Benito Mussolini barely escaped death on September 11, 1926, when Italian anarchist Ermete Giovannini hurled a bomb at the Fascist dictator's limousine in Rome. The 26-year-old marble cutter had snuck back into Italy from France specifically to assassinate Il Duce, but quick thinking by Mussolini's chauffeur — who gunned the engine when he felt the bomb hit the car — saved the premier's life. The bomb shattered the glass but rolled off the running board before exploding, wounding eight bystanders but leaving Mussolini unscathed. That evening, a defiant Mussolini addressed 100,000 cheering supporters in Colonna Square, warning foreign governments (clearly aimed at France) that plots against Italy 'must end' or face 'suitable methods.' This marked the third assassination attempt against Mussolini in just several months, ratcheting up tensions between Fascist Italy and republican France to their highest point since the Black Shirts marched on Rome in 1922.

This dramatic assassination attempt captures Europe teetering on the edge of the political upheavals that would define the coming decades. Mussolini's Italy was flexing its Fascist muscles while democratic nations struggled with how to handle this new authoritarian threat. Meanwhile, America in 1926 was riding high on Roaring Twenties prosperity, largely isolationist and focused inward — as evidenced by the front page's equal billing of a local Navy pilot's air race victory. The diplomatic tensions brewing in Geneva over German rearmament and League of Nations politics would eventually contribute to the conditions that sparked World War II, but to American readers, European dictators hurling threats still seemed like distant theater.

• A high school student named Herman Horowitz impersonated a police officer just to compete in Chicago police games — and won a foot race against actual cops before being sentenced to polish 25 saddles and bridles as punishment
• Lieutenant George Cuddihy from Anacostia Naval Air Station flew from Philadelphia to Washington in just 32 minutes a couple weeks before winning the air race at 180 miles per hour
• The weather forecast promised a high of 75°F and low of 52°F, with the ominous prediction of 'showers' and 'cooler tomorrow afternoon' — quite specific for 1926 meteorology
• A decomposed body found in an Indiana swamp was identified only by a letter in the pocket reading 'Blaisi, Three Rivers, Mich.' — authorities suspected murder after nearly two months

• Lieutenant Cuddihy's winning Boeing pursuit plane was powered by a Packard 600-horsepower engine — the same Packard company that made luxury cars was also a major aircraft engine manufacturer until they sold the division to Studebaker in 1956
• The Evening Star was delivered as 'second class matter' through the Washington D.C. post office — newspapers enjoyed special postal rates that subsidized information distribution until the internet age
• Gustav Stresemann, mentioned negotiating with France in Geneva, would win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926 (this very year) for his efforts to reconcile Germany with Western Europe — though he'd die just three years later
• President Coolidge's concern about keeping the National Mall free from buildings was prescient — today the area Mussolini threatened to defend with 'suitable methods' is home to the Smithsonian museums that millions visit annually
• The bomb attack on Mussolini occurred almost exactly four years after his March on Rome in October 1922 — he would rule Italy for another 17 years before his own violent end in 1945