March 7, 2025 • 9 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Titanic Thompson led a wild life, always chasing the next big score, including cheating the infamous mobster Al Capone. Here’s "The History Guy" with the story o
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
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
has also heard here in our American Stories. Here's the
History Guy with the story of Titanic Thompson, the greatest
(00:31):
cheat of all time.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
A gambler once bet al Capone that he could throw
a limon 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 limon 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. Unfazed, the man took a long running
(00:56):
jump and threw as hard as he could, and, to
al capone 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
(01:18):
Alvin Thomas, but he went by the name Titannic 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 eighteen ninety three in rural Missouri, near the
(01:39):
small town of Monnet. The last name Thompson that we
adopted most of his adult life came from a later
newspaper missprint that he embraced as his own. According to
the family history, his father was gambling the night Album
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 that house
(02:00):
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
(02:21):
spent hours sitting alone in his room teaching himself to
a deptly shuffle cards, practicing dealing from the bottom of
the deck more quickly than the I could follow. Thompson
developed his own method of marking cards by putting spots
on the back or bending the edges to be able
to tell face cards by feel. He practiced throwing playing
cards into a hat over and over again, or tossing dice,
figuring out how to hold them and make them land
(02:43):
like he wanted. Thompson would write down the results of
his dice throws, calculating odds and combinations, long before others
considered gambling a science of sorts, but he wanted more
than science. Thompson strove to elevate gambling to an art form.
He practiced shoes jumping and other simple skills like throwing
coins into a cup, to the point where his execution
(03:04):
of them made him seem extraordinary. According to Kevin Cook,
author of the book Titanic, Thompson the man who bet
on everything. Thompson said, if a thing's hard to do,
most folks are too lazy to do it. That puts
me one up on them. Alvin left home at the
age of sixteen. He only had fifty cents to his name,
but he wasn't worried. He would always say I've been broke,
(03:27):
but never for more than six hours at a time.
He promised his mother that he wouldn't drink or smoke,
and he kept those promises, although he engaged to numerous
other vices. When he was in high stakes games, he
would drink water or milk while the other high rollers
were dulling their senses with alcohol, and that was just
fine by him. In Mandit, Thompson discovered a man selling
maps on the street. He offered to sell maps for
(03:49):
a percentage of the money, and soon was wandering door
to door selling maps. When the luster wore off that job,
Thompson joined a sharpshooter named Captain Adam Henry Bogertis, and
his Bogartist's miracle medicine showed Thompson wowed Bogartess with his
shooting abilities, and together they built roll Americans out of
their money with promises of medicine that could cure almost
anything that was wrong with you, from gout to crossed eyes.
(04:12):
In actuality, the medicine was a mix of cocaine and alcohol,
which probably gave people bursts of energy if nothing else.
Thompson drew attention to the show by bragging he could
shoot a silver dollar out of the air with one shot.
The trick was to substitute a real silver dollar with
a pre punctured one and throw it in the air
while pulling the trigger. Thompson was already able to palm
itims like a pro, and fooled audiences with the trick.
(04:35):
After he left the Traveling Medicine Show, Thompson began Chris
costing the country, looking for games and offering unsuspecting people
propositions that he was certain to win. It was in
a pool haul in Joplin, Missouri, in nineteen twelve that
Thompson added the Titanic to his name. He just won
a couple of hundred dollars off of a local pool
player when on his way out the door, he read
a sign offering two hundred dollars to the person who
(04:57):
could jump over the pool table without touching it. Thompson
announced to the room that he'd take the bat. He
walked out and returned later with a mattress that he
positioned on the other side of the pool table. Then,
taking a running start, he threw himself over the table
head first and landed on the mattress on the other side,
without touching the table and collecting on the bat. An
onlooker asked what the gambler's name was, and, according to legend,
(05:20):
another replied, it must be Titanic because he sings everybody.
Thompson had dedication and skill, but he wasn't above shifting
the odds with a bit of guile. Once he heard
of a skilled horseshoe pitcher named Frank Jackson who bragged
that he would bet any amount on a game of horseshoes.
