4 Presidents Who Overindulged

Feeding an appet.i.te for power rarely fills a guy's belly. These four pudgy heads of state were as happy raiding the pantry as they were creating policy.

_01:: Grover Cleveland: The Gla.s.s Is Always Half Empty Large, jovial Grover Clevelandalso known as "Uncle Jumbo"enjoyed his beer. In 1870 (15 years before he became president), Grover ran for district attorney of Erie County, New York, against Lyman K. Ba.s.s. It was a friendly contest. In fact, it was so friendly that Cleveland and his opponent drank and chatted together daily. In the interest of moderation, they agreed to have no more than four gla.s.ses of beer per day. But soon they exceeded that and started "borrowing" gla.s.ses from the next day and the next until they'd exhausted their ration for the whole campaignwith the election still weeks away. The solution: Each brought his own giant tankard to the tavern, called it a "gla.s.s," and went back to the four-aday ration.

_02:: An Extra-Cuddly Teddy The standard scoop on Teddy Roosevelt was that he was a scrawny, sickly weakling from New York City who built himself up into a rough, tough cowboy type through vigorous outdoor pursuits. What's seldom mentioned is that Roosevelt went from skinny boy to robust young man to plump (though vigorous) president to obese (though still active) ex-president. While running on the Bull Moose Party ticket in a 1912 attempt to regain the White House, Roosevelt was described as "an eager and valiant trencherman" (it meant he ate a lot). If the main course was roast chicken, TR would consume an entire bird himself, in addition to the rest of the meal. Not to mention the four gla.s.ses of whole milk the portly prez routinely threw back with dinner. Photos and films show an aging Roosevelt carrying a decidedly wide load.

_03:: W. H. Taft and His Presidential Privileges William Howard Taft often dieted because his doctor and his wife told the 290-pound president that he must. But without supervision, Will "the Thrill" didn't just give in to temptation, he sought it. Once while traveling he asked a railroad conductor for a late-night snack. When the conductor said there was no dining car, Taft angrily called for his secretary, Charles D. Norton, who had probablyunder instruction from Mrs. Taftarranged for the diner to be unhooked. Norton reminded the president that his doctor discouraged between-meal eating. Taft would have none of it. He ordered a stocked dining car attached at the next stop and specified that it have filet mignon. "What's the use of being president," he said to Norton, "if you can't have a train with a diner on it?"

_04:: Bill Clinton: With an a.s.sist from Helmut Kohl President Bill Clinton, who famously frequented McDonald's, was known for eating whatever was put in front of him. He showed a more discriminating, if just as hungry, side in the company of Germany's chancellor Helmut Kohl, though. Kohl was called "Colossus," at least in part because he carried 350 pounds on his 6-foot-4 frame. But, in Kohl, Clinton found a gourmand soul mate. In 1994, Clinton hosted the chancellor at Filomena Ristorante of Georgetown for a lunch at which both consumed ma.s.s quant.i.ties of ravioli, calamari, and red wine, as well as plenty of antipasto, b.u.t.tered breadsticks, Tuscan white bean soup, salad, and sweet zabaglione with berries. Each ended the meal by ordering a large piece of chocolate cake to go. Clinton once remarked that he and his German counterpart, though the largest of world leaders, were still too slim to be sumo wrestlers.

5 Deadly Digestive Problems On the long list of unpleasant ways to die, it's hard to imagine anything topping "exploding colon." We'll take the stomach flu, heartburn, death by paper cuts even! Just please, please, spare us these fates.

Touch of Evil The most deadly digestive problem of all may prove to be bovine in nature. Cows emit so much methane in their flatulence that some experts claim it to be a contributing factor to the erosion of the ozone layer.

_01:: Farting to Death Sounds like a third-grade punch line, but maybe it's so funny because it's true. The average person expels about a half liter of gas per day. Put bluntly, that's somewhere between 13 and 17 daily farts. And although any 11-year-old with a matchbook and curiosity knows that gas pa.s.sed is flammable (since it contains primarily hydrogen and methane), it's not dangerous for the excessively ga.s.sy to work around open flames. Once in a great while, though, someone will blow up from gas. The problem usually occurs during colonic surgery, when heat (or a spark) comes into contact with flammable intestinal ga.s.ses after inadequate "bowel evacuation." The resulting explosion is sometimes fatal. Anyone who's ever suffered through colon surgery can tell you exactly what "bowel evacuation" entailsyou drink a laxative the day before surgery and find yourself in the bathroom with enough time to read Anna Karenina. Unpleasant, sure, but better than blowing up on the operating table.

_02:: Pica Pica, an eating disorder in which sufferers feel compelled to eat nonfood items, is usually seen in children. At least 10% of kids enjoy eating dirt or paste or plaster, but adults suffering from pica often develop unusual tastes. Strangely, the same such cravings pop up so often they have their own names. Pagophagia is the compulsive eating of ice; coprophagia describes eating (often animal) feces; coniophagia involvesget thisthe pathological consumption of dust from venetian blinds. And pica can be fatal. Too much plaster might lead to fatal lead poisoning, for instance, and consuming clay can lead to a potentially deadly intestinal blockage.

_03:: Roundworms About 25% of the world's population is infected with roundworms (that's Ascaris lumbricoides to the Latin scholars), which is even more disconcerting when you consider that one generally contracts roundworms by swallowing egg-ridden human feces. Once infected, the eggs hatch in the stomach and intestines, then migrate throughout the body. Although completely disgusting, roundworms are only occasionally deadlythey can cause edema in the lungs; and the female worms, which can grow 18 inches long, sometimes perforate the intestines, leading to peritonitis. But the most terrifying wormy complication involves anesthesia. Because worms find anesthesia irritating, they sometimes migrate up the trachea and nasal pa.s.sages or down the intestines during surgery. It's been reported, for instance, that one pregnant woman had several of the nematodes worm out of her nose and mouth while she was giving birth.

_04:: Celiac Sprue Dieters seeking a low-carb lifestyle might do well to seek out celiac sprue, an intestinal ailment that amounts to an allergy to the protein glutenfound in such foods as wheat, barley, and rye. When celiac sufferers ingest the dreaded stuff, the immune system responds by attacking the small intestine, which leads to a sort of intestinal baldness. Villi, hairlike protuberances that line the small intestine, absorb nutrients into the body, but when people with celiac eat gluten, the villi get flattened or otherwise damaged, making proper nourishment impossible. If left undiagnosed, celiac can lead to ma.s.sive malnutrition, wasting, and even death. But people with celiac can lead perfectly healthy lives provided they forswear gluten. Which means no beer. Which is, frankly, unacceptable.

_05:: Megacolon A blessedly uncommon but life-threatening disorder, megacolon is characterized by the one-two punch of a ma.s.sively inflated colon (one), and the accompanying abdominal distension (two). Although generally a complication of bowel diseases like ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, megacolon occasionally develops from severeand we mean severeconstipation. One such example is on display at Philadelphia's Mutter Museum, which collects all manner of medical oddities (from John Wilkes Booth's thorax to a tumor removed from President Grover Cleveland's jaw). The crown jewel of the Mutter Museum's collection is a five-foot-long megacolon. Bearing a distinct resemblance to Jabba the Hutt, the monstrosity was removed from a man who, unable to move his bowels, died with 40 pounds of excrement in his gut.

All You Need Is Drugs:

3 Philosophers Who Liked to Get

Groovy Thoughts

Philosophy requires precise reasoning and intense concentration on the most complex and intractable problems of human existence. But when your job involves developing elaborate proof about subjects like epistemology (the science of figuring out what we know, and how we can know it, and whether we can really know what we think we can know, and so on), perhaps you can be forgiven for winding down with a bit of illicit pleasure.

Touch of Evil In 1963, Timothy Leary was fired from his job as a psychology professor at Harvard University due to continued experiments with psychedelic agents.

_01:: Aldous Huxley and His Rave New World While no one confuses him with Aristotle, Aldous Huxley is considered something of a minor philosopher. Most famous for his tome Brave New World (1932), which featured the drug Soma, Huxley became fascinated with Hindu philosophy in the late 1930s, and eventually wrote a book (The Perennial Philosophy) and many essays on the subject. By the time 1953 rolled around, Huxley had tried the hallucinogen mescaline, and believed the visionary experiences he'd had reflected a truer world. In fact, Huxley was so enamored with hallucinogens that he dropped acid on his deathbed, pa.s.sing away on November 22, 1963. For the record, C. S. Lewis, who abstained from drugs, and John F. Kennedy, who took copious amounts of tranquilizers, died on the same day.

