The Bronx
The Bronx is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City, in the U. S. state of New York. It is south of Westchester County. Since 1914, the borough has had the same boundaries as Bronx County, the third-most densely populated county in the United States; the Bronx has a land area of 42 square miles and a population of 1,471,160 in 2017. Of the five boroughs, it has the fourth-largest area, fourth-highest population, third-highest population density, it is the only borough predominantly on the U. S. mainland. The Bronx is divided by the Bronx River into a hillier section in the west, a flatter eastern section. East and west street names are divided by Jerome Avenue—the continuation of Manhattan's Fifth Avenue; the West Bronx was annexed to New York City in 1874, the areas east of the Bronx River in 1895. Bronx County was separated from New York County in 1914. About a quarter of the Bronx's area is open space, including Woodlawn Cemetery, Van Cortlandt Park, Pelham Bay Park, the New York Botanical Garden, the Bronx Zoo in the borough's north and center.
These open spaces are situated on land deliberately reserved in the late 19th century as urban development progressed north and east from Manhattan. The name "Bronx" originated with Jonas Bronck, who established the first settlement in the area as part of the New Netherland colony in 1639; the native Lenape were displaced after 1643 by settlers. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Bronx received many immigrant and migrant groups as it was transformed into an urban community, first from various European countries and from the Caribbean region, as well as African American migrants from the southern United States; this cultural mix has made the Bronx a wellspring of hip hop and rock. The Bronx contains the poorest congressional district in the United States, the 15th, but its wide diversity includes affluent, upper-income, middle-income neighborhoods such as Riverdale, Spuyten Duyvil, Pelham Bay, Pelham Gardens, Morris Park, Country Club; the Bronx the South Bronx, saw a sharp decline in population, livable housing, the quality of life in the late 1960s and the 1970s, culminating in a wave of arson.
Since the communities have shown significant redevelopment starting in the late 1980s before picking up pace from the 1990s until today. The Bronx was called Rananchqua by the native Siwanoy band of Lenape, while other Native Americans knew the Bronx as Keskeskeck, it was divided by the Aquahung River. The origin of the person of Jonas Bronck is contested; some sources claim he was a Swedish born emigrant from Komstad, Norra Ljunga parish in Småland, who arrived in New Netherland during the spring of 1639. Bronck became the first recorded European settler in the area now known as the Bronx and built a farm named "Emmanus" close to what today is the corner of Willis Avenue and 132nd Street in Mott Haven, he leased land from the Dutch West India Company on the neck of the mainland north of the Dutch settlement in Harlem, bought additional tracts from the local tribes. He accumulated 500 acres between the Harlem River and the Aquahung, which became known as Bronck's River or the Bronx. Dutch and English settlers referred to the area as Bronck's Land.
The American poet William Bronk was a descendant of Pieter Bronck, either Jonas Bronck's son or his younger brother. The Bronx is referred to with the definite article as "The Bronx", both and colloquially; the County of Bronx does not place "The" before "Bronx" in formal references, unlike the coextensive Borough of the Bronx, nor does the United States Postal Service in its database of Bronx addresses. The region was named after the Bronx River and first appeared in the "Annexed District of The Bronx" created in 1874 out of part of Westchester County, it was continued in the "Borough of The Bronx", which included a larger annexation from Westchester County in 1898. The use of the definite article is attributed to the style of referring to rivers. Another explanation for the use of the definite article in the borough's name stems from the phrase "visiting the Broncks", referring to the settler's family; the capitalization of the borough's name is sometimes disputed. The definite article is lowercase in place names except in official references.
