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The trouble all started with Daniel Sickles,

which was a distressingly commonplace for trouble to start in 19th century America.

Daniel, or Dan, or Devil Dan, as he was nicknamed, first attracted public scrutiny in 1852, when he

married Teresa Baggioli. At the time, Sickles was a young New York State Assemblyman, just out of law school and only 32 years old, and Teresa was a 15-year-old girl.

Teresa was the granddaughter of opera libretticist Lorenzo Deponte, best known for writing the librettos to Mozart's Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni, among others.

Deponte had been living in America and teaching at New York University when he met a young Dan Sickles.

He was impressed by the teenager and not only got him admitted to NYU, but asked him to move into his house.

There, Sickles met Teresa Baglioli, but she was only an infant at the time, so Dan seduced her mother.

Then, 14 years later, he seduced and married Teresa.

Both families disapproved of their elopement, as you might have guessed, but not just for the obvious reasons, because...

Oh, right. Never mind what I said.

Sickles first attracted public scrutiny in 1847, when he was censured by the New York

...