Years of Lead: Piazza Fontana bombing: The offices of Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura in Piazza Fontana, Milan, are bombed.
The Years of Lead (Italian: Anni di piombo) is a term used for a period of social and political turmoil in Italy that lasted from the late 1960s until the late 1980s, marked by a wave of both far-left and far-right incidents of political terrorism.
The Years of Lead are often considered to have begun with the 1968 movement in Italy and the Hot Autumn strikes starting in 1969; the death of the policeman Antonio Annarumma in November 1969; the Piazza Fontana bombing in December of that year, which killed 17 and was perpetrated by right-wing terrorists in Milan; and the subsequent death that same month of leftist anarchist worker Giuseppe Pinelli while in police custody under suspicion of a crime he did not commit. A far-left group, the Red Brigades, eventually became the most notorious terrorist organization associated with the period; in 1978, they kidnapped and assassinated former Prime minister Aldo Moro. Another major crime associated with the Italian Years of lead was the 1980 bombing of the Bologna railway station, which killed 85 people and was perpetrated by the far-right, neo-fascist terrorist group known as the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari. The terrorist organizations were gradually disbanded and their members arrested, though sporadic political violence continued in Italy until the late 1980s.