mother, Stella, stayed at home with the children. • Although her lifelong dream was to be a missionary in China, the Pope sent Cabrini to New York City on March 31, 1889, to help the Italian Immigrants there " Not to the East but to the West". There, she obtained the permission of Archbishop Michael Corrigan to found an orphanage, which is located in West Park, Ulster County, New York, today and is known as Saint Cabrini Home, the first of 67 institutions she founded in New York, Chicago, Des Plaines ,Seattle, New Orleans, Denver, Golden, Los Angeles, Philadelphia,[1] and in countries throughout South America and Europe. • Chicago became a major center of Mother Cabrini’s work. In 1899, she opened the city’s first Italian immigrant school. She also transformed a former hotel into Columbus Hospital in 1905; in 1911, she opened Columbus Extension Hospital (later renamed Saint Cabrini Hospital) in the heart of the city’s Italian neighborhood on the Near West Side. Although both hospitals eventually closed near the end of the 20th century, their foundress’s name lives on via Chicago's Cabrini Street. • Cabrini was beatified on November 13, 1938, and canonized on July 7, 1946, by Pope Pius XII. St. Frances Xavier Cabrini is the patron saint of immigrants. Her beatification miracle involved the restoration of sight to a child who had been blinded by excess silver nitrate in its eyes. Her canonization miracle involved the healing of a terminally ill nun. The date fixed at the universal level for Mother Cabrini's feast day is December 22,[2] for the novus ordo and November 13 for the traditional Latin Mass, but other dates may be assigned at a local level. • Chicago's Cabrini-Green housing project, which has since been mostly torn down,[3] was named after her, due to her work with Italian immigrants in the location.
Frank Russell Capra (May 18, 1897 – September 3, 1991) was an American film director and a creative force behind a number of films of the 1930s and 1940s, including It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), You Can't Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) and It's a Wonderful Life (1946). • Born Francesco Rosario Capra in Bisacquino, Sicily, Italy, his father Salvatore, his mother Rosaria Nicolosi, and his siblings immigrated to the United States in 1903. • Frank Capra was commissioned as a major in the United States Army Signal Corps during World War II. He produced State of the Union and directed or co-directed eight documentary propaganda films between 1942 and 1948, Why We Fight is widely considered a masterpiece of propaganda and won an Academy Award. Prelude to War won the 1942 Academy Award for Documentary Feature. Capra regarded these films as his most important works. • It's a Wonderful Life (1946) was considered a box office disappointment but it was nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Director, Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Sound Recording and Best Editing. The American Film Institute named it one of the best films ever made, putting it at the top of the list of AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers, a list of what AFI considers to be the most inspirational American movies of all time. • Capra films usually carry a definite message about the basic goodness of human nature and show the value of unselfishness and hard work. His wholesome, feel-good themes have led some to call his Capra-corn, but those who hold his vision in high regard prefer the term Capraesque. It may be argued that much of the 'feel-good' type of cinema, which has become a genre of its own, is largely Frank Capra's legacy
Arturo Toscanini (Italian pronunciation; March 25, 1867 – January 16, 1957) was an Italianconductor. One of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and 20th Centuries, he was renowned for his brilliant intensity, his restless perfectionism, his phenomenal ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his photographic memory. He is especially regarded as an authoritative interpreter of the works of Verdi, Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner. As music director of the NBC Symphony Orchestra he became a household name through his radio and television broadcasts and many recordings of the operatic and symphonic repertoire. • In 1919, Toscanini ran unsuccessfully as a Fascist parliamentary candidate in Milan. He had been called "the greatest conductor in the world" by Fascist leader Benito Mussolini. However, he became disillusioned with fascism and repeatedly defied the Italian dictator after the latter's ascent to power in 1922. He refused to display Mussolini's photograph or conduct the Fascist anthem Giovinezza at La Scala.He raged to a friend, "If I were capable of killing a man, I would kill Mussolini.
Giovanni da Verrazzano (often spelled Verrazano; c. 1485 – c. 1528) was an Italianexplorer of North America, in the service of the Frenchcrown. He is renowned as the first European since the Norse colonization of the Americas around AD 1000 to explore the Atlantic coast of North America between South Carolina and Newfoundland, including New York Harbor and Narragansett Bay in 1524 • Verrazzano was born into a rich family of Val di Greve, south of Florence, the son of Piero Andrea da Verrazzano and Fiammetta Capelli. Although he left a detailed account of his voyages to North America, little is known about his life. • In the 19th and early 20th centuries there was a great debate in the United States about the authenticity of the letters he wrote to Francis I describing the geography, flora, fauna and native population of the east coast of North America. Others thought it was true, and it is almost universally accepted as authentic todayparticularly after the discovery of the letter signed by Francis I which referred to Verrazzano's letter. • It was only with great effort in the 1950s and 1960s that Verrazzano's name and reputation as the European discoverer of the harbour was re-established, during an effort to have the newly built Narrows bridge named after him.
