Category Archives: Great Italian American Series

Fiorello La Guardia Biography Mayor, U.S. Representative (1882–1947) Corruption-fighting politician Fiorello La Guardia was New York City’s mayor from 1934 to 1945. He also served in the U.S. House of Representatives. QUOTES “It requires more courage to keep the peace

Louis Zamperini, the Olympic winner and World War II officer who survived a horrific plane crash, a seven-week journey across the Pacific in a raft, near starvation and unspeakable torture in Japanese POW camps, died this past July at age

Did you know? The man who created Woody Woodpecker, cartoonist Walter Lantz (1899-1994), was Italian American. His parents were both Italian immigrants. His  father’s last name, Lanza, was anglicized when he passed through Ellis Island.  

 It has been over ninety years since the death of the man known as the “greatest tenor of the century:” and to this day, fourteen years into the next century, the title still invokes the name Enrico Caruso. Every tenor

Jerome Caminada, born from an Italian father and Irish mother, was a real-life Victorian super-sleuth whose ground-breaking detective work in the notorious rookeries of 19th century Manchester earned him a place in the city’s history as the first Detective Superintendent.

     Philip Mazzei  a Florentine merchant, surgeon, and horticulturist, befriended Thomas Jefferson through business connections several years before they actually met.  After working as a wine merchant in London for about eighteen years, Mazzei sailed to Virginia in 1773 to indulge his