Dansvidania a minute ago

Just to offer food for thought, some people in the south of Italy still regard him as a Sardo/French invader and do not buy the “national hero” persona that garibaldi got attributed after the unification.

riffraff an hour ago

More fun trivia about Garibaldi: he was elected to the french parliament, and he caused a stir when he showed up wearing his signature poncho rather than formal clothes. He was also the only french commander in the Franco Russian war to capture a Prussian flag.

Also, he was supposedly invited to fight in the American civil war but refused since he couldn't get the level of command he wanted, although there was a Garibaldi Guard in that war.

Queen Victoria wrote in her diary , about Garibaldi's visit to London, that most of the elite was far too fascinated with him. During the same visit, the servants at the house he was staying sold the water he used to wash himself to collectors.

  • thomassmith65 44 minutes ago

    Re: the civil war, here's a letter Garibaldi wrote to Lincoln, congratulating him on the Emancipation Proclamation

    https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/giuseppe-...

      "If an entire race of human beings, subjugated into slavery by human egoism, has been restored to human dignity, to civilization and human love, this is by your doing and at the price of the most noble lives in America."
al2o3cr 7 days ago

It's amazing how many Italian dictators had biscuits named after them.

You've got the Garibaldi of course, you've got your Bourbon, and you've got your Peek Freens Trotsky assortment!

  • teo_zero an hour ago

    > how many Italian dictators had biscuits named after them.

    So, how many?

    • esperent 17 minutes ago

      Well, it seems Garibaldi biscuits were genuinely named after this guy. However Bourbon was named for the House of Bourbon, a French royal family.

      I'm discounting the Peek Freens Trotsky assortment because Trotsky was, of course, Russian.

      So, one. Which is still more than you might expect.

  • thomassmith65 7 days ago

    It's weird to remember Garibaldi as a dictator, as though he were similar to Mussolini or Hitler. That said, he was one, for a few months in 1860.

    • golem14 2 hours ago

      I know little more than what is written in Giovanni Guareschi’s work. But he feels more like the Napoleon of Notting Hill. I wonder where Chesterton got his inspiration from…

  • colinb 7 days ago

    I have happy memories of the struggle to open the Trotsky boxes. In my house we used to have them with cocktails, so it was easiest to just pull out the bar tools and hack away.

    (Oh the embarrassment. My ears are burning)

trashtensor 2 hours ago

has the author never seen a young che guevara, fidel castro, or joseph stalin?

  • faidit an hour ago

    stalin's pictures were photoshopped when he was in power, he was actually quite ugly. napoleon similarly was ugly looking but had himself painted as a chad after he betrayed the revolution

timterim 3 hours ago

‘Garibaldi’ is the German word for pressure cooker!

  • golem14 2 hours ago

    ? It is? Which part of Germany?