It opened in 1939 and for years was the world’s largest. It was (and still is) in Argentina‘s Mar del Plata, the “smartest, most opulent, most ostentatious shore resort in South America,” as described by “Around the World” columnist Temple Manning in 1949 (The Courier-Express). Its large, magnificent building showcased an eclectic architectural style. It…
Lady Godiva has a new address. Looking gorgeous in a long blue dress, she and her horse distinctively embellish the front yard of a Carson City home. Godiva appears as though she’s arriving for a visit, but she’s there to stay, at least until she’s uprooted again. A Look Back In 1970, when Nathan “Nate”…
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…
1938, 1946 Notorious mobster, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, borrowed money several times from his friend, actor George Raft, according to the biography George Raft, for which author Lewis Yablonsky interviewed the subject on numerous occasions. Siegel first asked the man he’d known since childhood for a loan in roughly 1938, in the amount of $20,000 ($364,000…
1851 Roving gambler William “Lucky Bill” B. Thorington’s stint in Hangtown (today Placerville, California) was brief because he literally thimblerigged a prominent local out of $1,500 to $2,000 (more than $39,000 to $52,000 today) and that angered the men in the camp. Despite a potential lynch mob after him and his companion card sharp Sidney…
Today Bally Manufacturing Corp., at one time decades ago, was heavily involved in the gambling industry. It owned six hotel-casinos in the U.S. It was a major producer of state lottery games and developer of slot and video poker machines. After its peak, the corporation divested all of its various but its hotel-casino (some still…
1968, 1969 Bally Manufacturing Corp. got its name from Ballyhoo, the first coin-operated pinball machine (a penny got you seven plays) created in 1931 by Raymond Moloney, owner of Chicago, Illinois-based Lion Manufacturing Co. Lion became Bally in January 1932. The company also made slot machines, video poker machines, video games and state lottery games…
1938 Gambler Tony Cornero Stralla offered to donate a day’s worth of revenue from his Southern California casino boat, the Rex, to Zoo Park at 3800 Mission Road in Los Angeles. The attraction, then owned/operated by the California Zoological Society and formerly the Selig Zoo, was teetering on bankruptcy and its animals were facing starvation.…
1938 During a preliminary hearing on the felony charge of using a cheating device while playing cards at a Las Vegas gambling house, Walter Eccles of Los Angeles explained that he’d used a holdout worn on his arm for “protection against a crooked gambling game” (Nevada State Journal, April 24, 1938).
The Nevada Tax Commission members agreed by unanimous vote to allow reporters to sit in and report on its voting sessions, meetings in which they made key decisions. Previously, voting had been done behind closed doors during “executive sessions,” or as journalists called them, “secret sessions.” Exceptions to the new policy included times when confidential…