That Time an Assassin Shot Off Mussolini’s Nose

It happened on April 7, 1926, just seconds after he finished delivering a characteristically rousing speech lauding the wonder that was modern Italian medicine to an adoring crowd packed into Rome’s Piazza del Campidoglio.

The shooter was 50-year-old Irishwoman Violet Gibson, who, even now, very, very little is known about.

Other than the fact that, thanks to the good standing of her father, Edward Gibson, 1st Baron Ashburne, she spent her early years wandering through the halls and gardens of sprawling Irish castles and estates, and was ceremoniously presented as a debutante - a young woman of marriageable age - at the court of Queen Victoria in 1894, details about her life are scarce.

All there is to find are snapshots from an unfortunately troubled life of chronic health problems and persistent mental illness, exacerbated more than once by unexpected deaths in the family. The first was her father’s in 1913, which promoted a sudden move to Paris, and ultimately drove her into the arms of a group of pacifist activists that, over the next four years, passionately protested against French involvement in First World War.

The second was that of her brother Victor in 1922, and it’s believed to have been the catalyst for an emotional breakdown so severe that she was forcibly confined to a Parisian mental institution, where she’d spend the next two years of her life.