The definite article is capitalized at the beginning of a sentence or in any other situation when a lowercase word would be capitalized. However, some people and groups refer to the borough with a capital letter at all times, such as Lloyd Ultan, a historian for The Bronx County Historical Society, the Great and Glorious Grand Army of The Bronx, a Bronx-based organization; these people say. In particular, the Great and Glorious Grand Army of The Bronx is leading efforts to make the city refer to the borough with an uppercase definite article in all uses, comparing the lowercase article in the Bronx's name to "not capitalizing the's' in'Staten Island.'" European colonization of the Bronx began in 1639. The Bronx was part of Westchester County, but it was ceded to New York County in two major parts before it became Bronx County; the area was part of the Lenape's Lenapehoking territory inhabited by Siwanoy of the Wappinger Confederacy. Over
Bugsy Siegel
Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel was an American mobster. Siegel was known as one of the most "infamous and feared gangsters of his day". Described as handsome and charismatic, he became one of the first front-page celebrity gangsters, he was a driving force behind the development of the Las Vegas Strip. Siegel was not only influential within the Jewish mob but, like his friend and fellow gangster Meyer Lansky, he held significant influence within the American Mafia and the Italian-Jewish National Crime Syndicate. Siegel was one of the founders and leaders of Murder, Inc. and became a bootlegger during the Prohibition. After the Twenty-first Amendment was passed repealing Prohibition in 1933, he turned to gambling. In 1936, he moved to California, his time as a mobster was as a hitman and muscle, as he was noted for his prowess with guns and violence. In 1939, Siegel was tried for the murder of fellow mobster Harry Greenberg, he was acquitted in 1942. Siegel traveled to Las Vegas, where he handled and financed some of the original casinos.
He assisted developer William R. Wilkerson's Flamingo Hotel. Siegel managed the final stages of construction; the Flamingo opened on December 1946, to poor reception and soon closed. It reopened in March 1947 with a finished hotel. Three months on June 20, 1947, Siegel was shot dead at the home of his girlfriend, Virginia Hill, in Beverly Hills, California. Benjamin Siegel was born on February 28, 1906 in Williamsburg, the second of five children of a poor Jewish family that emigrated to the United States from the Galicia region of what was the Austro-Hungarian Empire, his parents and Max Siegel worked for meager wages. As a boy, Siegel left school and joined a gang on Lafayette Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, he committed thefts until he met Moe Sedway. With Sedway, Siegel developed a protection racket in which he threatened to incinerate pushcart owners' merchandise unless they paid him a dollar. Siegel had a criminal record, dating from his teenage years, that included armed robbery and murder.
During adolescence, Siegel befriended Meyer Lansky, who formed a small mob whose activities expanded to gambling and car theft. Lansky, who had had a run-in with Charles "Lucky" Luciano, saw a need for the Jewish boys of his Brooklyn neighborhood to organize in the same manner as the Italians and Irish; the first person he recruited for his gang was Siegel. Siegel became involved in bootlegging within several major East Coast cities, he worked as the mob's hitman, whom Lansky would hire out to other crime families. The two formed the Bugs and Meyer Mob, which handled hits for the various bootleg gangs operating in New York and New Jersey, doing so a decade before Murder, Inc. was formed. The gang kept themselves busy hijacking the liquor cargoes of rival outfits; the Bugs and Meyer mob was known to be responsible for the killing and removal of several rival gangland figures. Siegel's gang mates included Abner "Longie" Zwillman, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, Lansky's brother, Jake. "While we tried to figure out what the best move was, Bugsy was shooting.
When it came to action there was no one better. I've never known a man. Siegel was a boyhood friend to Al Capone. Siegel first was involved in the drug trade. By age 21, Siegel flaunted it, he was known to be charismatic and likable. He bought an apartment at a Tudor home in Scarsdale, New York, he participated in New York City night life. From May 13 to May 16, 1929, Lansky and Siegel attended the Atlantic City Conference, representing the Bugs and Meyer Mob. Luciano and former Chicago South Side Gang leader Johnny Torrio held the conference at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey. At the conference, the two men discussed the future of organized crime and the future structure of the Mafia crime families: Siegel stated, "The yids and the dagos will no longer fight each other." On January 28, 1929, Siegel married his childhood sweetheart. They had Millicent Siegel and Barbara Siegel. Siegel had a reputation as a womanizer and the marriage ended in 1946, his wife moved with their teenage daughters to New York.
