About Agostino Depretis
Agostino Depretis (31 January 1813 – 29 July 1887) was an Italian statesman and politician. He served as Prime Minister of Italy for several stretches between 1876 and 1887, and was leader of the Historical Left parliamentary group for more than a decade. He is the fourth-longest-serving prime minister in Italian history, after Benito Mussolini, Giovanni Giolitti and Silvio Berlusconi, and at the time of his death he was the longest-served. Depretis is widely considered one of the most powerful and important politicians in Italian history, having enacted numerous reforms that modernized Italy, such as expanding male suffrage and free education. Depretis was a master in the political art of Trasformismo, the method of making a flexible, centrist coalition of government which isolated the extremes of the left and the right in Italian politics after the unification. Elected deputy in 1848, he joined the Left and founded the newspaper Il Diritto, but he held no political offices. Upon the death of Rattazzi in 1873, Depretis became leader of the Left. As a result, Depretis became prime minister, with 414 of the 508 MPs supporting the government.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.