On 7 August 1915, Gabriele d'Annunzio and Giuseppe Miraglia took off from Venice in a plane bound for Trieste, then still part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, with a cargo of bombs and propaganda. Miraglia, the pilot, was a 32-year-old army officer; d'Annunzio, in the passenger seat, 20 years older than his companion, was famous throughout Italy, Europe and beyond as a writer, libertine and rabid nationalist. He had a notebook with him, in which he jotted down his impressions of Venice from the air ("the twisting canals are green as malachite") and passed messages to Miraglia: "Would you like some coffee?"
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