This is an I-Heart podcast.

What I told people, I was making a podcast about Benghazi.

Nine times out of ten, they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked, why?

Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies.

From prologue projects and Pushkin Industries, this is Fiasco, Benghazi. What difference at this point does it make? Listen to us from a man who's simply known as the history guy.

His videos are watched by hundreds of thousands of people of all ages on YouTube.

The History Guy is also heard here at our American Stories. Here's the history guy with the story of

Titanic Thompson, the greatest cheat of all time. A gambler once bet Al Capone that he could throw a lemon all the way to the top of a

five-story building in a single throw. After Capone took the crazy bet, the man walked up to a

street vendor and picked up a lemon and went to throw it. But sensing that this might be some sort of

trick, Capone instead picked up his own lemon, squeezed all the juice out of it, handed it to the man

and said, no, throw this. Unphased, the man took a long running jump and threw as hard as he could, and to Al Capone's shock, the lemon went all the way to the top of the building and landed on the roof. What Capone didn't know is that that gambler had already palmed the squished fruit that that Capone had given him and had instead thrown a lemon that was full of buckshot that he had placed on the vendor earlier

in preparation for his outrageous bet. That gambler was a man named Alvin Thomas, but he went by the

name Titanic Thompson, and among the people of his profession, he was truly a titan.

The history of who is perhaps the world's greatest wagerer deserves to be remembered.

Alvin Clarence Thomas was born in 1893 in rural Missouri near the small town of Monnet.

The last name, Thompson, that he adopted for most of his adult life,

came from a later newspaper misprint that he embraced as his own. According to the family history,

his father was gambling the night Alvin was born and didn't see his new son until he came home the

next day. Apparently, his father couldn't handle the new responsibilities that came with having a child,

so he took whatever cash he could find in the house and left. Alvin's mother didn't spend time bemoaning

her fate. She quickly remarried and ensured Alvin had a roof over his head. Thomas's new

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