_02:: Plotinus and the "Good" Life Plotinus, the third-century Roman credited with founding Neoplatonism, traveled more extensively than most ancient philosophers. And in those days, the easiest way to see the world was by joining a war. So in 242, Plotinus accompanied Emperor Gordian III in his battles against Persia, where Plotinus likely encountered Persian and Indian philosophies. He also probably encountered opium. Upon his return to Rome, the older, wiser, and definitely groovier Plotinus founded a loosely affiliated school of philosophers who placed great emphasis on union with "the Good," or G.o.d. And while it's not clear whether or not he thought it helped him in his search for this union, Plotinus also became a regular opium user. In fact, some scholars have even argued that his opium addiction shaped his high philosophical beliefs.

_03:: Foucault: The Thinking Man's Drinking Man Being something of a postmodernist, the French philosopher and literary critic Michel Foucault (19261984) didn't believe drugs to be intrinsically good or bad, true or false. But he did use them. In addition to drinking heavily, Foucault dabbled in psychedelics and opium, and reportedly grew marijuana plants on the ledge of his Parisian apartment (he also enjoyed S and M, but that's neither here nor there). Luckily, the drugs didn't affect the quality of his intellectbooks like The Order of Things and The Archaeology of Knowledge were the first major reb.u.t.tals to existentialismand Sartre called the latter "the last rampart of the bourgeoisie." Foucault's books are also so exceedingly dense and his definition of "truth" and "knowledge" so nuanced that, frankly, it's difficult to imagine he ever wrote stoned.

Booze Is to Comedy as Pen Is to Literature: Funny Lushes There's nothing funny about alcoholism. But for whatever reason, there's often something very funny about alcoholics. We can trace the phenomenon back at least 23 centuries, to the ancient Greek comic playwright Aristophanes, who is recorded as having said, "Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine so that I may wet my brain and say something clever." When full-blown alcoholism took hold of the comedians below, it was usually with tragic consequencesbut until then, their wet brains made some great jokes.

_01:: W. C. Fields (18801946) Of all the alcoholic comedians, the bulbous-nosed W. C. Fields (ne William Claude Dukenfield) was by far the least embarra.s.sed by his indulgence. Fields started his career as a juggler but found fame with his impeccable wit and comic timing, first on Broadway and then in the movies. Although also noted for his dislike of children ("Any man who hates children and dogs can't be all bad") and his ostentatious immorality (he claimed to religiously study the Biblein search of loopholes), Fields is probably best known for his drinking. At his peak, Fields downed two quarts of gin daily. "I like to keep a bottle of stimulant handy in case I see a snake, which I also keep handy," he once remarked. Fields died on his least favorite of daysChristmasin 1946.

_02:: Lenny Bruce (19251966) Among his many contributions to American culture, we ought not forget that it was Lenny Bruce who coined the term "T and A." Who knows what other witty obscenities he might have added to the vernacular were it not for his prodigious drinking and drug abuse. Attacking everyone from JFK to Dear Abby, Bruce brought social commentary into stand-up (although it didn't always pay well...he once dressed up as a priest and "solicited money for lepers" to supplement his income). After repeated arrests for obscenity and worsening addiction, though, Bruce lost his sense of humor. He took to reading transcripts of his trials onstage, and on those rare occasions when he'd tell a joke, he'd often forget it midsentence. Sadly, Bruce pa.s.sed away, bankrupt and alone, of a heroin overdose in 1966.

_03:: Bill Hicks (19611994) Considered by many to be the Lenny Bruce of a new generation, Bill Hicks's innovative, ranting stand-up style inspired everyone from Sam Kinison (also an alcoholic, and also dead) to Denis Leary. Raised in Georgia, Hicks abandoned his conservative Baptist upbringing and quickly garnered critical acclaim on the comedy circuit. But his rages, both onstage and off, made him quite a misanthrope throughout much of the 1980sheavily intoxicated, he once said Hitler "had the right idea, but was an underachiever." Unlike Lenny Bruce, though, Hicks managed to sober up. He never drank after 1988, making his 1994 death from pancreatic cancer all the more tragic.

_04:: Buster Keaton (18951966) Buster Keaton, who was discovered by Fatty Arbuckle (and stood by him throughout his trials), also drank to excess. An innovative filmmaker, Keaton's masterpiece, The General, mixed his trademark slapstick comedy with his obsessive fascination with trains. But when Keaton's film company was bought in 1928, he soured on moviemaking, and his alcoholism worsened. In fact, by 1934 he was strait-jacketed and placed in a sanitarium. Some claim that Keaton, whose G.o.dfather was none other than Harry Houdini, escaped the jacket using his G.o.dfather's tricks and then left the sanitarium to find some booze. Maybe so, but Buster eventually sobered up, and continued to be productive, if less famous. He starred, for instance, in playwright Samuel Beckett's only movie, cleverly t.i.tled Film. In the end, though, liquor didn't beat Buster Keaton; smoking did. He died of lung cancer in 1966.

WRATH.

4 X-treme (Aggressive) Sports You Haven't Heard About The 5 Best Tales of Revenge Taken by Scorned Women 6 Gangsters Who Earned Their Names 4 Angry Queens 5 Trials or Cases Where Reason Was Turned Upside Down 5 Deities with Anger Management Problems 5 Armies Hopped Up on Goofb.a.l.l.s 3 Historical Bar Brawls 5 Prophets on the Edge 7 Close Calls in the Nuclear Age 5 Charming Episodes of Violence from Medieval Iceland 5 Dictators Who Worked Their Way to the Top War, What Is It Good For? Well, 3 Things, Actually 4 Angry Authors and Even Angrier Critics 6 Natural Disasters Explained 3 Leaders Who Murdered Family Members to Get Ahead 4 Animals Subject to 'Roid Rage 7 G.o.ds of War 3 Historical Figures Who Struck Back with a Vengeance 5 Wars Waged on Familial Insults Working It Out in Court:

4 X-treme (Aggressive) Sports You Haven't Heard About

Ah, sportsmanship. It summons up images of compet.i.tion, camaraderie, broken bones, disembowelment, and brutal, disfiguring death. No wonder players have always had fans to cheer them on.

_01:: Dead Goat Polo The modern game of polo, favorite pastime of English aristocrats and sn.o.bbish upper-cla.s.s wannabes, is usually played with a small ball about the size of a billiard ball, and almost never with a human head or a dead goat. But that's how the sport of kings began thousands of years ago under a different name"bughazi." In fact, bughazi wasn't so much a leisure activity as military training for Persian cavalry, and it was possibly adopted from tribesmen in what is now modern-day Pakistan or Afghanistan. Aside from the dead goat factor, there were also other differences in play. Instead of four players on a side, for instance, the ancient version involved armies of menliterallywith hundreds or even thousands of players on each side. In fact, it's believed that the first tournament was won by Turkish tribesmen playing against the Persians in 600 BCE. And although the game was often played with animal heads, the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan made a popular change, inst.i.tuting the practice of decapitating military opponents and making a game ball of their noggins, still in their helmets.

_02:: Aztec Paddleball "Ullamalitzli," a ceremonial ball game played by the Aztecs a few hundred years before the European discovery of America, called for players on two teams to don large stone belts or hip paddles. These paddles were used to bounce a small rubber ball back and forth down a narrow court with inclined stone walls. The players used each others' bodies and the walls as they attempted to maneuver the ball into a small stone ring high above mid-court. The game ended when either side scored a goal. Amazingly enough, the game actually enjoyed long popularity among the native peoples of Mexico and Central America before the Aztecs played it, including the Maya some thousands of years earlier. Of course, the stakes were a little greater when the Aztecs came to play. In their version of the sport, at the end of the game one of the captains was sacrificed to the G.o.ds, giving even more meaning to the phrase "sore loser."

_03:: X-treme Cricket As with many aspects of their culture, it's unclear exactly what kinds of games the Vikings played, but one thing is certaintheir games were incredibly brutal and violent, since they were considered training for personal combat. From vague descriptions in Icelandic "sagas"histories of the Vikings that were pa.s.sed down orally for hundreds of years before finally being transcribed in the 1200sone ball game sounds a bit like an early and very violent version of cricket. The main difference being that most contemporary cricket players can expect to survive to the end of the game. Vikings, on the other hand, weren't always so lucky. "Egil and Thord played against Skallagrim, who grew tired and they came off better. But that evening after sunset, Egil and Thord began losing. Skallagrim was filled with such strength that he seized Thord and dashed him to the ground so fiercely that he was crushed by the blow and died on the spot."

_04:: Cheese Rolling Though it's without a doubt one of the most absurd sports on record, the annual cheese-rolling contest at Cooper's Hill in Gloucestershire, England, is also incredibly dangerous. Which is not surprising when you consider how the sport is played: first, a master of ceremonies gives the countdown"One to be ready, two to be steady, three to prepare, four to be off"and then up to 20 contestants chase a seven-pound circular block of cheese down a steep, b.u.mpy hillside, trying to catch it before it gets to the bottom 300 yards below. Four games are played over the course of one day, including one for women. Video footage of past events shows contestants breaking bones and splitting heads open, in addition to spectators suffering frequent injuries as contestants lose their footing and hurl themselves into the crowds. No one is quite sure how cheese-rolling started, though speculations include ancient pagan fertility rituals or harvest festivals.

Touch of Evil Way back in 1984, a j.a.panese show called Za Gaman ("Endurance") broke open the whole Fear Factor TV genre by rewarding contestants who could withstand the most punishment. Physical and mental tortures included events with hot coals, snakes, cacti, and a wide range of scary implements.

Served Cold: The

5 Best Tales of Revenge Taken by

Scorned Women

Who shot J. R.? A scorned woman. Who gave Mr. Bobbitt a belated bris? A scorned woman. Who bested b.u.t.tafuoco? You guessed it. Those guys could have picked up a thing or two from these poor saps, who quickly learned it's never a good idea to upset a lady.

_01:: "Mrs. Jack Johnson"

Black heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson was known for two things: (1) his conquests in the ring and (2) his conquests of the fairer s.e.x. One of his favorites of the latter was Belle Schreiber, a prost.i.tute at Chicago's glitzy Everleigh brothel. And though the Everleigh was for whites only, Johnson knew how to pull a few strings. In truth, Belle was only one of five white Everleigh girls Johnson saw, but when he married not one but two white women, Belle was crushed. Her high-cla.s.s career ruined by her widely publicized affair with Johnson, Schreiber was broke and strung out on absinthe and drugs. Agreeing to testify for the government in their prosecution of Johnson for violating the 1910 Mann Act (which outlawed taking a woman across state lines for the "purpose of prost.i.tution or debauchery") Belle's testimony got him a year in prison and seven years of exile in Canada. She also got her way: The stint put an end to Johnson, ruining his stellar boxing career.

_02:: Boudicca, One Bada.s.s British Babe In the year 60 CE, the Romans were busy bringing Britain under their heel. Since anyone who resisted was crushed, it's no wonder that Boudicca, queen of the Iceni tribe in southeast Britain, decided to cooperate and offered to share her realm with Roman emperor Nero. Instead, Nero had a governor declare the region a slave province, and took Boudicca into custody (did Nero ever do anything right?). She was then flogged publicly while her two daughters were raped by Roman soldiers. Not a particularly clever move. In response, Boudicca raised an army, marched on the Roman city of Colchester, and burned it with thousands of Roman colonists trapped inside. Her army grew until it became unwieldy, and was eventually defeated by a disciplined Roman army. Defiant to the end, Boudicca killed herself on the battlefield rather than surrender.

Profiles in Carnage Vlad the Impaler (14311476) This guy was pretty much as bad as it gets. Most famous, of course, was his penchant for having people impaledskewered alive through the a.n.u.s or v.a.g.i.n.a on giant wooden spikes, to be slowly dragged down by their own weight. In fact, he liked the practice so much he once impaled 30,000 people at one time, for violations of some trade law or other (those of higher social standing got longer spikes). All told, good old Vlad is said to have impaled hundreds of thousands of people. And while his nickname Vlad the Impaler or, in Romanian, Vlad Tepes ("Vlad the Spike") only came about after death, his behavior certainly could have earned him lots of other colorful monikers.

Vlad the Daddy's Boy: As a boy, Vlad's father, Vlad Dracul ("Vlad the Dragon"), traded him to the Turks as a peace offering. That obviously tweaked the kid a bit. Upon his return, Vlad (called Dracula, or "the Little Dragon") invited his father's murderers, the boyars (Romanian n.o.bility) to an Easter dinner. He arrested them all, sending the healthy ones into slavery to build him a palace (which many of them did naked). The rest he had impaled.

Vlad the Utopian: As ruler of Wallachia, Vlad wanted his realm to be a model of order and productivity and tried several innovative tactics to achieve this. He once had all the poor and sick invited to a great banquet. Like a good host, he fed 'em, got 'em drunk, then burned the hall with them all inside. The result: no more poor and sick people. To demonstrate his kingdom's absence of crime, he placed a golden chalice in the middle of a busy square in Tirgoviste and left it overnight. Not surprisingly, no one touched it, knowing what the penalty for thievery was under Vlad's rule (hint: it probably involved a tall spike).

Vlad the Literalist: When Turkish amba.s.sadors said their custom prevented them from removing their hats in his presence, he had their hats nailed to their heads.

Vlad the Renaissance Man and Dietary Innovator: Impaling wasn't Vlad's only pastime. He also enjoyed having people physically disfigured, skinned, dismembered, boiled, eviscerated, or blinded while he watched, and frequently while he ate. His supposed habit of drinking his victims' blood and eating their flesh led to the Dracula vampire stories we all know so well. If you happened to be a guest at one of his impaling dinners and you got queasy or expressed disgust, guess whatyou got impaled.

_03:: Perfect for the Part of Tyrant: Lady Mao Before the Communists took power under Mao Zedong, China had a thriving film industry centered in Shanghai. There, as in Hollywood, thousands of young actresses flocked to the city hoping to become stars. One did become a star, but not in the way she'd originally intended. Her stage name was Lan Ping ("Blue Apple"), and as an actress she never got the big roles. Frustrated by her career and increasingly resentful of the system, Ms. Apple fell in love with and married a young revolutionary named Mao. Of course, her demeanor was to change quickly. As Lady Mao, she became the head of the notorious Gang of Four, who presided over their own purge of "unacceptable" elements. This reign of terror, ironically called the Cultural Revolution, is one of the most terrifying and chaotic periods in China's history, where freedom of thought and diverse opinions were effectively outlawed. As a former actress, Lady Mao put herself in charge of the film industry, and banned films that she felt did not exemplify good Communist valuesand any film directed by someone who'd pa.s.sed her over. Many were executed for their so-called crimes, and her ruthlessness earned her a nickname: "the White-Boned Demon."

_04:: Rhymes with "Odious"

Salome gets a lot of misdirected criticism for the death of John the Baptist, but the real villain of the story was her mother, Herodias. The Roman wife of Herod Philip, Herodias had come to Palestine with her beautiful daughter, Salome, and married her husband's brother, Herod Antipas. John the Baptist looked none too kindly on this royal scandal and made no secret of his disdain for the arrangement. In an effort to appease his new wife's anger, Herod reluctantly had John imprisoned. You probably know the rest: Herod threw himself a birthday bash, and Salome danced the oh-so-s.e.xy Dance of the Seven Veils. Delighted, drunk, and probably more than a little lecherous, Herod granted her anything she desired. When she asked her mom what she should ask for, Herodias wasted no time in punishing her least favorite scandalmonger, the poor, locusteating, camel-hair-wearing John the Baptist. She instructed Salome to ask for John's head on a platter, and Herod reluctantly complied. Even worse, in the historian St. Bede's version of the story, Herodias stabbed poor John's tongue repeatedly with a dagger.

_05:: Cochiti Caught Cheatin'

The Cochiti tribe are one of the native Pueblo peoples of New Mexico. Their colorful folklore and mythology includes the tale of a woman who suspected her husband of having an affair with her younger sister. One day, while the husband and younger sister were out on a rabbit hunt together, the wife looked into a bowl of clear water and saw an image of her husband and sister, umm, "hunting rabbits" under a cedar tree. Repeatedly. She began to cry, sat in the middle of a basket, and sang to the spirits to be turned into a snake. When the two lovers returned, she bit them both, killing them. She then appealed to the tribe's medicine men to be taken somewhere to live in peace. They took her to Gaskunkutcinako ("the Girl's Cave"). This is how the Cochiti explain the tearlike marks on a certain species of snake. And why rabbit hunting is not more popular.

Killing Is My Hobby:

6 Gangsters Who Earned Their Names

What's in a name? And would a thug by any other moniker still be as dangerous? We're guessing a definite "yes."