By the late 1920s, Lansky and Siegel had ties to Luciano and Frank Costello, future bosses of the Genovese crime family. Siegel, Albert Anastasia, Vito Genovese, Joe Adonis were the four gunmen who shot New York mob boss Joe Masseria to death on Luciano's orders on April 15, 1931, ending the Castellammarese War. On September 10 of that year, Luciano hired four gunmen from the Lansky-Siegel gang, to murder Salvatore Maranzano in his New York office, establishing Luciano's rise to the top of the Mafia and marking the beginning of modern American organized crime. In 1931, following Maranzano's death and Lansky formed the National Crime Syndicate, an organization of crime families that brought power to the underworld; the Commission was established for preventing future gang wars. With hi
Mario Puzo
Mario Gianluigi Puzo was an American author and journalist. He is known for his crime novels about the Italian-American mafia, most notably The Godfather, which he co-adapted into a three-part film saga directed by Francis Ford Coppola, he received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the first film in 1972 and Part II in 1974. Puzo wrote the original screenplay for the 1978 Superman film, his novel The Family was released posthumously in 2001. Puzo was born in the Hell's Kitchen area of New York City into a poor family from Pietradefusi, Province of Avellino, Italy. Many of his books draw on his heritage. After graduating from the City College of New York, he joined the US Army Air Forces in World War II; because of his poor eyesight, he was not allowed to undertake combat duties, but he was made a public relations officer stationed in Germany. Puzo returned to New York where he attended the New School for Social Research Columbia University. In 1950, his first short story, "The Last Christmas," was published in American Vanguard.
After the war, he wrote his first book, The Dark Arena, published in 1955. During the 1950s and the early 1960s, Puzo worked as a writer/editor for publisher Martin Goodman's Magazine Management Company. Puzo, along with other writers like Bruce Jay Friedman, worked for the company line of men's magazines, pulp titles like Male, True Action, Swank. Under the pseudonym Mario Cleri, Puzo wrote World War II adventure features for True Action. Puzo's most famous work, The Godfather, was encouraged by a suggestion of the publisher of his The Fortunate Pilgrim, who thought that if there had been more Mafia in that book, it would have been more successful. A story outline was presented to the publisher, who rejected it. After several publishers were approached, Putnam editors met with him without having read the outline, he told them a few stories, the project was approved. With the advance, he got on with the project, he had heard anecdotes about Mafia organizations during his time in pulp journalism.
He said in an interview with Larry King that the critical reception of his previous two books, without the monetary success to follow, made the issue all the more important in the next work to support his five children on a government clerk's salary. He was looking to write something, he found his audience with the novel, which became the top bestseller for months on the New York Times Best Seller List. The book was developed into the film The Godfather, directed by Francis Ford Coppola; the film received three awards of the eleven Oscar category nominations, including Puzo's Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. Coppola and Puzo collaborated on sequels to the original film, The Godfather Part II and The Godfather Part III. Puzo wrote the first draft of the script for the 1974 disaster film Earthquake, but he was unable to continue working on it because of his commitment to The Godfather Part II. Puzo wrote the original screenplay for Richard Donner's Superman, which also included the plot for Superman II, as they were written as one film.
He collaborated on the stories for the 1982 film A Time to Die and the 1984 Francis Ford Coppola film The Cotton Club. In 1991, Puzo's speculative fiction, The Fourth K was published. Puzo never saw the publication of his penultimate book, Omertà, but the manuscript was finished before his death, as was the manuscript for The Family. However, in a review published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Jules Siegel, who had worked with Puzo at Magazine Management Company, speculated that Omertà may have been completed by "some talentless hack." Siegel acknowledged the temptation to "rationalize avoiding what is the correct analysis – that wrote it and it is terrible." Puzo died of heart failure on July 1999 at his home on Manor Lane in West Bay Shore, New York. His family now lives in New York. Fyodor Dostoyevsky was an influence on Puzo, providing several quotations from The Brothers Karamazov, in Puzo's books: The Dark Arena, Fools Die, The Fourth K, The Family; the Corleone family in The Godfather resembles the Karamazov family in The Brothers Karamazov with a powerful father, an impulsive elder son, a philosophical son, a sweet-tempered son, an adopted stepson, maintained as an employee.
