1939 With the recent discoveries of dead bodies there, Lake Mead in Southern Nevada has been in the news. The 1.5 million acres encompassing this water body and its environs have been a designated national recreation area since 1964, but a portion of them almost had become a Nevada state park three decades earlier. The…
1953-1959 Australian-American actor Errol Flynn was going to open one of the world’s largest casinos, one that would rival Monaco’s Monte Carlo, in the Virgin Islands when gambling was legalized there, he said in 1953. Were the enterprise to be successful, he’d move permanently to the Caribbean, where he’d open his own studios and continue…
1950 In the morning, gambler Nelson Harris, 34, telephoned two Fort Worth, Texas criminal attorneys and said he was on his way over to discuss a life and death matter. He and his wife Juanita, 25 and pregnant, due in a week’s time, quickly loaded into the car to drive there, but didn’t get anywhere.…
1700s-1950s Faro stands out in U.S. gambling history. The imported card game dominated the industry here for a long time, about 100 years. “Tiger” was the country’s favorite gambling pastime during the 1800s, though played before and after. Men couldn’t get enough of it. It was ubiquitous. Faro also is noteworthy for being the game…
1949 The Smiths, who owned and operated Harolds Club in Reno, Nevada appropriately named their casino Roaring Camp. Generally, a roaring camp was “a gold-prospecting camp characterized by wild behavior, unrestrained drinking and gambling,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Specifically, Roaring Camp was an actual mining settlement in California’s Amador County, on the Mokelumne…
1928-1972 Samuel “Sam” F. Termini (1903-1972) was known as a small-time racketeer who worked at and operated gambling enterprises mostly for others. Here are 10 interesting tidbits about him and his life: Gambling History 1) Termini was associated with Kansas City Mobster Charles Binaggio. Born and raised in Missouri, Termini had worked for Binaggio before…
1934 A man named Hans Brucksmer played about $15 worth of nickels (about $300 today) in a slot machine at a place of business in Seattle, Washington and got only four coins back. He lifted the machine and took it to the local police station. There, holding the device under one arm, he filled out…
1913-1915 Circumstances of a lawsuit in the U.S. led to an unusual occurrence, even for Nevada: the federal government taking over and running a Silver State casino. It was The Big Casino, a combination casino, dance hall, hotel and restaurant, in Tonopah, then one of the state’s few remaining true mining towns. At the time,…
1936 Gambler Leo Barnes and his wife had only been in Denver, Colorado for about six months, having moved from Kansas City, Missouri. On the night of Dec. 8, the couple got in their car to go somewhere. When Barnes stepped on the car’s starter, an explosion blew him through the roof. He suffered lacerations…
1943-1944 Had it not been for a shifty plan Tony “Joe Batters” Accardo and/or his attorney, George Bieber, dreamed up, the Mobster might’ve gone to prison at age 37, in 1944, for illegal gambling. Cigar Store as Front A high-ranking Outfit member, Accardo had been operating a bookmaking enterprise out of the Ogden building at…