_01:: Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll (19081932) His first nickname, "the Mick," was relatively harmless, since he hailed from Ireland and all. But his second oneit proved to be a keeper. The criminal with an ominous moniker, and a rep to boot, Mad Dog Coll was a top mob enforcer for New York bootlegger Dutch Schultz. And among his many talents, the versatile Coll also specialized in kidnapping and extortion. In fact, he had no qualms about torturing his victims. After falling out with Schultz, Coll touched off a gang war in which at least 20 people were killed. One was a five-year-old boy caught in a crossfire. Coll was charged with the shooting, and though he was acquitted, his days on the street were numbered. Mob bosses put a price on Coll's head, and on February 8, 1932, he was shot more than a dozen times while placing a call in a telephone booth. The Mad Dog had had his day.

_02:: Lester "Baby Face Nelson" Gillis (19081934) He wanted to be called "Big George," but at 5 feet 4 inches and with the visage of a choirboy, Lester Gillis was stuck with "Baby Face." No matter. Starting as a pickpocket, Lester put an even better face on things by graduating to enforcer (for Al Capone), bank robber, and psychopathic killer, sometimes shooting people for no reason midheist. By 1934, Baby Face was the FBI's Public Enemy No. 1. But on November 27 of that year, he went out with a bang. A lot of bangs, actually. In a gun battle with two FBI agents, Nelson killed both Feds, but not before they put 17 slugs in him. Amazingly, Nelson walked back to his getaway car and escaped. Of course, the 17 shots ended up doing the trick. Lester's body was found in a ditch the next day.

_03:: Frank "the Dasher" Abbandando (19101942) Abbandando was one killer who was fast on his feet. A hit man for the New York mob's Murder, Inc., an organization of contract killers, Abbandando may have killed as many as 50 people. In one case, he walked up to a guy and pulled the trigger only to have the gun misfire. With his armed victim in pursuit, Frank "the Dasher" ran so fast around the block that he came up behind his quarry and coolly shot him in the back. Hence his nickname. But even Abbandando couldn't outrun a stool pigeon inside Murder, Inc. Convicted of a single murder, the speedy criminal was awarded a speedy trial, followed by a speedy execution via electric chair.

_04:: Albert "Lord High Executioner" Anastasia (19031957) Also dubbed "the Mad Hatter" for his love of fancy fedoras, the dapper "Lord High Executioner," as his name suggests, was not a man to be messed with. In the early 1920s, Anastasia was sentenced to death for killing a fellow longsh.o.r.eman. But he was granted a retrial and the conviction was reversed when four of the witnesses "disappeared." And that was just at the start of his career. After helping to kill crime boss Joe Ma.s.seria, Anastasia was made head of Murder, Inc. by new boss Lucky Luciano, and was dubbed the mob's "Lord High Executioner" by the press. And while the name stuck, his position didn't, as Anastasia eventually fell out with the other bosses. On October 25, 1957, Anastasia was shot six times while getting a haircut. As one New York paper put it the next day: "He Died in the Chair After All."

_05:: Tony "the Ant" Spilotro (19381986) For the 15 years after he first hit Las Vegas in 1971 to the day he died, the mob's chief Vegas enforcer, Tony Spilotro, never spent a day in jail. Not bad for a guy who was implicated in at least 24 murders. In one case, he was even said to have squeezed a victim's head in a vise until his eyes popped out. Ugh. As for "the Ant" bit, though, li'l Tony hated the nickname, which was a reference to his diminutive stature (he was 5'5"). What he didn't hate, however, was the limelight, and it proved to be his undoing. Tony's bosses in Chicago figured he was getting a little too much press, so they came up with a quick remedy: Tony and his brother were beaten up, then buried alive in an Indiana cornfield. As for the slick lawyer who kept the Ant out of jail all that time? His name was Oscar Goodman, and he was elected Vegas's mayor in 1999, then reelected in 2003.

_06:: Aladena "Jimmy the Weasel" Fratianno (19141993) "When the boss tells you to do something," Fratianno told a reporter in 1987, "you do it. You don't do it, they kill you." That's how he explained taking part in 11 murders. Of course, it didn't explain why he became a government witness in 1977 after 32 years in the mob. Fratianno, who got his nickname after speedily fleeing a crime scene as a kid, explained that he began ratting on his colleagues because they had a contract on his life. Fratianno spent 10 years in the Federal Witness Protection Program before being kicked out because he was costing taxpayers too much. Amazingly, he died peacefully in his sleep at the age of 89. Not bad for a weasel.