Not everyone understands the acronym HvK; even when we search on Google, there are not many answers. For IH, the acronym HvK means Herbert von Karajan. For young readers, this name doesn’t mean much today, but HvK was an outstanding musician and a passionate of the private aviation as well

Mercury, Gemini, Apollo: Walter Schirra, Wally as his family used lovely to call him, was the only astronaut who took part in all three early US space programs. Why does IH commemorate Walter Schirra? Because he was certainly an US astronaut but with Insubrica roots. His father immigrated from the

The Bronze Age (2200-800 BC) coincided with a significant intensification of human vocational activities which left to us many burial sites and tombstones, but there haven’t been still found a lot of traces of settlements around lake shores and alongside alpine roads.  This amazing human development was connected with an

The quiet and picturesque town of Ascona, situated in the heart of Lake Maggiore in the Canton Ticino, had a bolstering dynamite factory in the past. Several explosions and accidents forced to relocate the operations to the islands of Brissago. However, the politics played some role, so that the company

When travelling to Petrovaradin, Belgrade, Nis, Timisoara, the submerged island of Ada Kaleh-New Orsova, and Alba Iulia (see the map here), we can admire huge fortresses that are testimonials of a consistent military past. Only few visitors know that these fortresses, built by Austrian-Hungarians, were in fact all conceived by Swiss military engineer Nicolas Doxat (Yverdon 1682 – Belgrade

Joseph Antoine Marie Michel Mainoni was born in Lugano (but according to some sources the place of his birth was rather Porlezza), in 1754 in the Canton Ticino in Switzerland and died in Italy in 1807. He became a General in the Napoleon French army. Unfortunately, his name is synonymous

The American Civil War (1861–1865) was a civil war that took place in the United States of America opposing two fronts. Eleven Southern states, in which slavery was legal, formed the Confederate States of America (Confederacy). These states aspired to become independent from the rest of the United States, and

From 1949 to 1963, Konrad Adenauer (Cologne 1876 – Bad Honnef 1967) was the first Bundeskanzler (in English: chancellor) of the Federal Republic of Germany. He spent for eleven years, till his death, his holidays in the Insubrica region, at first on Lake Maggiore and then on Lake of Como.

Giovanni Bassanesi (Aosta 1905- Montelupo Fiorentino 1947) was an Italian anti-fascist. On July 11, 1930, at 10:30, he left Bellinzona, passing by Lodrino (Valle Leventina), in order to jettison over 150’000 anti-fascism propaganda flyers over the Fascist city of Milan.  The Farman F.200, used for this exploit, was a civil