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Dean O'Banion
Charles Dean O'Banion (July 8, 1892 – November 10, 1924) was an American mobster who was the main rival of Johnny Torrio and Al Capone during the brutal Chicago bootlegging wars of the 1920s. The newspapers of his day made him better known as Dion O'Banion, although he never went by that first name. He led the North Side Gang until 1924, when he was shot and killed, reportedly by Frankie Yale, John Scalise and Albert Anselmi. Early life O'Banion was born to Irish Catholic parents in the small town of Maroa in Central Illinois. The O'Banion family moved to Aurora, Illinois, when Dean was a small child. In 1901, after his mother's death, he moved to Chicago with his father and older brother (a sister, Ruth, remained in Maroa). The family settled in Kilgubbin, otherwise known as, "Little Hell," a heavily Irish area on the North Side of Chicago that was notorious citywide for its crime. As a youngster, "Deanie," as he became known, sang in the church choir at Chicago's Ho ...
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Maroa, Illinois
Maroa is a city in Macon County, Illinois, United States. Its population was 1,577 at the 2020 census, down from 1,801 in 2010. It is included in the Decatur, Illinois Metropolitan Statistical Area. History The city was named after the Maroa people. The first settler of the township was James Pettyjohn, who came from Kentucky and settled in 1839. The next group of settlers came from Ohio, Indiana, and Tennessee. The first schoolhouse was built in 1852. Maroa at one time was the second largest township, besides county seat Decatur, as it sat at the junction of both the Illinois Central Railroad and the Midland Railroad Company. Maroa was officially incorporated as a town on March 7, 1867. Geography Maroa is located in northern Macon County at (40.036951, -88.954967). Its northern boundary is the DeWitt County line. U.S. Route 51 passes through the west side of the city, leading south to Decatur and north to Clinton. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Maroa has a total ...
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Aurora, Illinois
Aurora is a city in the Chicago metropolitan area located partially in DuPage, Kane, Kendall, and Will counties in the U.S. state of Illinois. Located primarily in DuPage and Kane counties, it is the second most populous city in Illinois, after Chicago, and the 144th most populous city in the United States. The population was 197,899 at the 2010 census, and was 180,542 as of the 2020 Census. Founded within Kane County, Aurora's city limits have expanded into DuPage, Kendall, and Will counties. Once a mid-sized manufacturing city, Aurora has grown since the 1960s. From 2000 to 2009, the U.S. Census Bureau ranked the city as the 46th fastest growing city with a population of over 100,000. In 1908, Aurora adopted the nickname "City of Lights", because in 1881 it was one of the first cities in the United States to implement an all-electric street lighting system. Aurora's historic downtown is located on the Fox River, and centered on Stolp Island. The city is divided into t ...
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Mickey Finn (drugs)
In slang, a Mickey Finn (or simply a Mickey) is a drink laced with an incapacitating agent, particularly chloral hydrate, given to someone without their knowledge with the intent to incapacitate them or "knock them out"; hence the colloquial name knockout drops. Serving someone a "Mickey" is most commonly referred to as "slipping someone a mickey". The "spiking" of drinks is a practice used by predators at drinking establishments who lace alcoholic drinks with sedative drugs. History Michael "Mickey" Finn The "Mickey Finn" is most likely named after the manager and bartender of the Lone Star Saloon and Palm Garden Restaurant, which operated on South State Street in the Loop neighborhood of Chicago from 1896 to 1903.The saloon's exact location is usually said to be on the west side of South State Street, just north of Congress Parkway. The entire west side of South State Street between Congress and Van Buren is now occupied by Chicago Public Library's Central Library (also known ...
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Tenor
A tenor is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. The tenor's vocal range extends up to C5. The low extreme for tenors is widely defined to be B2, though some roles include an A2 (two As below middle C). At the highest extreme, some tenors can sing up to the second F above middle C (F5). The tenor voice type is generally divided into the ''leggero'' tenor, lyric tenor, spinto tenor, dramatic tenor, heldentenor, and tenor buffo or . History The name "tenor" derives from the Latin word '' tenere'', which means "to hold". As Fallows, Jander, Forbes, Steane, Harris and Waldman note in the "Tenor" article at ''Grove Music Online'': In polyphony between about 1250 and 1500, the enor was thestructurally fundamental (or 'holding') voice, vocal or instrumental; by the 15th century it came to signify the male voice that sang such parts. All other voices were normal ...
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Charles Reiser
Charles "The Ox" Reiser (1878 – October 10, 1921) was a safecracker and mentor to many of the organized crime leaders of the early 20th century including Dean O'Banion, George "Bugs" Moran, Earl "Hymie" Weiss, and John Mahoney. Biography He was born in 1878; very little is known of Reiser's early life. Reiser quickly started a rap sheet. In 1902, Reiser was arrested for safecracking. Released on bail, he reportedly killed the witness to this crime and the case was later dropped. In 1905, Reiser was again arrested and released, the witness disappeared, and the case was dropped. In 1907, he was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and sentenced to 30 days in jail. In 1909, Reiser was arrested in Seattle, Washington and charged with burglary and murder. Yet again, the witnesses in the case were killed. The murderous safecracker soon returned to Chicago. Around 1914, Reiser met O'Banion, the future leader of the Chicago North Side Gang. O'Banion and several friends s ...
