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LITTLE-KNOWN FACTS FROM ITALIAN AMERICAN HISTORY
October is Italian American Heritage Month,
celebrating the contributions of an estimated 20 million
Americans of Italian descent -- the fifth largest ethnic
group in the United States.
- Two signers of the Declaration of Independence
were of Italian descent: Maryland's William
Paca and Delaware's Caesar Rodney.
- Four Italians were at the Battle of Little Bighorn
in 1876: John Martini, a trumpeter
and the last man to see Custer alive; Augusto
De Voto, Giovanni Casella, and Lieutenant
Charles De Rudio. All four survived the
massacre.
- The Planter's Peanut Company and its familiar
logo, Mr. Peanut, were created by Amedeo Obici
and Mario Peruzzi in Wilkes Barre,
Pennsylvania in 1908.
- "Chattanooga Choo-choo," "Lullaby of Broadway,"
and "An Affair to Remember" were some of the songs
written by Harry Warren, born
Salvatore Guaragna.
- The ice cream cone was invented in 1896 by
Italo Marcioni in New Jersey. Two generations
later, in Pittsburgh Jim Delligatti
invented the Big Mac.
- The only enlisted Marine in U.S. history to win
the nation's two highest military honors -- the Navy
Cross and the U.S. Congressional Medal of Honor -- was
John Basilone, a U.S. Marine
sergeant, who died at the Battle of Iwo Jima in World
War II.
- The suburban shopping mall was developed by
William Cafaro and Edward J.
DeBartolo. Cafaro pioneered the enclosed
shopping mall with his American Mall in Lima, Ohio in
1965. DeBartolo built the first American shopping
plaza in the 1940s.
- Between 5,000 and 10,000 Italians fought in the
Civil War for both the Union and the Confederacy. Four
were Union generals, including General Luigi
Palma di Cesnola, who received the Medal of
Honor and was later the first director of New York's
Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- Susan Sarandon, Bruce Springsteen,
and Ann Bancroft are Italian
American.
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