The Dark Arena The Fortunate Pilgrim The Runaway Summer of Davie Shaw Six Graves to Munich, as Mario Cleri The Godfather Fools Die The Sicilian The Fourth K The Last Don Omertà The Family "Test Yourself: Are You Heading for a Nervous Breakdown?" as Mario Cleri The Godfather Papers and Other Confessions Inside Las Vegas All short stories, except "The Last Christmas", were written under the pseudonym Mario Cleri. "The Last Christmas" "John'Red' Marston's Island of Delight" "Big Mike's Wild Young Sister-in-law" "The Six Million Killer Sharks That Terrorize Our Shores" "Trapped Girls in the Riviera's Flesh Casino" "The Unkillable Six" "Girls of Pleasure Penthouse" "Order Lucy For Tonight" "12 Barracks of Wild Blondes" "Charlie Reese's Amazing Escape from a Russian Death Camp" The Godfather The Godfather Part II Earthquake Superman Superman II A Time to Die The Cotton Club The Sicilian The Fortunate Pilgrim The Godfather Part III Christopher Columbus: The Disco
Upstate New York
Upstate New York is the portion of the American state of New York lying north of the New York metropolitan area. The Upstate region includes most of the state of New York, excluding New York City, the Lower Hudson Valley, Long Island, although the precise boundary is debated. Major cities in Upstate New York include Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse. Before the American Revolutionary War, Upstate was populated by Native Americans and was home to the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy; the region saw many battles between the Continental Army and the Iroquois, several treaties drawn up after the war ceded much of the land to settlers of European descent. It is rural with rugged terrain; the development of Upstate New York was spurred by the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, which eased the transport of goods between the port of New York City and inland cities along the Great Lakes. As a result, Upstate became a hotbed for manufacturing, giving birth to such firms as General Electric, IBM, Xerox, it welcomed a large influx of immigrants.
Since the mid 20th century, American de-industrialization has contributed to economic and population decline Upstate, the region is considered part of the Rust Belt. Unlike the New York metropolitan area, Upstate New York contains vast areas of rural land; as a result, Upstate supports a strong agriculture industry, is notable for its milk and other dairy products, its fruit production, winemaking. New York City is dependent on the natural resources of Upstate for a variety of services, including the city's water supply and electricity; the region is home to several popular tourist and recreational destinations, including Niagara Falls, the Adirondack and Catskill Mountains, the Finger Lakes. There is no clear official boundary between Downstate New York; the most expansive definition of the term Upstate New York excludes only New York City and Long Island, which are always considered to be part of Downstate New York. Another usage locates the Upstate/Downstate boundary further north, at the point where New York City's suburbs segue into its exurbs, as the exurbs do not fall within the US Census' urban area.
This latter boundary places most, but not all, of Westchester and Rockland Counties in Downstate, while putting the northwestern edge of Rockland County as well as the northernmost quarter of Westchester County in Upstate. Yet another usage follows the U. S. Census definition of the New York metropolitan area prior to 2010, which included Westchester and Putnam Counties; this was the definition used by the plaintiffs in the federal redistricting case Rodriguez v. Pataki. In New York State law, the definition of the Upstate boundary varies: while Westchester is always considered downstate under state law, some definitions include Rockland and Putnam Counties in the downstate region, others include Orange and Dutchess Counties. Ulster County, and, in the largest state-defined extent of downstate, Columbia County, are sometimes included; the division line between the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York places Sullivan County and Dutchess County in the Southern District, Ulster and Columbia Counties in the Northern District.
Within New York State, surveys have had difficulty determining a consensus. In a 2016 poll of New York voters in which respondents were asked to choose among four definitions of where Upstate begins, three were about common, selected by between 25% and 30% of respondents each: north of New York City, north of Westchester County, north of Poughkeepsie in Dutchess County. An informal 2018 poll found the Hudson Valley region is the most disputed area regarding whether it is Upstate or Downstate. Residents of Upstate New York sometimes prefer to identify with a more specific subregion, such as Western New York or Central New York. A number of businesses and institutions in the area have "Upstate" as part of their name. Examples of this include the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, the Upstate New York Chapter of the Arthritis Foundation serving 31 of New York's 62 counties, the VA Healthcare Network Upstate New York, which includes all of New York State northward and westward from Kingston, New York in Ulster County.
Other organizations in New York with "Upstate" in their name include the Upstate Collegiate Athletic Association, the Upstate Correctional Facility, the Upstate New York Club Hockey League, the Upstate New York Synod, the Upstate Citizens for Equality. The other regions of New York State are culturally and economically distinct from the New York City area and in many ways from each other. Most of New York State is characterized both by agricultural and forested rural communities, by small and medium-sized cities and their surrounding suburbs located along major transportation corridors; the state's major metropolitan areas outside of New York City are Buffalo, Albany-Schenectady-Troy, Syracuse, each of whose population exceeds 500,000. The different regions of New York State are influenced by and have affinities with other adjacent regions. Western New York has cultural and economic ties to the other Great Lakes states as well as Southern Ontario; the Capital Distr
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
Gangster
A gangster is a criminal, a member of a gang. Some gangs are considered to be part of organized crime. Gangsters are called mobsters, a term derived from mob and the suffix -ster. Gangs provide a level of organization and resources that support much larger and more complex criminal transactions than an individual criminal could achieve. Gangsters have been active for many years in countries around the world; some gangsters, such as Al Capone have become infamous. Gangsters are the subject of many novels and films from the period between 1920 and 1990; some contemporary criminals refer to themselves as "gangsta" in reference to non-rhotic black American pronunciation. In today's usage, the term "gang" is used for a criminal organization, the term "gangster" invariably describes a criminal. Much has been written on the subject of gangs, although there is no clear consensus about what constitutes a gang or what situations lead to gang formation and evolution. There is agreement that the members of a gang have a sense of common identity and belonging, this is reinforced through shared activities and through visual identifications such as special clothing, tattoos or rings.
