1916 in Italy

← 1915 1914 1913 1916 in Italy → 1917 1918 1919
Decades:	1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s
See also:	History of Italy Timeline of Italian history List of years in Italy

Events from the year 1916 in Italy.

Kingdom of Italy

• Monarch –
  Victor Emmanuel III
  (1900–1946)
• Prime Minister –
  1. Antonio Salandra (1914–1916)
  2. Paolo Boselli (1916–1917)
• Population – 36,481,000

Events

The Italian Front in 1915–1917: eleven Battles of the Isonzo and Asiago offensive. In blue, initial Italian conquests

Italian Alpini troops; 1915

Italy entered

• February 14 – First bombing of Milan. Two Austrian planes drop bombs on Porta Romana and Porta Volta.^[1]

March

• March 9–15 – After the winter lull, the Italians launch the Fifth Battle of the Isonzo, but Austrian-Hungarian troops repulse the offensive, and the battle concludes in poor weather for trench warfare.

May

• May 15 – June 10 –
  Po River
  plain and thus cutting off the Italian Armies in the North East of the country. The offensive results in no gain.

June

• June 11 – Due to the defeat at the Battle of Asiago, Prime Minister Antonio Salandra resigns.^[2]
• June 18 – Paolo Boselli forms a new Cabinet. The new government has the character of a government of national unity and consists of nineteen ministers, representative of all political groups. Vittorio Emanuele Orlando becomes Minister of the Interior, while Sidney Sonnino remains Foreign Minister.^[1][3]

July

• July 12 – Cesare Battisti and Fabio Filzi, both Austrian subjects but exponents of Trentino irredentism are hanged by the Austrians in Trento. They had enlisted in the Italian army and were captured by the Austrians, who condemned them as deserters.^[1]

August

• August 6–17 – The
  Sixth Battle of the Isonzo, both launched by the Italians, result in a success greater than the previous attacks. The offensive gains nothing of strategic value but did take Gorizia
  , which boosts Italian spirits.
• August 28 – Italy declares war on Germany.

• September 14–17 – Seventh Battle of the Isonzo. The Italians try to extend their hold of their newly-won Gorizia bridgehead in attacks to the south-east of the town. Despite the greater concentration of resources upon a single point – intended to reduce the severely high casualty rate sustained to date – the attack was called off after three days of heavy casualties.

October

• October 5 – The Italian Government is informed of the content of the agreement signed in May between France, England and Russia for the partition of the Asian part of the
  Konya and Adana, would be allocated to Italy as agreed in the 1915 Treaty of London.^[1]
• October 10–12 – Eighth Battle of the Isonzo. The attack is essentially a continuation of attempts made during the previous Seventh Battle of the Isonzo to extend the bridgehead established at Gorizia during the Sixth Battle of the Isonzo in August 1916. Heavy Italian casualties require that the initiative is called off pending the army's recuperation.

November

• November 1–4 – Ninth Battle of the Isonzo is called off in failure, and the Italians, weakened by continual offensive operations throughout the year – 1916 had seen five Isonzo operations on top of four undertaken the year before – take a lengthy break for the winter.

December

• December 13 – "White Friday", 10,000 Austrian and Italian soldiers are killed by avalanches in the Dolomites.^[4] According to some reports both sides deliberately fired shells into the weakened snowpacks in an attempt to bury the other side.

Births

• January 24 – Arnoldo Foà, Italian actor (d. 2014)
• March 4 – Giorgio Bassani, Italian writer (d. 2000)
• April 28 – Ferruccio Lamborghini, Italian automobile manufacturer (d. 1993)
• May 20 –
  Trebisonda Valla
  , Italian athlete (d. 2006)
• July 14 – Natalia Ginzburg, Italian author (d. 1991)
• September 23 – Aldo Moro, Prime Minister of Italy (d. 1978)
• September 27 – Trento Longaretti, Italian painter (d. 2017)

Deaths

• April 20 – Claudio Casanova, Italian professional football player who died from the injuries he suffered at front in World War I (b. 1895)
• August 6 – Enrico Toti, Italian one-legged cyclist killed in the Sixth Battle of the Isonzo (b. 1882)
• August 10 – Giuseppe Sinigaglia, Italian rower, killed in the Sixth Battle of the Isonzo (b. 1884)
• August 17 – Umberto Boccioni, influential Italian painter and sculptor that helped shape the revolutionary aesthetic of the Futurism movement (b. 1882)
• October 10 – Antonio Sant'Elia, Italian architect and a key member of the Futurist movement in architecture, killed during the Eighth Battle of the Isonzo (b. 1888)

References