The history of Italy covers the Ancient Period, the Middle Ages and the modern era. In antiquity, Italy was the metropole of the Roman Empire. Rome was founded as a Kingdom in 753 BC and became a Republic in 509 BC, when the monarchy was overthrown in favor of a government of the Senate and the People; the Roman Republic unified Italy at the expense of the Etruscans and Greeks of the peninsula. Rome led the federation of the Italic peoples to the domination of Western Europe, Northern Africa, the Near East; the Roman Empire dominated Western Europe and the Mediterranean for many centuries, making immeasurable contributions to humanity. Some of these led to the development of Western philosophy and art, that remained central during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. After the fall of Rome in AD 476, Italy remained fragmented in numerous city-states and regional polities until the Italian unification led to the establishment of an Italian nation-state; the new Kingdom of Italy, established in 1861 modernized and built a large colonial empire, colonizing parts of Africa, countries along the Mediterranean.

However, the southern regions of the young nation remained rural and poor, originating the Italian diaspora. In World War I, Italy joined the Entente with France and Britain, despite having been a member of the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary, gave a fundamental contribution to the victory of the conflict as one of the principal allied powers. Italy completed the unification by acquiring Trento and Trieste, gained a permanent seat in the League of Nations's executive council. Italian nationalists considered World War I a mutilated victory and that sentiment led to the rise of the fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini in 1922; the subsequent participation in World War II on the side of Germany and Japan ended in military defeat and an Italian Civil War. Following the liberation of Italy, the country abolished the monarchy with a referendum, reinstated democracy, enjoyed an economic miracle, founded the European Union, NATO, the Group of Six, it remains a strong economic, cultural and political factor in the 21st century.

The arrival of the first hominins was 850,000 years ago at Monte Poggiolo. The presence of the Homo neanderthalensis has been demonstrated in archaeological findings near Rome and Verona dating to c. 50,000 years ago. Homo sapiens sapiens appeared during the upper Palaeolithic: the earliest sites in Italy dated 48,000 years ago is Riparo Mochi. In November 2011 tests conducted at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit in England on what were thought to be Neanderthal baby teeth, unearthed in 1964 dating from between 43,000 and 45,000 years ago. Remains of the prehistoric age have been found in Lombardy and in Sardinia; the most famous is that of Ötzi the Iceman, the mummy of a mountain hunter found in the Similaun glacier in South Tyrol, dating to c. 3400–3100 BCE. During the Copper Age, Indoeuropean people migrated to Italy. Approximatively four waves of population from north to the Alps have been identified. A first Indoeuropean migration occurred around the mid-3rd millennium BCE, from a population who imported coppersmithing.

The Remedello culture took over the Po Valley. A second wave of immigration occurred in the Bronze Age, from the late 3rd to the early 2nd millennium BCE, with tribes identified with the Beaker culture and by the use of bronze smithing, in the Padan Plain, in Tuscany and on the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily. In the mid-2nd millennium BCE, a third wave arrived, associated with the Apenninian civilization and the Terramare culture which takes its name from the black earth residue of settlement mounds, which have long served the fertilizing needs of local farmers; the occupations of the Terramare people as compared with their Neolithic predecessors may be inferred with comparative certainty. They had domesticated animals. In the late Bronze Age, from the late 2nd millennium to the early 1st millennium BCE, a fourth wave, the Proto-Villanovan culture, related to the Central European Urnfield culture, brought iron-working to the Italian peninsula. Proto-villanovans practised cremation and buried the ashes of their dead in pottery urns of distinctive double-cone shape.

Speaking, Proto-Villanovan settlements were centered in the northern-central part of the peninsula. Further south, in Campania, a region where inhumation was the general practice, Proto-villanovan cremation burials have been identified at Capua, at the "princely tombs" of Pontecagnano near Salerno and at Sala Consilina. Born in Sardinia and southern Corsica, the Nuraghe civilization lasted from the early Bronze Age to the 2nd century CE, when the islands were Romanized, they take their name from the characteristic nuragic towers, which evolved from the pre-existing megalithic culture, which built dolmens and menhirs. The nuraghe towers are unanimously considered the best preserved and largest megalithic remains in Europe, their effective use is still debated: some scholars considered them as fortresses, others as temples. A warrior and mariner people, the ancient Sardinians held flourishing trades with the other Mediterranean peoples; this is shown by numerous remains contained in the nuraghe, such as amber coming from the Baltic Sea, small bronzes portraying African apes and animals, Oxhide ingots and weapons from Eastern Mediterr

Delias ennia, the yellow-banded Jezebel, is a butterfly in the family Pieridae. It is found in Australia, Papua New Guinea and several surrounding islands; the wingspan is 50 mm. The larvae feed on Notothixos leiophyllus; the larvae spread silk around the leaves. Delias ennia ennia Delias ennia mysolensis Rothschild, 1915 Delias ennia multicolor Joicey & Noakes, 1915 Delias ennia iere Grose-Smith, 1900 Delias ennia jobiana Delias ennia oetakwensis Rothschild, 1915 Delias ennia xelianthe Grose-Smith, 1900 Delias ennia saturata Rothschild, 1915 Delias ennia limbata Rothschild, 1915 Delias ennia nigidius Miskin, 1884 - Nigidius Jezabel Delias ennia tindalii Joicey & Talbot, 1926 Australian Insects Australian Faunal Directory

USS Muscoota, was a 1370-ton Mohongo-class iron "double-ender" steam gunboat of the United States Navy during the American Civil War. The ship was built at Greenpoint, New York, commissioned in January 1865, she was at Norfolk, Virginia, in May 1865 when ordered to Key West as part of an effort to prevent Confederate President Jefferson Davis escaping abroad. Muscoota remained in the Gulf of Mexico area at least until August 1866, when she was sent north in response to a serious outbreak of yellow fever among her crew. George Westinghouse, future inventor and businessman, served aboard the warship as an engineer. Sold in June 1869, she was extensively renamed Tennessee; the ship had only a short civilian career, as she was destroyed by fire near Little River, North Carolina, on 29 June 1870. Naval Historical Center Online Library of Selected Images: USS Muscoota Naval Historical Center Online Library of Selected Images: USS Tennessee Image here: https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/OnlineLibrary/photos/images/h63000/h63884.jpg This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships