Enrico Caruso was an Italian operatic first lyric tenor then dramatic tenor. He sang to great acclaim at the major opera houses of Europe and the Americas, appearing in a wide variety of roles that ranged from the lyric to the dramatic. One of the first major singing talents to be commercially recorded, Caruso made 247 commercially released recordings from 1902 to 1920, which made him an internationally popular entertainment star.
Salvatore Maranzano, nicknamed Little Caesar, was an Italian-American mobster from the town of Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, and an early Cosa Nostra boss who led what later would become the Bonanno crime family in New York City. He instigated the Castellammarese War in 1930 to seize control of the American Mafia, winning the war after the murder of rival faction head Joe Masseria in April 1931. He then briefly became the Mafia's capo di tutti capi and formed the Five Families in New York City, but was murdered on September 10, 1931, on the orders of Charles "Lucky" Luciano, who established The Commission, in which families shared power to prevent future turf wars.
Black Hand was a type of Italian extortion racket. Originally developed in the eighteenth century, Black Hand extortion was imported to the United States in the later nineteenth century with Italian immigrants.
CSI: Miami is an American police procedural drama television series that ran from September 23, 2002 until April 8, 2012 on CBS. Featuring David Caruso as Lieutenant Horatio Caine, Emily Procter as Detective Calleigh Duquesne, and Adam Rodriguez as Detective Eric Delko, the series is the first direct spin-off of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, "transplanting the same template and trickery—gory crimes, procedural plot and dazzling graphics—into [a new city] while retaining the essence of the original idea".
The Sicilian Mafia or Cosa Nostra, also referred to as simply Mafia, is a criminal society and criminal organization operating on the island of Sicily since the 19th century. It is an association of gangs which sell their protection and arbitration services under a common brand. The Mafia's core activities are protection racketeering, the arbitration of disputes between criminals, and the organizing and oversight of illegal agreements and transactions.
Nicolò Terranova, also known as Nicholas "Nick" Morello, was one of the first Italian-American organized crime figures in New York City he succeeded Giuseppe Morello as boss of the then Morello Gang in 1909 and was succeeded by Vincenzo Terranova in 1916. Along with his half-brother Giuseppe Morello and brothers Ciro and Vincenzo Terranova, he founded the Morello crime family, and was later one of the participants in the Mafia-Camorra War of 1915–17.
The Morello crime family was one of the earliest crime families to be established in the United States and New York City. The Morellos were based in Manhattan's Italian Harlem and eventually gained dominance in the Italian underworld by defeating the rival Neapolitan Camorra of Brooklyn. They were the predecessors of what eventually became known as the Genovese crime family.
Ignazio Lupo, also known as Ignazio Saietta and Lupo the Wolf, was a Sicilian American Black Hand leader in New York City during the early 1900s. His business was centered in Little Italy, Manhattan, where he ran large extortion operations and committed other crimes including robberies, loan-sharking, and murder. By the start of the 20th century, Lupo merged his crew with others in the South Bronx and East Harlem to form the Morello crime family, which became the leading Mafia family in New York City.
Vito Cascio Ferro or Vito Cascioferro, also known as Don Vito, was a prominent member of the Sicilian Mafia. He also operated for several years in the United States. He is often depicted as the "boss of bosses", although such a position does not exist in the loose structure of Cosa Nostra in Sicily.
Don Fanucci is a fictional character appearing in Mario Puzo's 1969 novel The Godfather and the 1974 film The Godfather Part II, a sequel to the 1972 film version of Puzo's novel. Fanucci is portrayed by Gastone Moschin and is based on the personality of Ignazio Lupo, a real-life Black Hand figure.
Joseph Petrosino was an Italian-born New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer who was a pioneer in the fight against organized crime. Crime fighting techniques that Petrosino pioneered are still practiced by law enforcement agencies.
Michele Cavataio, also known as Il cobra was an Italian mobster and powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. He was the boss of the Acquasanta mandamento in Palermo and was a member of the first Sicilian Mafia Commission. Some sources spell his surname as Cavatajo.
In June 2000, the North Caucasian Chechen separatist-led Chechen insurgents added suicide bombing to their tactics in their struggle against Russia. Since then, there have been dozens of suicide attacks within and outside the republic of Chechnya, resulting in thousands of casualties among Russian security personnel and civilians. The profiles of the suicide bombers have varied, as have the circumstances surrounding the bombings.
The Blow Out is a 1936 Warner Bros. Looney Tunes animated short film directed by Tex Avery. The short was released on April 4, 1936, and is the first Porky Pig solo cartoon.
The Ramadan Offensive was a series of insurgent attacks against Coalition and Iraqi military targets from the end of October and during much of November 2003.
The Los Angeles crime family, also known as the L.A. Mafia or the Southern California crime family, and dubbed "the Mickey Mouse Mafia" by former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates, is an Italian-American organized crime syndicate based in Los Angeles as part of the larger Italian-American Mafia. Since its inception in the early 20th century, it has spread throughout Southern California. Like most Mafia families in the United States, the Los Angeles crime family gained power bootlegging alcohol during the Prohibition era. The L.A. family reached its peak strength in the 1940s and early 1950s under Jack Dragna, although the family was never larger than the New York or Chicago families. The Los Angeles crime family itself has been on a gradual decline, with the Chicago Outfit representing them on The Commission since the death of boss Jack Dragna in 1956.
The Brooklyn Camorra or New York Camorra was a loose grouping of early-20th-century organized crime gangs that formed among Italian immigrants originating in Naples and the surrounding Campania region living in Greater New York, particularly in Brooklyn. In the early 20th century, the criminal underworld of New York City consisted largely of Italian Harlem-based Sicilians and groups of Neapolitans from Brooklyn, sometimes referred to as the Brooklyn Camorra, as Neapolitan organized crime is referred to as the Camorra.
Giosuè Gallucci, also known as Luccariello, was a crime boss of Italian Harlem in New York City affiliated with the Camorra. He dominated the area from 1910–1915 and was also known as the undisputed "King of Little Italy" or "The Boss", due to his power in the criminal underworld and political connections. He held strict control over the policy game, employing Neapolitan and Sicilian street gangs as his enforcers.
Black Hand is a 1950 American film noir directed by Richard Thorpe and starring Gene Kelly as an Italian immigrant fighting against the Black Hand extortion racket in New York City in the first decade of the 20th century.
Galleanisti are followers or supporters of the insurrectionary anarchist Luigi Galleani, who operated most notably in the United States following his immigration to the country. The vast majority of Galleanisti or Galleanists were similarly poor and working class Italian immigrants or Italian-Americans, and especially Italian anarchists and Italian immigrants or Italian-Americans involved in the labor movement of the time. Galleanists remain the primary suspects in a campaign of bombings between 1914 and 1920 in the United States.
