by ezzat amier
Lucky Luciano
Salvatore Lucania was born on November
24, 1897 in Lercara
Friddi, Sicily. Luciano's parents, Antonio and Rosalia
Lucania, had four other children: Bartolomeo (born 1890), Giuseppe (born 1898),
Filippa (born 1901), and Concetta. Luciano's father worked in a sulfur mine in Sicily.
In 1907, when Luciano was nine years
old, the family immigrated 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 dropped out of
school and 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 started his own gang and 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 also learning the pimping trade in the years
around World War I.
Around this time, Luciano also 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 the 1920s, as well as a throat slashing. This was because Luciano
refused to work for another mob boss. From
1916 to 1936, Luciano was arrested 25 times on charges including assault, illegal gambling, blackmail and robbery, but
spent no time in prison. The name
"Lucky" may have also been a mispronunciation of Luciano's surname
"Lucania".
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