The Thousand Departs for Sicily

It was on this day in 1860 that Giuseppe Garibaldi and his famous redshirts of "The Thousand" set sail from Genoa to make their landing in Sicily, calling for a revolution against the Spanish Bourbon dynasty and eventually taking power, handing it over later to HM King Vittorio Emanuele II of Piedmont-Sardinia. The expedition is still controversial centuries after the fact, and there are plenty of good reasons for that, but there can be no denying that it was a major step in the elimination of the last remaining foreign influences on the Italian peninsula and toward the unification of the country into a single Kingdom of Italy governed from Rome, something not seen since the end of the original Roman Empire. W il Re Galantuomo! Viva Italia!