‪On this day‬ John Nardi was born back in 1916. Nardi was a Cleveland Crime Family associate who switched sides in a 1970’s gang war, when he started working for Irish mobster Danny Greene. After several assassination attempts on Nardi, he would meet his end in a car bomb that would take away both his legs.

His final words as he was being dragged from the wreckage:

“it didn’t hurt”

Born on this day in 1916, John Nardi would go on to become one of the most intriguing and ultimately tragic figures in the turbulent history of the Cleveland Organised Crime Family. A labour union official by trade and a mob insider by reputation, Nardi spent decades navigating the treacherous waters of Cleveland's underworld, a city that had long maintained its own proud criminal traditions stretching back to the Prohibition era, when figures like Frank Milano helped establish the Mayfield Road Mob as a force to be reckoned with on the national stage.

Nardi built his public legitimacy through his position with the Teamsters union, a common enough arrangement in an era when organised labour and organised crime were frequently found sleeping in the same bed. His uncle, Anthony Milano, had been a powerful presence in the Cleveland family, which gave Nardi his entrée into mob circles and afforded him a degree of protection that most men in his position could only dream of. For years he operated comfortably within the family's orbit, a trusted associate with the right bloodlines and the right connections.

Everything changed in the 1970s when Cleveland's criminal landscape erupted into open warfare. Nardi, harbouring his own ambitions and grievances, made the fateful decision to align himself with Danny Greene, the charismatic and utterly fearless Irish-American mobster who had become a serious thorn in the side of the Cleveland family's leadership. Together, Nardi and Greene represented a genuine threat to the established order, and the family's bosses — with backing from figures in the New York families who had long-standing financial interests in Cleveland — were determined to eliminate them both.

The attempts on Nardi's life were numerous and, for a time, spectacularly unsuccessful. Bombs, shooters, and various other methods were deployed against him as the gang war grew increasingly vicious and brazen in its execution. His luck finally ran out on 17th May 1977, when a car bomb planted in the car park of the Teamsters hall detonated, tearing away both of his legs and fatally wounding him. According to those present, as Nardi was dragged from the smouldering wreckage, he uttered what would become perhaps the most stoic final words in mob history — "it didn't hurt." He died shortly afterwards.

John Nardi's story remains a defining chapter in the Cleveland mob wars of the 1970s, a period that ultimately saw Danny Greene meet a similar fate and led to one of the most significant FBI prosecutions against the American Mafia in that decade.