Submitted by capsaicinintheeyes t3_yfs4ef in todayilearned
He's one of those people whose life ended before his legacy took off—you wish there was a way to let them know what the judgment of history will be
You know that episode of Doctor Who where the Doctor takes Van Gogh to a modern exhibit and shows him how his artwork came to inspire and delight millions? Who ELSE in history is deserving of that treatment?
Alan Turing
There is a short story where the inventor of a time machine secretly enrolls Shakespeare in a class on Shakespearean works. He fails it.
Norm Macdonald
RIP. I barely figured out who he was and started looking up videos of him a year before he passed. I only knew him as “that guy with the voice named Norm”, hearing him on radio talk shows, always made me laugh. Now, I found the Norm Macdonald Live show after he passed, makes me appreciate him even more. Wish he had more time.
You'd need to send somebody with a thick skin for periodic racist screeds, but HP Lovecraft
I think you are confusing Ness with Melvin Purvis a bit.
Ness was a Special Agent with the Treasury Department (Bureau of Prohibition). Hoover worked for the Department of Justice, and later became head of FBI. Ness was grabbing headlines as a Prohibition Agent before the FBI had really established itself as the "chief law enforcement" agency.
Hoover did keep files on Ness, and disliked him as he saw him as a rival to the FBI. Ness apparently tried to apply to the FBI, after his time in Chicago. However, either Hoover or some of his underlings taunted Ness about salary and experience (according to Smithsonian Magazine, they offered Ness a lowball entry-level salary, despite him being a supervisory federal agent). Ness went on to do enforce prohibition in Ohio, but eventually had a string of divorces, and had a failed run for political office. He died broke and of a heart attack apparently. https://case.edu/ech/articles/n/ness-eliot
Now Melvin Purvis is a real sad story, as he did a lot of leg work for Hoover and was intensely loyal to him. However, due to jealousy of Purvis's fame for his involvement in catching or killing several high profile gangsters (to include Dillinger and Babyface Nelson), Hoover started treating Purvis like crap. He demoted Purvis, moved him at will, and often berated him in front of others. Purvis eventually resigned from the FBI and went to practice law. He died in 1960 of either a suicide or a possible accident by the FBI service weapon he was given as a parting gift when he resigned almost 30 years earlier.
This is an awesome post! Thank you for clarifying, I certainly did confound the worst parts of the stories into a single individual. And I can only imagine that dozens if not hundreds of other agents who crossed Hoover in a way or rubbed him wrong in a way that resulted in executive retaliation.
Hoover was a monster, IMHO. Yes, he helped build the FBI into the primer law enforcement agency in the US, but he did so on the backs of several loyal employees and by breaking the very laws and rules he was tasked with enforcing.
& Eliot Ness; Capone, pictured here ~age 34 during his trial, had only been the head of the Chicago outfit for 7 years when he got pinched.
Reading through both their short biographies here, Ness seems to have had the sadder life., simply because he had the greater potential. He was married thrice, his law enforcement career seemed to have gradually withered, he was involved in trying to cover up his own drink and drive accident and ‘In later years, Ness struggled financially; he was nearly penniless at the time of his death, with his role in bringing down Al Capone having been largely forgotten.’
its like Wyatt Earp.. WHen he died he was really known only for refereeing a boxing match everyone thought he was paid to fix.
He and his wife happened to live longer than most of this contemporaries and were friends with the Hollywood circles.. and Josie was a bull dog about white washing and expanding on his hisotry..
It’s always so wild to be reminded how many people bridged the pre-modern and modern era. 1880 and 1920 seem like entire universes apart, far more than 1980 and 2020.
Like it seems perfectly reasonable to imagine someone seeing Star Wars in the theater and also using Twitter. But the idea of riding a train to the Wild West, and later taking a commercial airline flight?
WW2 feels a lot closer to us than WW1 despite only 20 years between them. WW2 feels modern while WW1 feels archaic. It’s weird how we perceive things
Its not just perception thing, its been like that for last couple hundred years. Insane pace of technological improvements have changed this world time and time again is short span.
It's crazy to think that some people who grew up thinking radio was cutting edge watched the moon landing.
Now we have mumble rap and TikTok. What a time to be alive Sigh
I had a teacher in high school complain that there wasn't a way to have both instant news (like on television) with the ability to read different sections (like a newspaper).
It's the colour photography.
I think because WW2 was a truly modern conflict of combined arms and most of the technologies we know today existed back then in rudimentary form.
