The Battle of Caporetto in October 1917 was almost a catastrophic event for Italy. Eighty years after the event, this work reconsiders the meaning of that event in the wider framework of World War I. Following the Central Powers' breakthrough on the Isonzo front, there followed a huge collapse of the Italian army, which lost over half its men and material. Having suffered such losses, Italy was on the brink of total collapse. Yet, by December 1917, Italy had overcome the crisis and remained in the conflict. How did it manage to do this? For Mario Morselli, the answer lies in the poor...

Quantum refert in quae tempora vel optimi cujusque virtus incidet. (From an architrave on the Palatine.) The history of the development of scientific thought offers several examples of unconventional, perplexing and untimely conjectures advanced by obscure men. The molecular hypothesis set forth by Amedeo Avogadro in 1811 is one of these. It was little noticed when proposed and it soon fell into oblivion. Although numerous attempts have been made in the past one hundred years to identify the main reasons for the neglect and the indifference which surrounded the molecular hypothesis, very...