1943 A site protection officer disciplined nine workers for shooting dice in a restroom and instructed them to report to the labor relations officer. This happened during the night shift at the Ford Motor Company tank assembly facility at Highland Park in Michigan, on a Friday night in April, during World War II. Four of…
1965 Interesting age and marital status restrictions are specified in this help wanted ad for casino personnel:
1935 Avoiding darkness, they only emerged amid brightness, real or artificial. They congregated outside of every Reno, Nevada gambling club at the beginning of June, pestering the guests as they entered and exited. One night they even went so far as to invade the Palace Club casino. They, Feltia annexa (Treitschske), or Feltia subterranea, or…
Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was such a rabid fan of horse racing that every summer, when in nearby La Jolla for his annual physical exam, he visited Del Mar in California, where he had a designated parking space and a private Turf Club box. Along with spectating, he wagered, frequently as much as…
1950 For Hollywood’s Academy Awards, Las Vegas, Nevada casinos offered even money on All The King’s Men, the favorite for Best Movie. The other nominees and their odds were Battleground, 5 to 2; The Heiress, 9 to 2; and Twelve O’Clock High, 10 to 1. In fact, Sin City had it right; the Oscar for…
1953 The Sands hotel-casino in Las Vegas, Nevada offered craps not poolside but in the pool! Photo from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ Digital Collections
1830s In this decade, moral fervor over gambling and organized crime led many United States cities to outlaw nine-pin bowling, which had been popular since colonial times. By the mid-40s, nine pin had vanished from the country except for in Texas, where instead of illegalizing it, they taxed it at $150 per year (today, about…
1957 In 1957, Club Primadonna chartered passengers to and from San Francisco to the Reno, Nevada casino on “champagne tours.” On the September 28 return flight, delayed from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. due to bad weather, the plane’s engines failed near the San Francisco International Airport. The pilot shouted, “Fasten your belts, loosen your…
1938 To draw guests, a 1938 newspaper ad for the new casino resort at Lake Tahoe in Crystal Bay touted the cinematic history of the land. It read: “All America enjoyed the beloved Will Rogers in the screen version of Frank Bacon’s Lightnin’. Calneva Lodge is built on the original location of this masterpiece —…
1963 On his third spin of the roulette wheel, having bet on the number 17, actor/producer Sir Sean Connery won, not just once, but thrice … in a row. With this wager, he raked in 17 million lire, or $27,000 (about $218,000 today), at the Casino de la Vallée in Saint-Vincent, Italy.