Virginia Hill

Virginia Hill (August 26, 1916 – March 24, 1966) was an American organized crime figure. A courier, she was famous for being the girlfriend of mobster Bugsy Siegel.

Biography

Early life

Virginia Hill was born on August 26, 1916 in Lipscomb, Alabama. She claimed to have neither worn nor owned a pair of shoes until the age of seventeen, when she ran away.

Adult life

She found a job waitressing at the 1933 Century of Progress Chicago's World Fair. Then she happened to come to the attention of a wealthy bookmaker and gambler, Joseph Epstein, who became her lover, financial advisor and ultimately, her entree into the Chicago Outfit crime organization. She was used to pass messages to mobsters. One contemporary commentator explained Hill was:

She became the lover of acting boss and capo Joe Adonis of the Genovese family, then the Frank Costello crime family.

Even law enforcement eventually concluded that she was a "central clearing house" for intelligence on organized crime and enjoyed an independent power base within the Mafia. She told people when arriving in Chicago that she was a Southern-belle society girl who had gone through four rich husbands, all divorced or dead, and that she had received $1 million each from their estates, but authentic socialites saw through the ruse. She built up an entourage of hangers-on and Latin gigolos hanging out on Broadway Avenue and frequently picked up the check. Four days before her lover, mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, was assassinated at her home in California, she took an unscheduled flight to Paris, France. There were rumors that she and Siegel secretly got married in Mexico after Siegel divorced his wife Esta in 1946, but there hasn't been any evidence to prove the theory.

Virginia

Virginia (ⁱ/vərˈdʒɪnjə/ vər-JIN-yə, UK /vərˈdʒɪniə/ vər-JIN-ee-ə), officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state located in the South Atlantic region of the United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" due to its status as the first colonial possession established in mainland British America, and "Mother of Presidents" because eight U.S. presidents were born there, more than any other state. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are shaped by the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Chesapeake Bay, which provide habitat for much of its flora and fauna. The capital of the Commonwealth is Richmond; Virginia Beach is the most populous city, and Fairfax County is the most populous political subdivision. The Commonwealth's estimated population as of 2014 is over 8.3 million.

The area's history begins with several indigenous groups, including the Powhatan. In 1607 the London Company established the Colony of Virginia as the first permanent New World English colony. Slave labor and the land acquired from displaced Native American tribes each played a significant role in the colony's early politics and plantation economy. Virginia was one of the 13 Colonies in the American Revolution and joined the Confederacy in the American Civil War, during which Richmond was made the Confederate capital and Virginia's northwestern counties seceded to form the state of West Virginia. Although the Commonwealth was under one-party rule for nearly a century following Reconstruction, both major national parties are competitive in modern Virginia.

50 Virginia

50 Virginia /vərˈdʒɪnjə/ is a large, very dark main belt asteroid. It was discovered by American astronomer James Ferguson on October 4, 1857 from the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. German astronomer Robert Luther discovered it independently on October 19 from Düsseldorf, and his discovery was announced first.

The reason for Virginia's name is not known; it may be named after Verginia, the Roman noblewoman slain by her father, but it may alternatively have been named after the American state of Virginia, which is contiguous with Washington.

Photometric observations of this asteroid at the Organ Mesa Observatory in Las Cruces, New Mexico during 2008 gave a light curve with a period of 14.315 ± 0.001 hours and a brightness variation of 0.19 ± 0.02 in magnitude. The shape of the light curve at the maximum was found to change with phase angle.

The orbit of 50 Virginia places it in an 11:4 mean motion resonance with the planet Jupiter. The computed Lyapunov time for this asteroid is only 10,000 years, indicating that it occupies a chaotic orbit that will change randomly over time because of gravitational perturbations of the planets.

Virginia (1941 film)

Virginia is a 1941 American drama film directed by Edward H. Griffith. It featured the onscreen debut of Sterling Hayden.

Cast

See also

References

External links