Mass tank formations, strategic bombing, radar, missiles, jet fighters, effective combined arms strategies, aircraft carriers, etc.
Even though it was only 20 odd years prior WW1 had more in common with warfare of the past and unlike WW2, had no resemblance to a modern conflict really.
WW1 saw absolutely massive leaps in military technology and strategy that paved the way for how "modern" WW2 felt by comparison.
The war of 1918 had no resemblance to that of 1914. Everything had changed dramatically, from the basic uniforms to the appearance of massed tanks, and the strategies employed by both sides.
1914 was closer to the war of 1871 really in how it played out initially.
One woman saw the wagon trains, and the Moon landing.
another guy saw Lincoln get shot and talked about it on a TV show.
Biden was born closer to Lincolns inauguration than his own.
> Biden was born closer to Lincolns inauguration than his own.
Only if you use Lincoln's second inauguration. Lincoln's first was in 1861, 81 years before Biden was born in 1942, and Biden was inaugurated at 78 in 2021.
Yep. We talk about how the Internet has changed life and society, but it’s peanuts compared to the changes that occurred the prior turn of the century.
I've got a picture somewhere of one of the last Confederate Army veterans posing with a 1950's era jet fighter.
for sure
Peter Capaldi saw Doctor Who when it first aired in 63 and in 2013(?) he was the Doctor.
Speaking of Elliott Ness and Al Capone...the original TV show The Untouchables (with Robert Stack as Eliott Ness) aired in the early 1960s, only roughly 30 years after the events it was based on.
But the 1960s and 1930s feel so incredibly far apart to us today, even though to the audience watching The Untouchables on ABC in 1960, it would be like us watching Stranger Things.
Well if you think about it though, 1990 and 2020 are a lot further apart than you think. In 1990 most people did not have a personal computer, and there certainly wasn't widespread adoption of the Internet, those came in the late 90s like 1995 onward with Windows 95 adding support for networking via the Internet. In 1990 you wouldn't even have a cellular telephone let alone anything resembling a smartphone. Video calling, driverless cars, GPS, drones, etc were all the stuff of science fiction. We take for granted how much technology we have access to now that the public simply did not 30 years ago.
> 1880 and 1920 seem like entire universes apart
That's because of the huge changes brought by the invention of processes to mass produce steel in the 1860s. Henry Bessemer created the modern age. When cheap steel became available there was a whole new way of manufacturing everything.
Besides that, there were many important scientific discoveries. For instance, the concept of sanitation started by Florence Nightingale increased life expectation by twenty years during that period.
1903: Wright Bros. first flight.
1966 69: First moon landing.
I still have trouble wrapping my mind around this.
Wasn't the first moon landing in 1969?
I think they mean unmanned landing
Oh.
Stupid fingers.
what? To me, 1880 and 1920 seems like "basically the same time" while 1980 and 2020 seems completely different.
Mostly because he didn’t really play much of a role in bringing down Capone. The image of Ness we have now was mostly created by pop culture (the Untouchables tv show and movie). He did far more as the safety coordinator of Cleveland (created a police academy, introduced patrols both on foot and by cruiser, and created community organizations to head off juvenile delinquency) than he did as an untouchable.
If you want a great, very readable book on them I'd recommend SCARFACE AND THE UNTOUCHABLE by Max Allan Collins. Nonfiction with the pacing of a good novel.
This is what Harry Potter's life would be like.
That's sad. 😔
Jesus those are some city miles on capone lol. Looks much older than 34.
They noticed his syphilis pretty early on in his confinement...I wonder if its early symptoms include any accelerated aging or facial swelling?
Wait, I’m aging…oh man could I have syphilis?
And I'm swelling...but that might just be from your Grandma poses
His brothers Ralph and Frank (who both worked for Al) had a similar premature aging thing going on, with round faces and receding hairlines. Maybe a mix of genetics and excess?
Guy spends most of his career enforcing prohibition. Does an alchoholic.
That means he was 26 when he became the head of the Chicago outfit? That's wild. That's like getting out of college, working for 2 years, going back for an MBA in murdering people and moving illegal booze, and then becoming the regional VP of Murder and Bootlegging of a branch that brings in $1.5B/yr.
Crazy - They were both basically adult kids!
I was 34 before I was even done with edu and started my actual career!
(Was done at 24 with edu for the first, mediocre, whatever career)
A cleveland brewery, The Great Lakes Brewing Co. Has a beer named after Elliot Ness.
and the best porter out there: Edmund Fitzgerald
I also love the Dortmunder Gold, one of my favorite lagers.
they have solid beers. the blackout stout is pretty good.
