The Piazza Fontana Bombing was a false flag, fascist terrorist attack in Milan that occurred on this day in 1969, committed by "Ordine Nuovo" with help from police. The attack was blamed on anarchists and led to the death of Giuseppi Pinelli.

The bombing took place in the headquarters of Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura ("National Agricultural Bank") in Piazza Fontana, and killed 17 people, wounding 88. The same afternoon, three more bombs were detonated in Rome and Milan.

The attack was initially attributed to Italian anarchists, leading to more than 80 arrests. Giuseppe Pinelli, an anarchist railway worker, died after falling from the fourth-floor window of the police station where he was being held. Anarchist Pietro Valpreda was falsely convicted and served 18 years in prison.

Ordine Nuovo committed the attacks to prevent the country falling into the hands of the left-wing by duping the public into believing the bombings were part of a communist insurgency. They also had assistance from the state - General Gianandelio Maletti, the head of SID (Servizio Informazioni Difesa) obstructed the investigation and withheld information from one of the trials.

Maletti also destroyed a report implicating Ordine Nuovo and arranged for potential witnesses to leave the country before fleeing himself to South Africa.

According to Jamie Mackay of openDemocracy, the center-left Italian government of Romano Prodi declared that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) knew about the attack in advance and deliberately withheld that information from the SID.

Mackay goes on to argue that "Piazza Fontana was not an isolated tragedy but a part of an international 'strategy of tension' which saw escalating violence, rather than suppressing it, as being the most effective way to prevent a communist revolution."