On this day in 1897 the Chairman of the Mob, Charles Luciano was born in Lercara Friddi in Sicily to his parents Antonio and Rosalia. Charles also had 4 other siblings, Bartolomeo, Filippa, Concetta and Giuseppe. By the age of 9 Charles and his family moved to the United States and settled in Manhattan.

During his teenage years he joined the Five Points Gang, and during this era he met with Meyer Lansky whom he would eventually build up a successful criminal empire with.

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By 1920, Luciano had met many future Mafia leaders, including Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, his long-time friend and future business partner through the Five Points Gang. By 1925, Luciano was grossing over $12 million a year, and he would eventually go on to become one of the most powerful bosses of all time, but not before he earned his nickname, Lucky.

Charles was born with the name Salvatore Lucania but changed his surname to Luciano after he decided to separate himself from his family name, as his criminal operations brought shame to them. He also adopted the nickname Lucky when he survived an ambush by Salvatore Maranzano’s men that nearly killed him off back in 1929.

Lucky Luciano is considered the father of modern organized crime in the United States for the establishment of the first Commission and the development of the National Crime Syndicate.

On this day, November 24, 1897, one of the most consequential figures in the history of organised crime drew his first breath in the Sicilian town of Lercara Friddi. Born Salvatore Lucania to parents Antonio and Rosalia, the boy who would one day reshape the American underworld came into the world in modest surroundings, with four siblings — Bartolomeo, Filippa, Concetta, and Giuseppe — sharing the family home. By the time young Salvatore was just nine years old, the Lucania family had made the voyage across the Atlantic, settling in the teeming tenements of Manhattan's Lower East Side, a neighbourhood that would prove to be the crucible of his criminal ambitions.

It did not take long for the streets of New York to leave their mark on him. As a teenager, Luciano gravitated toward the notorious Five Points Gang, one of the most powerful criminal organisations in the city at the time. It was here, running with the gang's ranks, that he forged what would become one of the most important partnerships in mob history — his friendship with Meyer Lansky, a sharp and calculating young man whose financial genius would complement Luciano's own ruthless ambition perfectly. Through the same circles, he also cultivated relationships with future powerbrokers including Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, men who would stand beside him as he constructed his criminal empire.

By 1920, Luciano was already a force to be reckoned with, and by the mid-1920s he was reportedly grossing over $12 million a year from his various rackets. Yet his rise was not without peril. In 1929, he was abducted and brutally beaten by men loyal to Salvatore Maranzano, left for dead on Staten Island with his throat slashed. That he survived at all seemed almost miraculous, and it was from this harrowing ordeal that the enduring nickname "Lucky" was born. Around this same time, he quietly shed his birth surname, adopting Luciano to distance his family from the notoriety his criminal life had brought upon them.

He later changed his name officially to Charles Luciano, and it was under this name that he made history, orchestrating the assassination of the old Sicilian bosses in the so-called Night of the Sicilian Vespers in 1931 and establishing the Commission — the governing body of American organised crime. Lucky Luciano's legacy endures to this day as the architect of modern organised crime in America, a visionary strategist whose blueprint for the National Crime Syndicate shaped the underworld for generations to come.