1890s-Today A way to drum up business for a failing zoo in the late 19th century, reportedly, quickly evolved into and, to this day, remains an enormously popular game of chance among Brazilians: jogo do bicho. Zoological Pursuit In 1884, Rio de Janeiro businessman João Batista Viana Drummond (1825-1897) purchased what remained of the…
1938 In the following verse, penned about the S.S. Monte Carlo following its demise, the writer Ida Clarise Gowan uses a hostile, derogatory and accusatory tone. She personifies, or gives human qualities to, the ship, such as being greedy and taking advantage of people. Gowan, then a Coronado, California resident, employs hyperbole by incorporating words…
1932-Today Though local, state and federal authorities were working to eradicate all gambling ships moored off of the Pacific Coast, the S.S. Monte Carlo met its demise at the hands of an unexpected interloper, Mother Nature. On a Stormy Night On New Year’s Eve in 1936, the waterborne casino, closed for the winter, offshore…
1936-1950s The Palace Club introduced a new casino game to Nevada’s “Biggest Little City” on May 1, 1936. Renoites quickly discovered it, and its popularity soared, leading to a solid run over about a decade. The emergence of this enticing gambling offering was “a major event in the development of Reno’s gaming,” Raymond Sawyer…
1965-1969 The Red Carpet in Biloxi was cheating its craps players by using a “juice joint,” a two-ton electromagnet that controlled metal-containing dice on a game table, in 1965. At the time, Mississippi prohibited all forms of clean, never mind dirty, gambling. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) launched an investigation. Agents learned that Harry…
1965-1969 In its July 1966 raid of Kress Manufacturing Co. in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents seized a treasure trove of crooked gambling equipment that seemed headed to various Nevada casinos. The haul included “hundreds of decks of marked cards and hundreds of pounds of crooked dice” (Nevada State Journal, July 27,…
1937-1947 More so than craps, roulette, 21 and slots, all on offer, tango enraptured gamblers at Club Fortune, then “the outstanding night spot in Western Nevada,” according to the Reno Evening Gazette (Jan. 12, 1953). Tango was “the Reno name for the well-known bean game,” as described in the newspaper column, “In the Biggest Little…
1920s-1960s Joseph “Doc” Stacher (né Gdale Oistaczer)* was a New Jersey-based Mobster who made his foray into organized crime with Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and Meyer Lansky’s Bugs and Meyer Mob in Manhattan, N.Y. and then with Abner “Longie” Zwillman’s Third Ward Gang in Newark, N.J. Eventually, he teamed up with local Mobsters, including Zwillman…
1961-1966 “When you bring in gamblers, you bring in trained law violators, and to expect them not to break the law is to expect the tides not to rise,” Wallace Turner wrote in Gambler’s Money. The Manx Casino, also called the Isle of Man Casino, named for its locale, was a case in point. …
1958 Myrton “Mert” C. Wertheimer was murdered, William “Bill/Curly” J. Graham ordered the hit and Frank “Frankie” Frost carried it out. This was hearsay from Los Angeles Mobster and made man, Aladena James “Jimmy/The Weasel” Fratianno, as documented in Ovid Demaris‘ biography of Fratianno, The Last Mafioso. Page 173 (hardback version) contains a conversation relayed…