How many prisoners in the United States are on death row?

Detroit lawmen coined the term in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They realized that Saturday night holdups were committed with handguns purchased in quick one-hour trips to Toledo, Ohio. There, guns could be bought at filling stations and flower shops for $5 or $10, without time restrictions.

Al (“Scarface”) Capone claimed he received the scar while fighting with the Lost Battalion in France during World War I. Actually, he was knifed in Brooklyn while working as a bouncer in a saloon, in a fight over a woman. Capone never served in World War I.

The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre lasted eight minutes. Several members of the George (“Bugs”) Moran gang were killed that day, February 14, 1929, along with a man in the garage who looked like Moran. Moran himself escaped the massacre to die a natural death of lung cancer on February 25, 1957.

Sacco and Vanzetti were pardoned, but not until long after their deaths. On July 14, 1921, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two avowed anarchists, were convicted of robbing a shoe factory and murdering a paymaster and guard in South Braintree, Massachusetts. Their trial was marred by possible perjury, suppression of evidence, and the bias of…

During Prohibition, the taking of trucks full of illegal liquor became commonplace. When it happened, a gunman would say, “High, Jack,” to indicate how the driver should raise his hands.

Bluebeard was a wife murderer in Charles Perrault’s 1679 novel Conte du Temps. The nickname has since been applied to many real-life killers of women. The most famous was Frenchman Henri Desire Landru (1869-1922), who over a period of five years killed 10 women after proposing marriage to them. Gilles de Rais, who was a…