That was my first introduction to ABVs. Young me thought beers had a similar alcohol content. Was playing games and had a few then finally got up to go to the bathroom. Immediately fell into the door. Good stuff.
haha
i remember wondering why i got buzzed after like two beers the first time i had 90m min IPA (coming from bud or whatever cheap beer people had at parties usually).. heard about people not being able to stand after having 2 or 3 120 min not realizing the ABV..
120 min is so good. Knew what I was doing for that one.
A bit morbidly ironic, if you ask me
Why does every historical figure look 20 years older than they actually are?
No sunscreen, constant drinking and smoking from a young age, barely existent healthcare and wacky ideas about proper nutrition/less access to a variety of food (plus nonexistent environmental, food and medical safety laws). Everybody was either outside getting sun damage or inside breathing their own and other people's smoke constantly from birth, eating meat that wasn't properly handled and potatoes that may have been covered in pesticides we now ban, and taking "medicines" that maybe did fuckall and maybe had cocaine or heroin or lead or mercury or probably just straightup little shards of glass in it.
Capone was let out of prison early on a combination of mercy due to his illness destroying his mind and for being a model in-mate, even being a member of the prison's band. He actually wrote a love song in prison.
An Assassin was sent to his cell once, but decided the state he was in was worse than death and thus left him to it.
No chorus, just freeform lyrical structure: his Valentine's Day Massive Verse
He was a non-violent offender.
Everyone just looked like shit back then. Probably because they smoked, drank, and ate like shit without even thinking about exercising.
People definitely exercised a lot more back in the day. Kids and teenagers atleast.
Well ok but they were also vastly less obese and out of shape.
So like people in Mississippi
Haha yea because people look so good now. Also it’s hard to eat like shit back then seeing how there was almost zero processed foods, mostly it was all fresh. I also think the general population was way more fit and active compared to today.
Until food safety standards came into effect, that era’s “fresh” food was still pretty dodgy.
> mostly it was all fresh
unless it wasnt. fresh produce is and was not necessarily the cheapest fare.
poor people often lived off oats and sugar.
White people age when they don't have sunscreen.
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Tells you why the phrase "may you live in interesting times" is considered a curse
The real Elliott Ness was pretty boring.
Drinking used to be worse back then. Americans would get drunk on their lunchtime. Alcohol apparently ruined lives.
> Alcohol apparently ruined lives.
It's still pretty effective at this.
Yep.
My philosophy? Alcohol is a loaded gun. Someone still has to pull the trigger.
Both are true yea
> Drinking used to be worse back then. Americans would get drunk on their lunchtime. Alcohol apparently ruined lives.
I remember reading that alot of progressives, especially feminists, actually strongly supported Prohibition for this reason.
They were sick of men getting blind drunk and then beating the crap out of their wife and kids every night.
Alcohol doesn't make a person violent. It just lowers their inhibitions. Most would find an excuse without the drink.
Edit: Downvotes. Looks like I triggered some people. I guess by the same token alcohol causes people to commit sexual assault or rape, and causes them to cheat on their partners. What a wonder drug.
It's not that you are wrong, it's that your point doesn't change the argument. Women (and kids) weren't seen as people back then so more men felt like it was okay to treat them like shit, but it was generally frowned upon to be kicking the crap out of them every night. Those feelings were more likely to express themselves when alcohol lowered their inhibitions. Changing how men view women was/is a much longer process, prohibition just helped it along. If staying sober gives ol' Jimbob the ability to restrain most of his violent urges and leaves him with enough money to feed his kids, at least those kids had a chance of growing into better people than their dad.
Well firstly, you say women and children were seen different back then. I mean, industrial revolution, kids were chimney sweeps and working in factories. That treatment has next to nothing to do with alcohol and as you said, their perceived value.
I'd say the following had/has more to do with it than alcohol:
Unmanaged/unrecognised trauma from world war 1. We saw the repetition of it in world war 2.
Social underclass/being poor and the associated sense of a lack of control over their existence, so controlling what they could (I mean, your example of Jim Bob - you've gone redneck, which while not suffering like Black people, were/are still the social underclass).
I'm sure there's more, but - alcohol is way down the list on the reason people feel the need to pound out their frustrations on others. Those feelings are already there. Removing alcohol, again, removes inhibitions but it doesn't get to the root cause.
All I'm saying is, alcohol is a symptom and not a cause. Removing alcohol won't do much for most people because the underlying cause/s are still there.
