Word: duces
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...African conquest at Mussolini's whim. One day Mussolini called him to his Palazzo Venezia, said: "I can't see the Colosseum from my window." Replied Vaselli: "There's a hill in the way. Give me an order and I'll remove it." Cried the Duce: "I want a wide road joining the Palazzo Venezia and the Colosseum. Along it shall march Italian youth with its 8,000,000 sharp bayonets. It shall be called the Via dell' Impero...
...more. Like Crassus of old (who introduced the first fire-fighting service to Caesar's Rome but always bought up threatened nearby properties dirt-cheap before dousing the flames), he picked up many a real-estate bargain from cash-short owners in the course of cutting through the Duce's grandiose streets and squares. By 1937 Vaselli was known as the "garbage baron" and "asphalt king." And when typhus broke out again in Rome, Mussolini blamed him. After a vast check, Vaselli took Mussolini early one morning to a Roman creamery. There the Duce saw that the milkmaids...
...young, hot-eyed Benito Mussolini stared out of U.S. TV screens this week and spoke in accented English: "I salute the great American people." CBS conjured up the Duce's shade in Mussolini, a fast-moving half hour on Twentieth Century galvanized by rare images of the living past. Viewers caught glimpses they had half forgotten or never seen before: newborn Fascist babies squirming wholesale on a nursery table; the bare-chested dictator on a ski slope; his mistress, Claretta Petacci, in a silken boudoir; an anonymous GI mugging in victory from the famous balcony of the Palazzo Venezia...
...League of Nations imposed its sanctions against Italy, but, thanks to Costantini, the Italian dictator knew that they were largely a bluff. When the British home fleet came steaming into the Mediterranean, set on frightening the Duce, Mussolini's fear was considerably abated by the fact that he knew from Admiralty orders that the fleet had every intention of going peaceably home again...
...identified, then placed under a tricolor to await burial. Next day during three Masses, some 500 shouting, banner-waving Fascists broke a pledge against demonstrations, milled about the chapel, and while Rachele stood motionless, gave the blackshirt salute and knelt before the coffin. Later, Italy's old-time Duce was buried beside his blacksmith father and schoolteacher mother...