Some preconceptions may be false. For example, the common view that illegal drug distribution in the United States is controlled by gangs has been questioned. A gang may be a small group of people who cooperate in criminal acts, as with the Jesse James gang, which ended with the leader's death in 1882, but a gang may be a larger group with a formal organization. The Chicago Outfit created by Al Capone outlasted its founder's imprisonment and death, survived into the 21st century. Large and well structured gangs such as the Mafia, drug cartels, Triads or outlaw motorcycle gangs can undertake complex transactions that would be far beyond the capability of one individual, can provide services such as dispute arbitration and contract enforcement that parallel those of a legitimate government; the term "organized crime" is not synonymous. A small street gang that engages in sporadic low-level crime would not be seen as "organized". An organization that coordinates gangs in different countries involved in the international trade in drugs or prostitutes may not be considered a "gang".
Although gangs and gangsters have existed in many countries and at many times in the past, they have played more prominent roles during times of weakened social order or when governments have attempted to suppress access to goods or services for which there is a high demand. The Sicilian Mafia, or Cosa Nostra is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy, it is a loose association of criminal groups that share common organizational structure and code of conduct. The origins lie in the upheaval of Sicily's transition out of feudalism in 1812 and its annexation by mainland Italy in 1860. Under feudalism, the nobility owned most of the land and enforced law and order through their private armies. After 1812, the feudal barons sold off or rented their lands to private citizens. Primogeniture was abolished, land could no longer be seized to settle debts, one fifth of the land was to become private property of the peasants. Organized crime has existed in Russia since the days of Imperial Russia in the form of banditry and thievery.
In the Soviet period Vory v Zakone emerged, a class of criminals that had to abide by certain rules in the prison system. One such rule was. During World War II some prisoners made a deal with the government to join the armed forces in return for a reduced sentence, but upon their return to prison they were attacked and killed by inmates who remained loyal to the rules of the thieves. In 1988 the Soviet Union legalized private enterprise but did not provide regulations to ensure the security of market economy. Crude markets emerged, the most notorious being the Rizhsky market where prostitution rings were run next to the Rizhsky Railway Station in Moscow; as the Soviet Union headed for collapse many former government workers turned to crime, while others moved overseas. Former KGB agents and veterans of the Afghan and First and Second Chechen Wars, now unemployed but with experience that could prove useful in crime, joined the increasing crime wave. At first, the Vory v Zakone played a key role in arbitrating the gang wars that erupted in the 1990s.
By the mid-1990s it was believed that "Don" Semion Mogilevich had become the "boss of all bosses" of most Russian Mafia syndicates in the world, described by the British government as "one of the most dangerous men in the world". More criminals with stronger ties to big business and the government have displaced the Vory from some of their traditional niches, although the Vory are still strong in gambling and the retail trade; the Albanian Mafia is active in Albania, the United States, the European Union countries, participating in a diverse range of criminal enterprises including drug and arms trafficking. The people of the mountainous country of Albania have always had strong traditions of family and clan loyalty, in some ways similar to that of southern Italy. Ethnic Albanian gangs have grown since 1992 during the prolonged period of instability in the Balkans after the collapse of Yugoslavia; this coincided with large scale migration to the United States and Canada. Although based in Albania, the gangs handle international transactions such as trafficking in economic migrants and other contraband, weapons.
