July 1900 - July 29, 1900 (Sunday)

July 29, 1900 (Sunday)

• At Monza, King Umberto I of Italy was assassinated by anarchist Gaetano Bresci, a resident of Paterson, New Jersey. The King had attended an awards ceremony at a gymnastics competition, and was preparing to leave at 10:00 p.m., when Bresci shot him three times. Umberto's son Victor Emmanuel III, the Prince of Naples, succeeded him. Back in the Paterson, where Mrs. Bresci still lived, Mayor John Hinchcliffe reassured the press that the city's 104 policemen were keeping an eye on possible terrorism. "There is one thing I want to say, and that is the plot to kill King Humbert was not hatched in New Jersey," said Governor Foster M. Voorhees, adding, "I am sure it was made up in New York if plotted in this country at all." Legend has it that King Umberto met his exact double the day before at a restaurant, and that the man died earlier in the day "of a shooting accident".
• Born: Eyvind Johnson, Swedish writer; witnner of Nobel Prize in Literature, 1974; in Boden, Sweden; (d. 1976)