In my update yesterday I was remiss to add another important date in White History immediately relevant to the above.
Noted Italian journalist, socialist activist and politician, Benito Mussolini, was born on July 29th, 1883. He served as Prime Minister of Italy in a coup he launched in 1922 until his forcible abdication in 1943 when the Italian mainland was invaded by the Western Allies. Soonafter he was the puppet leader of the Italian Social Republic, until the collapse of Nazi Germany and its European dominance, after which he and his Mistress were caught by Italian partisans, executed and then hung upside down from a local gas station.
Mussolini's brand of Italian Fascism was largely seen as instrumental in showing how fascism could be implemented across an entire society, first by actually seizing power and then operating the entire government and country along 'fascist' lines instead of a despotism representative of only an elite or fragment of a political party or other grouping. He was instrumental in the use of mass media to magnify his cult of personality, broadened Fascist membership to all classes, both genders and reached out to even disaffected and otherwise alienated groups and like all proper dictators, was able to apply extrajudicial violence and coercion against any challengers to his one party state. The dude also pacified Libya and conquered Ethiopia (after eight months).
None of it helped Italy much during World War Two though.
Which if course leads to the old stereotype which is that it was a mistake for Germany to ally with Italy. No my friends, it was a mistake for Italy to ally with Germany.
Anyways enough about pasta Daddy.
As for what happened on this very July 30th... way back in 1864 what occurred was the Battle of the Crater in the American Civil War. The Battle of the Crater was one of the opening engagements of he Siege of Petersburg which itself was started after Grant's mostly successful Overland Campaign. The Union Army turned out to have several hundred Coal Miners of the 48th Pennsylvania spent a month digging a 150+ meter long shaft beneath the Confederate lines and filled it with 320 kegs of gunpowder or about 8000 pounds/3600 kilograms worth. It was detonated to terrific effect on this day.
Almost three hundred Rebel Confederate troops were annihilated immediately by the blast and... it all went downhill from there for the opposing Union forces? Why? I BLAME RACISM.
The initial idea was that Ferraro's US Colored Troops were specially trained to assault the positions after the mine detonation, but due to political pressure (often mistakeningly stated to be negative racism 'ie Black troops couldn't do it') over the idea of using Colored Troops as 'cannon fodder' at the last moment, it was decided a different brigade would be used in the vanguard. General Burnside, showing his excellent command capabilities, had his remaining brigade commanders draw straws and whoever had the shortest one would command their brigade in the vanguard.
Unfortunately this fell to General Ledlie... who showed his own excellent command capabilities by delegating the assault to subordinates while he reportedly got drunk well behind the front lines and failed to command in any way. Thus... Ledlie's untrained brigade charged directly into the Crater... and as the Rebels began to recover, began to engage in a rather awful 'turkey shoot' of all of the Union troops who charged into said Crater and found they couldn't get out the other side. Attempting to salvage the situation, Burnside ordered his other brigades led by the Colored Troops to attack
around the Crater but after some brief initial success, the Rebel forces in the adjacent trenches were able to repel all assaults and offered little quarter to the US Colored Troops during the battle.
Needless to say, the Union forces lost almost four thousand casualties and the Confederates less then fifteen hundred for absolutely no gain. General Ledlie was soon kicked out of the Army while General Burnside was placed under a Court of Inquiry by General Meade (who himself was just as guilty of masterminding this plan and in fact ordered Burnside to switch up the brigades) and while not punished, was not assigned to another active duty assignment for the rest of the war.
EDIT:
General Ferraro was reportedly seen drinking with General Ledlie during the assault but I guess somehow avoided any punishment, probably because he was wealthy and politically connected to individuals abroad (like Italian hero Giuseppi Garibaldi) and prominent Democratic officials and politicians.