Other criminal organizations that emerged in the Balkans around this time are popularly called the Serbian Mafia, Bosnian Mafia, Bu
Lucky Luciano
Charles "Lucky" Luciano was an influential Italian-born mobster, criminal mastermind, crime lord who operated in the United States. Luciano is considered the father of modern organized crime in the United States for the establishment of the first Commission, he was the first official boss of the modern Genovese crime family. He was, along with his associates, instrumental in the development of the National Crime Syndicate. Luciano was tried and convicted for compulsory prostitution and running a prostitution racket in 1936 after years of investigation by District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey, he was given a thirty-year prison sentence, but during World War II an agreement was struck with the Department of the Navy through his associate Meyer Lansky in order to protect New York's harbors from Axis U-boats. Dewey failed to keep his end of the bargain, it took months to come up with a solution to release Luciano, he was deported to live his life outside the U. S. Salvatore Lucania was born on November 24, 1897, in Lercara Friddi, Italy.
Luciano's parents and Rosalia Capporelli-Lucania, had four other children: Bartolomeo, Giuseppe and Concetta. Luciano's father worked in a sulfur mine in Sicily, his father was ambitious and persistent in moving to America. Luciano recounts in his semi-autobiography The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano: The Mafia Story in His Own Words that his father always had a new Palermo-based steamship company calendar each year and would save money for the boat trip by keeping a jar under his bed, he mentions in the book that his father was too proud to ask for money so instead his mother was given money by Luciano's cousin in secret, named Rotolo who lived in Lercara Friddi. In April 1906, when Luciano was nine years old, the family emigrated to the United States, they settled in New York City in the borough of Manhattan on its Lower East Side, a popular destination for Italian immigrants. At age 14, Luciano started a job delivering hats, earning $7 per week. However, after winning $244 in a dice game, Luciano quit his job and went to earning money on the street.
That same year, Luciano's parents sent him to the Brooklyn Truant School. As a teenager, Luciano was a member of the old Five Points Gang. Unlike other street gangs, whose business was petty crime, Luciano offered protection to Jewish youngsters from Italian and Irish gangs for 10 cents per week, he was learning the pimping trade in the years around World War I. Around this time, Luciano met Meyer Lansky, his future business partner and close friend, it is not clear how Luciano earned the nickname "Lucky". It may have come from surviving a severe beating by three men in 1929, as well as a throat slashing; this was. The nickname may be attributed to his gambling luck, or to a simple mispronunciation of his last name. From 1916 to 1936, Luciano was arrested 25 times on charges including assault, illegal gambling and robbery, but spent no time in prison, it is not clear how his surname came to be rendered "Luciano." This too may have been the result of persistent misspellings by newspapers, he is not known to have used it.
On January 17, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution took effect and Prohibition lasted until the amendment was repealed in 1933; the amendment prohibited the manufacture and transportation of alcoholic beverages. As there was still a substantial demand for alcohol, this provided criminals with an added source of income. By 1920, Luciano had met many future Mafia leaders, including Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, his longtime friend and future business partner through the Five Points Gang; that same year, Lower Manhattan gang boss Joe Masseria recruited Luciano as one of his gunmen. Around that same time and his close associates started working for gambler Arnold "The Brain" Rothstein, who saw the potential windfall from Prohibition and educated Luciano on running bootleg alcohol as a business. Luciano and Genovese started their own bootlegging operation with financing from Rothstein. Rothstein served as a mentor for Luciano. In 1923, Luciano was caught in a sting selling heroin to undercover agents.
Although he saw no jail time, being outed as a drug peddler damaged his reputation among his high-class associates and customers. To salvage his reputation, Luciano bought 200 expensive seats to the Jack Dempsey–Luis Firpo boxing match in the Bronx and distributed them to top gangsters and politicians. Rothstein took Luciano on a shopping trip to Wanamaker's Department Store in Manhattan to buy expensive clothes for the fight; the strategy worked, Luciano's reputation was saved. By 1925, Luciano was grossing over $12 million a year, he had a net income of around $4 million each year after the costs of bribing politicians and police. Luciano and his partners ran the largest bootlegging operation in New York, one that extended into Philadelphia, he imported Scotch whisky from Scotland, rum from the Caribbean, whisky from Canada. Luciano was involved in illegal gambling. Luciano soon became a top aide in Masseria's criminal organization. In contrast to Rothstein, Masseria was uneducated, with limited managerial skills.
By the late 1920s, Masseria's main rival was boss Salvatore Maranzano, who had come from Sicily to run the Castellammarese clan. Maranzano refused to pay commissions to Masseria, their rivalry escalated into the bloody Cas
