1905 in Italy

Years in Italy:	1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908
Centuries:	19th century · 20th century · 21st century
Decades:	1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s
Years:	1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908

See also: 1904 in Italy, other events of 1905, 1906 in Italy.

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Events from the year 1905 in Italy.

Kingdom of Italy

• Monarch – Victor Emmanuel III (1900–1946)
• Prime Minister –
  1. Giovanni Giolitti (1903–1905)
  2. Tommaso Tittoni (1905)
  3. Alessandro Fortis (1905–1906)
• Population – 33,489,000

Events

• February – Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti brings a bill to the Chamber of Deputies for the nationalization of the railways that makes it a crime to stop or disturb railway service. The railway unions order a slowdown.^[1]
• March 5 – Pleading illness Giolitti resigns over the issue of national railways.
• March 12 – An interim government under Tommaso Tittoni takes over.
• March 28 – On the recommendation of Giolitti, Alessandro Fortis forms a new government, he is the first Jewish Prime Minister of Italy. The government undertakes the nationalization of the railways, after confronting a railroad strike that could have paralyzed transportation in the country. Railroad workers became public employees, which deprives them of the right to strike.^[1]
• April – The Italian government acquired control (from a private Italian company called SACI) of the coastal area around Mogadishu, and creates the colony of Italian Somaliland.
• April 22 – The Ferrovie dello Stato (State Railways) is instituted, taking control over the majority of the national railways, which were private until then, with a total of 10,557 km (6,560 mi) of lines.
• June 11 – Pope Pius X promulgates the encyclical Il fermo proposito, which establishes Azione Cattolica as a non-political lay organization under the direct control of bishops. It was established after an earlier similar organization, Opera dei Congressi was disbanded in 1904 because many of its members were siding with modernism. Catholics were allowed by the Pope to vote "to help the maintenance of the social order".^[2]
• July 1 - The three principal railway companies in Italy are brought together with a number of private operators into the nationalised Ferrovie dello Stato.
• September 8 – An earthquake strikes southern Italy with a magnitude of 7.2, damaging parts of Lipari Island and Messina Province, and killing between 557 and 2,500 people. The earthquake particularly affects the Calabria region, destroying as many as 25 villages,^[3] and 14,000 homes.^[4] Fortis visited the area and introduced a special law to aid these southern regions. This measure was the first real acknowledgment by the Italian state of the fundamental problems underlying southern underdevelopment.^[5]
• December 24 – The government of Prime Minister Fortis falls over Foreign Minister Tittoni's proposal to reduce the duty on Spanish wine in connection with an Italo-Spanish commercial treaty that created turmoil among the rural classes. Fortis forms a new government, without Tittoni.

Births

• January 8 – Giacinto Scelsi, Italian composer (d. 1988)
• February 1 – Emilio G. Segrè, Italian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1989)
• April 13 – Bruno Rossi, Italian experimental physicist (d. 1993)
• September 15 – Bernardo Mattarella, Italian politician (d. 1971)

Deaths

• June 18 – Carmine Crocco, Italian brigand and folk hero (b. 1830)
• August 31 – Francesco Tamagno, Italian opera singer (b. 1850)
• September 14 – Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, Franco-Italian explorer (b. 1852)

References

1. Ashley, Making Liberalism Work, p. 65
2. Clark, Modern Italy: 1871 to the present, p. 176
3. "Italy's earthquake history". BBC News. October 31, 2002. Retrieved September 4, 2009.
4. "Today in Earthquake History: September 8". United States Geological Survey. February 18, 2009. Retrieved September 4, 2009.
5. Fortis, Alessandro, Historical Dictionary of modern Italy

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