Al Capone was born in New York City in 1899 to Italian immigrants.
88 Facts About Al Capone
2.
Al Capone joined the Five Points Gang as a teenager and became a bouncer in organized crime premises such as brothels.
3.
Al Capone apparently reveled in attention, such as the cheers from spectators when he appeared at baseball games.
4.
Al Capone made donations to various charities and was viewed by many as a "modern-day Robin Hood".
5.
However, the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, in which seven gang rivals were murdered in broad daylight, damaged the public image of Chicago and Al Capone, leading influential citizens to demand government action and newspapers to dub Al Capone "Public Enemy No 1".
6.
Federal authorities became intent on jailing Al Capone and charged him with twenty-two counts of tax evasion.
7.
Al Capone was convicted and sentenced to eleven years in federal prison.
8.
Al Capone showed signs of neurosyphilis early in his sentence and became increasingly debilitated before being released after almost eight years of incarceration.
9.
Al Capone was born in the Brooklyn borough of New York, New York, on January 17,1899.
10.
Al Capone's parents were Italian immigrants Gabriele Capone and Teresa Capone.
11.
Al Capone's father was a barber and his mother was a seamstress, both born in Angri, a small commune outside of Naples in the Province of Salerno.
12.
Al Capone's family had immigrated to the United States in 1893 by ship, first going through Fiume, a port city in what was then Austria-Hungary.
13.
Al Capone showed promise as a student but had trouble with the rules at his strict parochial Catholic school.
14.
Al Capone's schooling ended at the age of 14 after he was expelled for hitting a female teacher in the face.
15.
Al Capone worked at odd jobs around Brooklyn, including a candy store and a bowling alley.
16.
Al Capone married Mae Josephine Coughlin at age 19, on December 30,1918.
17.
Al Capone was Irish Catholic and earlier that month had given birth to their son Albert Francis "Sonny" Capone.
18.
Al Capone was under the age of 21, and his parents had to consent in writing to the marriage.
19.
Al Capone initially became involved with small-time gangs that included the Junior Forty Thieves and the Bowery Boys.
20.
Al Capone then joined the Brooklyn Rippers, and then the powerful Five Points Gang based in Lower Manhattan.
21.
Al Capone inadvertently insulted a woman while working the door, and he was slashed with a knife three times on the left side of his face by her brother, Frank Galluccio; the wounds led to the nickname "Scarface", which Al Capone loathed.
22.
Al Capone was called "Snorky" by his closest friends, a term for a sharp dresser.
23.
In 1919, Al Capone left New York City for Chicago at the invitation of Torrio, who was imported by crime boss James "Big Jim" Colosimo as an enforcer.
24.
Al Capone began in Chicago as a bouncer in a brothel, where is thought the most likely way for him to have contracted syphilis.
25.
Al Capone was aware of being infected at an early stage and timely use of Salvarsan probably could have cured the infection, but he apparently never sought treatment.
26.
In 1923, Al Capone purchased a small house at 7244 South Prairie Avenue in the Park Manor neighborhood in Chicago's South Side for.
27.
Torrio took over Colosimo's criminal empire after the latter's murder on May 11,1920, in which Al Capone was suspected of being involved.
28.
An ambush in January 1925 left Al Capone shaken but unhurt.
29.
Any establishment that refused to purchase liquor from Al Capone often got blown up, and as many as 100 people were killed in such bombings during the 1920s.
30.
Al Capone often enlisted the help of local members of the black community into his operations; jazz musicians Milt Hinton and Lionel Hampton had uncles who worked for Al Capone on Chicago's South Side.
31.
Al Capone sent two bodyguards to accompany jazz pianist Earl Hines on a road trip.
32.
Al Capone indulged in custom suits, cigars, gourmet food and drink, and female companionship.
33.
Al Capone was particularly known for his flamboyant and costly jewelry.
34.
Al Capone based himself in Cicero, Illinois, after using bribery and widespread intimidation to take over town council elections, making it difficult for the North Siders to target him.
35.
Al Capone's driver was found tortured and murdered, and there was an attempt on Weiss' life in the Chicago Loop.
36.
Al Capone was unhurt and called for a truce, but the negotiations fell through.
37.
Al Capone became increasingly security-minded and desirous of getting away from Chicago.
38.
In 1928, Al Capone paid $40,000 to Clarence Busch of the Anheuser-Busch brewing family for a 10,000 square foot home at 93 Palm Avenue on Palm Island, Florida, between Miami and Miami Beach.
39.
An infuriated Joe Aiello, who had wanted the position himself, believed Al Capone was responsible for Lombardo's ascension and resented the non-Sicilian's attempts to manipulate affairs within the Unione.
40.
Aiello allied himself with several other Al Capone enemies, including Jack Zuta, who ran vice and gambling houses together.
41.
Aiello plotted to eliminate both Lombardo and Al Capone, and starting in the spring of 1927 made several attempts to assassinate Al Capone.
42.
An indication of the attitude of local law enforcement toward Al Capone's organization came in 1931 when Belcastro was wounded in a shooting; police suggested to skeptical journalists that Belcastro was an independent operator.
43.
Al Capone was widely assumed to have been responsible for ordering the 1929 Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, despite being at his Florida home at the time of the massacre.
44.
The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre led to public disquiet about Thompson's alliance with Capone and was a factor in Anton J Cermak winning the mayoral election on April 6,1931.
45.
Al Capone was primarily known for ordering other men to do his dirty work for him.
46.
