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Geraldo Rivera: Rivera Live
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BIRTHDAY GUY: Reporter and television personality Geraldo Rivera was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., on this date in 1943. Although he is currently the host of his own TV show, Geraldo At Large, this journalist may be most famous, or infamous, for opening Al Capone s "secret vault" in a highly publicized live TV special in 1986 that revealed nothing but disappointment.
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In April 1986, Rivera hosted the syndicated special The Mystery of Al Capone's Vault, an ill-conceived adventure where Rivera excavated what he had been told was the site of Al Capone's buried treasure trove. Rivera attempted to do this live, fully expecting to find a store of the former gangster's wealth. The show was heavily advertised, particularly on Chicago's WGN television station. A medical examiner was brought along for the excavation, in the event of any dead bodies having been discovered during the live expedition. The show continued to air for several hours, displacing regularly scheduled programming, as Rivera continued to excavate what he was sure would eventually yield the famed loot, but instead found nothing except a few broken bottles. Attempting to salvage what was left of his reputation, Rivera held one of these bottles aloft for the camera and excitedly stated that it had contained "bootleg moonshine gin". The phrase "Al Capone's Vault" later became synonymous with extremely hyped events that delivered disappointingly few results in the end.
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(Actually, Rivera has previously made nearly identical on-screen confessions about his Zionist commitment and his shocked epiphanies about alleged Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians. In October 2000 he opined on his talk show, Rivera Live: "Oh, my God, what are the people we have adored and supported for so long doing in the name of -- of the State of Israel?")
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A sailor before he was a celebrity, Rivera, who turned 64 in July, is never far from the water. When he's not at this seaside spread between New Bedford and Cape Cod, he lives with his 32-year-old wife, Erica, and their 2-year-old daughter, Sol, in a Kennedy-esque compound in Edgewater, N.J. Most mornings, if he sees the traffic backed up on the George Washington Bridge, Rivera takes his boat to work, docking it at 79th Street and making his way to Fox headquarters in midtown Manhattan.
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Prior to joining FOX News, Rivera served as host of CNBC’s number-one rated prime time show, “Rivera Live," where his critically-acclaimed coverage of the O.J. Simpson civil trial verdict set an all-time CNBC ratings record.
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