1931 When a Southern Pacific train stopped in Reno on a Friday in May at about 9:15 p.m., four passengers disembarked to squeeze in, before continuing on, a glance at gambling, which Nevada recently had legalized. The travelers left their luggage onboard. One woman, temporarily forgetting she had one with her, left her baby there,…
1976 “Next time try London. The odds are better,” boasted a sign in the McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas in 1976. The posting of this ad and possibly others resulted from an agreement between gambling industry representatives in London and Las Vegas to “swap promotions and high roller lists” (Las Vegas Sun, Oct. 15,…
1954 “If the Streeter suggestion should catch fire and the state took over gambling, it would be the damnedest experiment tried in the United States, and Nevada would have more hoodlums per square block than it has jackrabbits per square mile,” read a non-bylined Nevada State Journal op-ed piece, referring to the idea of Jack…
1948 The November 22, 1948 issue of Sports-Week roiled Nevada Wolf Pack fans and supporters. Bevy Of Allegations An article in that edition of the nationally circulated digest charged that the University of Nevada* (UN) football team had thrown the game against Santa Clara two weeks earlier, on November 7, “for the specific benefit…
1931 The Big Baccarat Table in Nice (France) was sketched by cartoonist, Pierre de Régnier, aka Tigre (1898-1943), and ran in newspapers with this description: “From left to right: Mme. Ephrussi, the French multimillionaire widow who lives at the gaming tables; Andre Citroen, the rich automobile manufacturer, whose fortune represents motor cars; Yves Mirande, the…
Texas-born Lester B. “Benny” Binion (1904-1989) no longer is with us, he remains a legend among Las Vegas casino owners and operators — gamblers, in industry parlance. Iconic even in his appearance — large in girth and ever clad in a cowboy hat and boots — Binion was complex. The dichotomous traits he embodied likely…
1956 When auditors for Nevada reviewed its books, they discovered the El Rancho casino on the Las Vegas Strip had underpaid the requisite gambling taxes over nine quarters by $39,000 ($350,500 today). Despite the claims of owners , et. al. that they believed they’d paid the proper amount, tax commissioners assessed a 100% penalty, the…
1883-1884 A gambling affinity, in part, did in Everton J. Conger’s career as associate justice of the Territory of Montana. President Chester A. Arthur suspended him in March 1883. Conger had served three years in that role, beginning in 1880. Along with his penchant for playing games of chance, legal there at the time, reasons…
1933 When panhandling in Bakersfield, California, an Arthur J. Hayden received 25 cents ($4.70 today), which he took to a casino and parlayed into $690 ($13,000 today). The next day he grew his winnings to $1,000 ($19,000 today), which he put in a postal savings account. When he went back to begging on the street,…
1936 To better understand the experience, Judge Harry D. Landis of Seward, Nebraska purposefully spent 10 summer days, undercover as an inmate, in the Iowa State Penitentiary (since closed). After, when he publicly reported his assessment of the institution, he praised it for allowing inmates to gamble — as the Nevada State Prison did — in…