While working as a bouncer at a bar in Brooklyn, this hoodlum was knifed and got a scar on his cheek in a fight over a woman. Who was he?

The infamous gangster earned his legendary nickname long before he became a crime boss in Chicago. As a young man working as a bouncer and bartender at the Harvard Inn in Brooklyn, he made an insulting comment to a woman at the bar. Unfortunately for him, her brother, a hoodlum named Frank Galluccio, was present. Galluccio demanded an apology, and when the future mobster refused, he slashed his left cheek three times with a knife, leaving him with the disfiguring marks that would define his public image.

This violent encounter is what permanently branded him with the moniker "Scarface." It was a name he despised throughout his life, and he often tried to hide the scarred side of his face from photographers. To downplay his thuggish origins, the gangster would lie and claim the scars were war wounds from his service with the "Lost Battalion" in France during World War I, though he never actually served in the military. Among his friends (Review), he much preferred to be called "Snorky," a slang term for a sharp dresser.

Years later, after rising to power, he would summon Galluccio to Chicago. Fearing for his life, Galluccio was surprised when the crime boss simply wanted to shake his hand, admitting the incident was his own fault. The Brooklyn bar fight was a brutal lesson from his early days, a stark reminder of the violence that would characterize his eventual reign over Chicago's underworld during the Prohibition era.