Al Capone later beat the men with a baseball bat and then ordered his bodyguards to shoot them, a scene that was included in the 1987 film The Untouchables.
47.
Bair questioned why "three trained killers could sit quietly and let this happen", while Hazelgrove stated that Al Capone would have been "hard pressed to beat three men to death with a baseball bat" and that he would have instead let an enforcer perform the murders.
48.
George Meyer, an associate of Al Capone's, claimed to have witnessed both the planning of the murders and the event itself.
49.
In 1930, upon learning of Aiello's continued plotting against him, Al Capone resolved to finally eliminate him.
50.
Al Capone arranged a secret meeting at the White House, just two weeks after Hoover's inauguration.
51.
On March 27,1929, Al Capone was arrested by FBI agents as he left a Chicago courtroom after testifying to a grand jury that was investigating violations of federal prohibition laws.
52.
Al Capone was charged with contempt of court for feigning illness to avoid an earlier appearance.
53.
On May 16,1929, Al Capone was arrested in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for carrying a concealed weapon.
54.
On May 17,1929, Al Capone was indicted by a grand jury and a trial was held before Philadelphia Municipal Court Judge John E Walsh.
55.
Al Capone claimed that Miami police had refused him food and water and threatened to arrest his family.
56.
In February 1931, Al Capone was tried on the contempt of court charge.
57.
In February 1930, Al Capone's organization was linked to the murder of Julius Rosenheim, who served as a police informant in the Chicago Outfit for 20 years.
58.
Hence, without any investigation, the government had been given a letter from a lawyer acting for Al Capone conceding his large taxable income for certain years he had paid no tax on.
59.
On March 13,1931, Al Capone was charged with income tax evasion for 1924, in a secret grand jury.
60.
On June 5,1931, Al Capone was indicted by a federal grand jury on 22 counts of income tax evasion from 1925 through 1929; he was released on $50,000 bail.
61.
Al Capone was then indicted on 5,000 violations of the Volstead Act.
62.
However, on July 30,1931, Wilkerson refused to honor the plea bargain, and Al Capone's counsel rescinded the guilty pleas.
63.
Al Capone was convicted on five counts of income tax evasion on October 17,1931, and was sentenced a week later to 11 years in federal prison, fined $50,000 plus $7,692 for court costs, and was held liable for $215,000 plus interest due on his back taxes.
64.
New lawyers hired to represent Al Capone were Washington-based tax experts.
65.
However, a judge interpreted the law so that the time that Al Capone had spent in Miami was subtracted from the age of the offences, thereby denying the appeal of both Al Capone's conviction and sentence.
66.
Al Capone was sent to Atlanta US Penitentiary in May 1932, aged 33.
67.
Al Capone was experiencing withdrawal symptoms from cocaine addiction, the use of which had perforated his nasal septum.
68.
Al Capone was competent at his prison job of stitching soles on shoes for eight hours a day, but his letters were barely coherent.
69.
Al Capone was seen as a weak personality, and so out of his depth dealing with bullying at the hands of fellow inmates that his cellmate, seasoned convict Red Rudensky, feared that Capone would have a breakdown.
70.
The conspicuous protection by Rudensky and other prisoners, drew accusations from less friendly inmates and fueled suspicion that Al Capone was receiving special treatment.
71.
On June 23,1936, Capone was stabbed and superficially wounded by fellow Alcatraz inmate James C Lucas.
72.
Al Capone transcribed the song "Madonna Mia" creating his own arrangement as a tribute to his wife Mae.
73.
At Alcatraz, Al Capone's decline became increasingly evident, as neurosyphilis progressively eroded his mental faculties; his formal diagnosis of syphilis of the brain was made in February 1938.
74.
Al Capone spent the last year of his Alcatraz sentence in the hospital section, confused and disoriented.
75.
Al Capone completed his term in Alcatraz on January 6,1939, and was transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution at Terminal Island in California to serve out his sentence for contempt of court.
76.
Al Capone was paroled on November 16,1939, after his wife Mae appealed to the court, based on his reduced mental capabilities.
77.
The main effect of Al Capone's conviction was that he ceased to be boss immediately on his imprisonment, but those involved in the jailing of Al Capone portrayed it as considerably undermining the city's organized crime syndicate.
78.
Some historians have speculated that Capone ordered the 1939 murder of Edward J O'Hare a week before his release, for helping federal prosecutors convict Capone of tax evasion, though there are other theories for O'Hare's death.
79.
Al Capone was grateful for the compassionate care that he received and donated two Japanese weeping cherry trees to Union Memorial Hospital in 1939.
80.
In 1942, after mass production of penicillin was started in the United States, Al Capone was one of the first American patients treated by the new drug.
81.
In 1946, his physician and a Baltimore psychiatrist examined him and concluded that Al Capone had the mentality of a 12-year-old child.
82.
Al Capone spent the last years of his life at his mansion in Palm Island, Florida, spending time with his wife and grandchildren.
83.
Al Capone regained consciousness and started to improve, but contracted bronchopneumonia.
84.
Al Capone's body was transported back to Chicago a week later and a private funeral was held.
85.
Al Capone was originally buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Chicago.
86.
In 1950, Al Capone's remains, along with those of his father, Gabriele, and brother, Frank, were moved to Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois.
87.
Al Capone is one of the most notorious American gangsters of the 20th century and has been the major subject of numerous articles, books, and films.
88.
Al Capone cultivated a certain image of himself in the media that made him a subject of fascination.