This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is our American stories, and our next story comes 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 in 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 that 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

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 stepfather wasn't

particularly fond of the boy, but taught him how to play cards and roll dice. Alvin took to the games far more quickly than he absorbed anything else.

Later in life, Thompson said he couldn't read, but numbers and odds always made sense to him.

He spent hours sitting alone in his room, teaching himself to adeptly shuffle cards,

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