Thompson saw opportunity, but there was a problem. He'd never
(05:40):
played horseshoes. He practiced, and practice until he was ready.
He baited Jackson by telling some kids he could be
anyone at horseshoes. As he planned, Jackson showed up after
he heard the boast. Thompson offered to play for ten dollars,
but Jackson bulk, saying he played for real money, so
Thompson offered to play for ten thousand dollars. It was
(06:00):
all the money I have and flashing a water bills,
the hook was set. They played, and Thompson ringed three
in a row while Jackson's throws kept coming up a
foot short. Jackson lost ten thousand dollars, wondering why his
throws were so weak that day. Apparently, Jackson never found
out that Thompson had set the stakes forty one feet apart,
(06:21):
a foot more than the forty foot regulation. More serious
trouble found Thompson when he killed a man with a
hammer in nineteen ten. It had been a good night
for Thompson before the killing. He had won a river
bow through gambling and was playing craps on that same
boat with Jim Johnson. Thompson's girlfriend, Nelly, was with him
as he won role after role. Johnson, drunken out of sorts,
(06:42):
accused Thompson of cheating, and threw him overboard into the
dark river. By the time Thompson climbed back on the boat,
Johnson had torn Nelly's clothes in multiple places and was
threatening to take out his frustrations with Thompson on her
Thompson was having none of it. He beat Johnson about
to head with a hammer and through the uncontent man
into the river, where he drowned. The local sheriff showed
(07:03):
up to sort out the trouble and offered Thompson a choice.
He'd either come to jail and face charges of murder,
or give the sheriff the boat and get out of town.
Thompson gave up his boat and left. The four other
men Thompson would kill during his lifetime, he claimed were
trying to rob him. He got off every time. Perhaps
it was this early violent experience on the river that
(07:24):
convinced Thompson that women had no place on the road
with him, But throughout his life Thompson refused to take
any of his five wives on his travels. Thompson preferred
his wives to be young and beautiful, even in his
later years. His first marriage to eighteen year old Nora
Trushel ended in divorce when he refused to get a
normal job, to spend time at home with her, or
to stop seeing other women while on the road. Alice Kane,
(07:47):
his second wife, was a con man's kindred spirit. Thompson
said he met black haired Alice when she tried to
pick his pocket in Pittsburgh. She was seventeen years old
and he was twenty five. He brought her an enormous
diamond ring and married her a month after their initial meeting.
A week after their first anniversary, Thompson was drafted in
order to report to Zachary Taylor in Kentucky. He was
(08:08):
made a sergeant and used his position to teach the
other soldiers how to play five card stud and craps.
The First World War ended, and Thompson went home without
having to serve overseas. He used some of his gains
to buy a new home for his long suffering mother.
Thompson didn't hesitate to take money from anyone he beat.
In fact, Thompson sometimes thought that arrogant rich folks had
(08:29):
the fleecing coming to them. He hustled and canned his
way through poker games, craps, pool games, propositions, and a
game he showed enormous promise for golf. I went purely
crazy over golf, Thompson said later he could play naturally
left handed, so a typical con would we play a
golfer right handed, and then offered double or nothing to
(08:50):
play another game, this time with his left hand. He
usually won. The itinerant gambling lifestyle faded away with the
invention of the modern era of telegraphs and the professional
gamb of Las Vegas. Thompson said you couldn't cheat in
Vegas with their waxy cards and video cameras. He was
paid to appear at the first World Series of Poker,
and he co hosted with Chill Wills, the actor. Thompson's wife, Alice,
(09:13):
died young after she was hit by a car while
Thompson was away at work. He married three more times,
divorcing each. His final wife, Jeanette Bennett, said the divorce
so Thompson could afford to go into a retirement home.
He had gambled his entire life, but was living off
his Social Security checks because he hadn't invested any of it.
Thompson died in Texas at the retirement home in May
(09:33):
nineteen seventy four. He was eighty years old.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Special thanks to Greg Hangler as always for working with
a history guy and bringing these stories to you. If
you want more stories of forgotten history, please subscribe to
his YouTube Channel, The History Guy. History deserves to be remembered.