Maria Montessori (August 31, 1870 – May 6, 1952) was an Italian physician, educator, philosopher, humanitarian and devout Catholic; she is best known for her philosophy and the Montessori method of education of children from birth to adolescence. Her educational method is in use today in a number of public as well as private schools throughout the world. • Maria Montessori was born in Chiaravalle (Ancona), Italy. At the age of thirteen she attended an all-boy technical school in preparation for her dreams of becoming an engineer. Montessori was the first woman to graduate from the University of Rome La Sapienza Medical School, becoming the first female doctor in Italy. • She was asked to start a school for children in a housing project in Rome, which opened on January 6, 1907, and which she called "Casa dei Bambini" or Children's House. Children's House was a child care center in an apartment building in the poor neighborhood of Rome. • It has been reported that the Montessori method of teaching has enabled children to learn to read and write much more quickly and with greater facility than has otherwise been possible. The Montessori Method of teaching concentrates on quality rather than quantity. The success of this school sparked the opening of many more, and a worldwide interest in Montessori's methods of education.
Geraldine Anne Ferraro (born August 26, 1935) is an American attorney, a Democratic Party politician and a former member of the United States House of Representatives. She was the first female Vice Presidential candidate representing a majorAmerican political party. • Ferraro grew up in New York and became a teacher and lawyer. • Ferraro began working as an elementary school teacher in public schools in Astoria, Queens, "because that's what women were supposed to do."Unsatisfied, she decided to attend law school; an admissions officer said to her, "I hope you're serious, Gerry. You're taking a man's place, you know."She earned a Juris Doctor degree with honors from Fordham University School of Law in 1960 going to classes at night while continuing to work as a second-grade teacher at schools such as P.S. 57 during the day.Ferraro was one of only two women in her graduating class of 179 • In 1984, former Vice President and presidential candidate Walter Mondale selected Ferraro to be his running mate in the upcoming election. In doing so she also became the only Italian American to be a major-party national nominee. Ferraro is one of only two U.S. women to run on a major party national ticket. The other is Alaska governorSarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee,[90] whose ticket also lost.
Constantino Brumidi (July 26, 1805 – February 19, 1880) was an Italian/Greek-American historicalpainter, best known and honored for his fresco work in the Capitol Building in Washington, DC. • His mother was from Rome. He showed his talent for fresco painting at an early age and painted in several Roman palaces, among them being that of Prince Torlonia. Under Gregory XVI he worked for three years in the Vatican. • The occupation of Rome by French forces in 1849 apparently persuaded Brumidi to emigrate, and he sailed for the United States, where he became a naturalizedcitizen in 1852. Taking up his residence in New York City, the artist painted a number of portraits. Subsequently he undertook more important works. • His first art work in the Capitol Building was in the meeting room of the House Committee on Agriculture. At first he received $8 a day, which Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War of the United States, caused to be increased to $10. His work attracting much favorable attention, he was given further commissions, and gradually settled into the position of a Government painter. His chief work in Washington was done in the rotunda of the Capitol and included the Apotheosis of George Washington in the dome, as well as other allegories, and scenes from American history. His work in the rotunda was left unfinished at his death, but he had decorated many other sections of the building, most notably hallways in the Senate side of the Capitol now known as the Brumidi Corridors.
Radio Flyer makes those wittle wed wagons adults adore and kids covet. An icon of childhood play and imagination, the #18 Classic Red Wagon has rolled out of the plant for more than 70 years -- an American toy industry record and the reason Radio Flyer owns a majority stake in the US market. The company also makes plastic wagons and models with oversized, terrain-friendly tires and wooden rails. Radio Flyer makes bikes and trikes for little tikes, in addition to scooters and pedal-powered cars. Italian immigrant Antonio Pasin made his first Liberty Coaster in 1917. He chose the name "Radio Flyer" in 1933 because it sounded futuristic. His grandchildren own and operate the company.
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra (December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. • Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became a successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, being the idol of the "bobby soxers." His professional career had stalled by the 1950s, but it was reborn in 1954 after he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. • Sinatra left Capitol to found his own record label, Reprise Records (finding success with albums such as Ring-A-Ding-Ding, toured internationally, was a founding member of the Rat Pack and fraternized with celebrities and presidents, including PresidentJohn F. Kennedy. Sinatra turned 50 in 1965, recorded the retrospective September of My Years, starred in the Emmy-winning television special Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music, and scored hits with "Strangers in the Night" and "My Way". • Sinatra was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, the only child of Italian immigrants Natalie Della Anthony Martin Sinatra.He left high school without graduating, having attended only 47 days before being expelled due to his rowdy conduct. His mother was influential in the neighborhood and in local Democratic Party circles, but also ran an illegal abortion business from her home; she was arrested several times and convicted twice for this offense. Frank, himself, was arrested for carrying on with a married woman, an illegal offense at the time.Frank's father Tony served with the Hoboken Fire Department.
Andrea Palladio (30 November 1508 – 19 August 1580), was a Venetianarchitect, widely considered the most influential architect in the history of Western architecture. He was influenced by Roman and Greek architecture. • His talents were first recognized in his early thirties by Count Gian Giorgio Trissino, an influential humanist and writer. It was also Trissino who gave him the name by which he is now known, Palladio, an allusion to the Greek goddess of wisdom Pallas Athene and to a character of a play of Trissino itself. Indeed the word Palladio means Wise one. • The Palladian style, named after him, adhered to classical Roman principles he rediscovered, applied and explained in his works. Palladio's architecture was not dependent on expensive materials, which must have been an advantage to his more financially-pressed clients. Many of his buildings are of brick covered with stucco. • His influence was extended worldwide into the British colonies. The Palladian villa format was easily adapted for a democratic worldview, as can be seen at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and his arrangement for the University of Virginia