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Safecracker
Safe-cracking is the process of opening a safe without either the combination or the key. Physical methods Different procedures may be used to crack a safe, depending on its construction. Different procedures are required to open different safes, so safe-crackers need to be aware of the differences. Lock manipulation Lock manipulation is a damage-free combination recovery method and a well known surreptitious bypass technique. Manipulation only requires fingers, eyes, and proper technique, though it is a skill that takes years to develop. While manipulation of combination locks is usually performed on Group 2 locks, many Group 1 locks are susceptible to manipulation. It involves the manipulation of the lock in order to obtain the combination one number at a time. Manipulation procedures can vary, but they all rely on exploiting the presence of mechanical imperfections in the lock, unlocking the safe and recovering its combination, which can then be reused to open the safe lock ...
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Moses Annenberg
Moses Louis Annenberg (February 11, 1877 – July 20, 1942) was an American newspaper publisher, who purchased ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'', the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the United States in 1936. ''The Inquirer'' has the sixteenth-largest average weekday U.S. newspaper circulation, and has won eighteen Pulitzer Prizes. He was the father of ''TV Guide'' creator Walter Annenberg. Early life Moses Louis Annenberg was born in Kalwischen, East Prussia (German Empire) in 1877 to a Lithuanian Jewish family. He left Germany and immigrated to Chicago in 1900. Career Annenberg began his career as a Chicago newspaper salesman at the ''Chicago Tribune'', then, for the Hearst Corporation. He eventually built a fortune and the successful publishing company that became Triangle Publications, Inc., owning, among other publications, the ''Daily Racing Form''. During the Roosevelt administration, he was indicted for tax evasion on August 11, 1939, for income tax evasion for ...
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Chicago Examiner
The ''Chicago American'' was an afternoon newspaper published in Chicago, under various names until its dissolution in 1974. History The paper's first edition came out on July 4, 1900, as '' Hearst's Chicago American''. It became the ''Morning American'' in 1902 with the appearance of an afternoon edition. The morning and Sunday papers were renamed as the ''Examiner'' in 1904. James Keeley bought the ''Chicago Record-Herald'' and '' Chicago Inter-Ocean'' in 1914, merging them into a single newspaper known as the ''Herald''. William Randolph Hearst purchased the paper from Keeley in 1918. Distribution of the ''Herald Examiner'' after 1918 was controlled by gangsters. Dion O'Banion, Vincent Drucci, Hymie Weiss and Bugs Moran first sold the ''Tribune''. They were then recruited by Moses Annenberg, who offered more money to sell the ''Examiner'', later the ''Herald-Examiner''. This "selling" consisted of pressuring stores and news dealers. In 1939, Annenberg was sentenced to th ...
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Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television are named), it remains the most-read daily newspaper in the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region. It had the sixth-highest circulation for American newspapers in 2017. In the 1850s, under Joseph Medill, the ''Chicago Tribune'' became closely associated with the Illinois politician Abraham Lincoln, and the Republican Party's progressive wing. In the 20th century under Medill's grandson, Robert R. McCormick, it achieved a reputation as a crusading paper with a decidedly more American-conservative anti- New Deal outlook, and its writing reached other markets through family and corporate relationships at the '' New York Daily News'' and the '' Washington Times-Herald.'' The 1960s saw its corporate parent owner, Tribune Company ...
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Black Market
A black market, underground economy, or shadow economy is a clandestine market or series of transactions that has some aspect of illegality or is characterized by noncompliance with an institutional set of rules. If the rule defines the set of goods and services whose production and distribution is prohibited by law, non-compliance with the rule constitutes a black market trade since the transaction itself is illegal. Parties engaging in the production or distribution of prohibited goods and services are members of the . Examples include the illegal drug trade, prostitution (where prohibited), illegal currency transactions, and human trafficking. Violations of the tax code involving income tax evasion in the . Because tax evasion or participation in a black market activity is illegal, participants attempt to hide their behavior from the government or regulatory authority. Cash is the preferred medium of exchange in illegal transactions since cash transactions are less- ...
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Bugs Moran
George Clarence "Bugs" Moran (; Adelard Leo Cunin; August 21, 1893 – February 25, 1957) was an American Chicago Prohibition-era gangster. He was incarcerated three times before his 21st birthday. Seven members of his gang were gunned down and killed in a warehouse in the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre of February 14, 1929, supposedly on the orders of his rival Al Capone. Early life and career Moran was born Adelard Cunin to French immigrant Jules Adelard Cunin and Marie Diana Gobeil, Canadian descendent, in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He attended Cretin High School, a private Catholic school in Saint Paul, but he also joined a local juvenile gang and left school at age 18. He was later caught robbing a store and was sent to the state juvenile correctional facility, and was put in jail three times before he turned 21. He then fled to Chicago where he was caught trying to rob a warehouse, taking part in a horse-stealing ring, taking part in robbery involving the death of a pol ...
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Vincent Drucci
Vincent Drucci (born Ludovico D'Ambrosio; January 1, 1898 – April 4, 1927), also known as "The Schemer", was an American mobster during Chicago's Prohibition era who was a member of the North Side Gang, Al Capone's best known rivals. A friend of Dean O'Banion, Drucci succeeded him by becoming co-leader. He is the only American organized crime boss to have been killed by a policeman. Early years Drucci was born Ludovico D'Ambrosio in Chicago, Illinois, on January 1, 1898, to Italian parents from northern Italy. After serving in the U.S. Navy, he returned to Chicago and started committing small-time crimes such as breaking open pay telephone coin boxes. He joined Dean O'Banion's North Side Gang, which had taken over the formerly legal breweries and distilleries in that part of the city giving them massive profits from illicit production of alcohol, in addition to shakedowns and other rackets. Often described as mainly Irish-American, after O'Banion's death the North Side Gang ...
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