Titanic Thompson's story Here on our American story.
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
has also heard here in our American Stories. Here's the
History Guy with the story of Titanic Thompson, the greatest
(00:31):
cheat of all time.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
A gambler once bet al Capone that he could throw
a limon 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 limon 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. Unfazed, the man took a long running
(00:56):
jump and threw as hard as he could, and, to
al capone 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
(01:18):
Alvin Thomas, but he went by the name Titannic 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 eighteen ninety three in rural Missouri, near the
(01:39):
small town of Monnet. The last name Thompson that we
adopted most of his adult life came from a later
newspaper missprint that he embraced as his own. According to
the family history, his father was gambling the night Album
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 that house
(02:00):
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
(02:21):
spent hours sitting alone in his room teaching himself to
a deptly shuffle cards, practicing dealing from the bottom of
the deck more quickly than the I could follow. Thompson
developed his own method of marking cards by putting spots
on the back or bending the edges to be able
to tell face cards by feel. He practiced throwing playing
cards into a hat over and over again, or tossing dice,
figuring out how to hold them and make them land
(02:43):
like he wanted. Thompson would write down the results of
his dice throws, calculating odds and combinations, long before others
considered gambling a science of sorts, but he wanted more
than science. Thompson strove to elevate gambling to an art form.
He practiced shoes jumping and other simple skills like throwing
coins into a cup, to the point where his execution
(03:04):
of them made him seem extraordinary. According to Kevin Cook,
author of the book Titanic, Thompson the man who bet
on everything. Thompson said, if a thing's hard to do,
most folks are too lazy to do it. That puts
me one up on them. Alvin left home at the
age of sixteen. He only had fifty cents to his name,
but he wasn't worried. He would always say I've been broke,
(03:27):
but never for more than six hours at a time.
He promised his mother that he wouldn't drink or smoke,
and he kept those promises, although he engaged to numerous
other vices. When he was in high stakes games, he
would drink water or milk while the other high rollers
were dulling their senses with alcohol, and that was just
fine by him. In Mandit, Thompson discovered a man selling
maps on the street. He offered to sell maps for
(03:49):
a percentage of the money, and soon was wandering door
to door selling maps. When the luster wore off that job,
Thompson joined a sharpshooter named Captain Adam Henry Bogertis, and
his Bogartist's miracle medicine showed Thompson wowed Bogartess with his
shooting abilities, and together they built roll Americans out of
their money with promises of medicine that could cure almost
anything that was wrong with you, from gout to crossed eyes.
(04:12):
In actuality, the medicine was a mix of cocaine and alcohol,
which probably gave people bursts of energy if nothing else.
Thompson drew attention to the show by bragging he could
shoot a silver dollar out of the air with one shot.
The trick was to substitute a real silver dollar with
a pre punctured one and throw it in the air
while pulling the trigger. Thompson was already able to palm
itims like a pro, and fooled audiences with the trick.
(04:35):
After he left the Traveling Medicine Show, Thompson began Chris
costing the country, looking for games and offering unsuspecting people
propositions that he was certain to win. It was in
a pool haul in Joplin, Missouri, in nineteen twelve that
Thompson added the Titanic to his name. He just won
a couple of hundred dollars off of a local pool
player when on his way out the door, he read
a sign offering two hundred dollars to the person who
(04:57):
could jump over the pool table without touching it. Thompson
announced to the room that he'd take the bat. He
walked out and returned later with a mattress that he
positioned on the other side of the pool table. Then,
taking a running start, he threw himself over the table
head first and landed on the mattress on the other side,
without touching the table and collecting on the bat. An
onlooker asked what the gambler's name was, and, according to legend,
(05:20):
another replied, it must be Titanic because he sings everybody.
Thompson had dedication and skill, but he wasn't above shifting
the odds with a bit of guile. Once he heard
of a skilled horseshoe pitcher named Frank Jackson who bragged
that he would bet any amount on a game of horseshoes.
Thompson saw opportunity, but there was a problem. He'd never
(05:40):
played horseshoes. He practiced, and practice until he was ready.
