What do you call someone born into a noble family, who fought alongside Garibaldi, was shipwrecked on his way to America, impregnated a teenager, tried and failed to assassinate Napoleon III, faced the guillotine, was thrown into prison on Devil’s Island, escaped to the United States, joined the Union Army during the American Civil War, survived Custer’s Last Stand, and then lived the life of a celebrity in Los Angeles?

Well, depending on your point of view, you might call him the world’s luckiest man or a profoundly cursed individual. I like to call him Charles DeRudio. Naturally, he was not born with this name; he was more appropriately christened Carlo Camillo Di Rudio by the Count and Countess Aquila Di Rudio on August 26, 1832 in the province of Belluno.