Doubt
he wasnt for it or against it, he was just enforcing the law.
And even if you hate prohibition, it does change things when the people moving it are carrying out systemic, organized murder
it was such a stupid idea.. we lost x amount money in taxes spending more than double/ triple that amount trying to enforce it, and made the Mob what it is/was
>made the Mob what it is
Really reawakened our national hybristophilia we hadn't seen since the days of the old West
Alright partner you don't have to slap us with them five dollar words like some snot nosed city slicka. We but some simple folk
^((I only knew the word existed bc I saw it on a QI episode)^)
Well at least we learned our lesson and never made that mistake again. Right?
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Ness got all the credit, but it was actually forensic accountant Frank Wilson that was the real hero.
>These nerds were supercool, not just supersmart—enduring near-misses of mob hits. “Wilson fears nothing that walks,” his boss Elmer Irey observed. “He will sit quietly looking at books eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, forever, if he wants to find something in those books.” He “sweats ice water,” a criminal interrogated by Wilson sighed.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-bean-counter-who-put-al-capone-in-the-slammer
Yeah, some random bureaucrats put Capone away.
Ness lived long enough to turn himself into a legend. He was charismatic.
I don’t think you appreciate just how much Americans consume today. At no point in Eliot Ness’s life were Americans averaging consuming more alcohol than is occurring today. That includes pre-Prohibition. We drink considerably more now, 140,000 Americans die annually from excessive drinking
This article was pre-pandemic, drinking has gone up even from then.
This is some real /r/im14andthisisdeep vibes
Bit older than 14.
Ness was a publicity hound. Yeah, alcohol consumption quickly gets problematic.
I drink a 1/5 or more per day. I hope it kills .e soon
Modern mobsters are much older and get the best health care from the public offices they hold.
"Damn it feels good to be a gangsta/ Getting voted into the White House..."
The Torso murders supposedly had a massive impact on Ness.
He lost his head over it?
>!^(sorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorry)!<
Heavy drinking? They should outlaw alcohol.
Good thinking! Somebody get-* ...ohright...
good luck with that
Yeah, 'cause it worked so well the last time they did it. 🙄
Yeah but Brian de Palma was 37 when he made an awesome movie about them...
Damn. Ness formed the Untouchables at 27 and all I’m doing with my life right now is high-scrolling Reddit.
Capone is already dead, tf else we supposed to do?
Geez, makes me think about how little I've accomplished in my life.
Considering the sad and short ways their lives ended, you've got a great shot at having a better life anyhow.
Yeah just think.. you could be dying of syphilis right now.
Elliot P. Ness died in Coudersport, Pa, home to the world famous Coudersport Ice Mine and not far from The Pennsylvania Grand Canyon.
neat
Exactly what I thought, too, I went out there for Cherry Springs State Park. It's a dark sky park where you can see the milky way.
Neat—that's more my jam. Have yet to make it over there, I'm afraid
My brother and I were there, and some dude just came jogging out of the woods and scared us.
Ness failed to catch the Cleveland Torso Murderer due to a successful insanity plea from the main suspect. It was his last case
Man and they had to chose ‘Guardians’ when ‘Torso Murderers’ would have been so much more colorful
They recently made a movie about the last year of Capone's life. You know when he was frail and hallucinating.
I'd try to look up the name for you, but it was a terribly boring movie.
Why do Americans love white criminals so much??
Hey, we also bump gangsta rap!
EDIT: but kidding aside, I think a lot of it does have its roots in prohibition: it was an era where a lot of otherwise mild-mannered people suddenly found themselves on the wrong side of the law, and I don't think our culture ever really "recovered" from it.
I know you were kidding, but just to be clear there is nothing illegal about “gangsta rap”
Ironic?
Death at around 50 is pretty typical for males. Every time I think about that, I think about Nobunaga singing that song in Kurosawa’s Kagemusha when Nobunaga finds out about the imposter daimyo.
Death at around 50 is a full life well lived for a male.
Found the clip on YouTube!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39sbKqSKXlc
Sasuga Shingen!
With his boy lover slaves staring adoringly at him.
I'm a big fan
Eliot ness
Eliot Ness, his LE hotness
very well, it's gone. Let it die a slow, lingering death from its sickness.
JohnDunstable t1_iu5lg6h wrote
He was basically treated like shit by J Edgar Hoover, who probably had a file on him full of compromising information. Hoover hated that Ness became a household name and over shadowed the FBI. Hoover sidelined him and derailed him.