He baited Jackson by telling some kids he could be
anyone at horseshoes. As he planned, Jackson showed up after
he heard the boast. Thompson offered to play for ten dollars,
but Jackson bulk, saying he played for real money, so
Thompson offered to play for ten thousand dollars. It was
(06:00):
all the money I have and flashing a water bills,
the hook was set. They played, and Thompson ringed three
in a row while Jackson's throws kept coming up a
foot short. Jackson lost ten thousand dollars, wondering why his
throws were so weak that day. Apparently, Jackson never found
out that Thompson had set the stakes forty one feet apart,
(06:21):
a foot more than the forty foot regulation. More serious
trouble found Thompson when he killed a man with a
hammer in nineteen ten. It had been a good night
for Thompson before the killing. He had won a river
bow through gambling and was playing craps on that same
boat with Jim Johnson. Thompson's girlfriend, Nelly, was with him
as he won role after role. Johnson, drunken out of sorts,
(06:42):
accused Thompson of cheating, and threw him overboard into the
dark river. By the time Thompson climbed back on the boat,
Johnson had torn Nelly's clothes in multiple places and was
threatening to take out his frustrations with Thompson on her
Thompson was having none of it. He beat Johnson about
to head with a hammer and through the uncontent man
into the river, where he drowned. The local sheriff showed
(07:03):
up to sort out the trouble and offered Thompson a choice.
He'd either come to jail and face charges of murder,
or give the sheriff the boat and get out of town.
Thompson gave up his boat and left. The four other
men Thompson would kill during his lifetime, he claimed were
trying to rob him. He got off every time. Perhaps
it was this early violent experience on the river that
(07:24):
convinced Thompson that women had no place on the road
with him, But throughout his life Thompson refused to take
any of his five wives on his travels. Thompson preferred
his wives to be young and beautiful, even in his
later years. His first marriage to eighteen year old Nora
Trushel ended in divorce when he refused to get a
normal job, to spend time at home with her, or
to stop seeing other women while on the road. Alice Kane,
(07:47):
his second wife, was a con man's kindred spirit. Thompson
said he met black haired Alice when she tried to
pick his pocket in Pittsburgh. She was seventeen years old
and he was twenty five. He brought her an enormous
diamond ring and married her a month after their initial meeting.
A week after their first anniversary, Thompson was drafted in
order to report to Zachary Taylor in Kentucky. He was
(08:08):
made a sergeant and used his position to teach the
other soldiers how to play five card stud and craps.
The First World War ended, and Thompson went home without
having to serve overseas. He used some of his gains
to buy a new home for his long suffering mother.
Thompson didn't hesitate to take money from anyone he beat.
In fact, Thompson sometimes thought that arrogant rich folks had
(08:29):
the fleecing coming to them. He hustled and canned his
way through poker games, craps, pool games, propositions, and a
game he showed enormous promise for golf. I went purely
crazy over golf, Thompson said later he could play naturally
left handed, so a typical con would we play a
golfer right handed, and then offered double or nothing to
(08:50):
play another game, this time with his left hand. He
usually won. The itinerant gambling lifestyle faded away with the
invention of the modern era of telegraphs and the professional
gamb of Las Vegas. Thompson said you couldn't cheat in
Vegas with their waxy cards and video cameras. He was
paid to appear at the first World Series of Poker,
and he co hosted with Chill Wills, the actor. Thompson's wife, Alice,
(09:13):
died young after she was hit by a car while
Thompson was away at work. He married three more times,
divorcing each. His final wife, Jeanette Bennett, said the divorce
so Thompson could afford to go into a retirement home.
He had gambled his entire life, but was living off
his Social Security checks because he hadn't invested any of it.
Thompson died in Texas at the retirement home in May
(09:33):
nineteen seventy four. He was eighty years old.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Special thanks to Greg Hangler as always for working with
a history guy and bringing these stories to you. If
you want more stories of forgotten history, please subscribe to
his YouTube Channel, The History Guy. History deserves to be remembered.
Titanic Thompson's story Here on our American story.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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