1975 The blaxploitation thriller, Lady Cocoa (also titled Pop Goes the Weasel), starring singer-dancer Lola Folana, San Francisco 49er Gene Washington and Pittsburgh Steeler Joe Green, was filmed in Northern Nevada. The movie climaxes with a snowmobile-versus-car chase through the lobby, around the casino and into the swimming pool of the Kings Castle resort in Incline…
1947 The United States’ Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) co-financed construction of a gambling enterprise via its $975,000 loan for the Mapes hotel-casino in Reno, Nevada in 1947. Under Attack Three years later, Senators William Fulbright (D-Ark.) and Paul Douglas (D-Ill.), members of a committee investigating the RFC’s past lending practices, publicly criticized the group…
1928 A woman named Gladys Anderson sued the McGill Club in McGill, Nevada for $5,000, which she claimed her husband had lost there playing poker. The district court, however, dismissed her case because it lacked a cause of action (a set of facts sufficient to justify a right to sue and receive compensation from another…
1934-1935 Today, 80 years later, the circumstances of actress Thelma Todd’s death remain a mystery, and the case still is one of Hollywood’s infamous unsolveds. A deep cover-up precluded the truth about the incident from surfacing. On December 16, 1935, the famous, 29-year-old blonde was found dead in her garage, her beaten, slumped body behind…
Early 1900s In The Silver State (Nevada), casinos hired men for the sole job of picking up dice that rolled off the game tables. Only these workers were allowed to touch the cubes to keep cheaters from swapping them with crooked ones.
1928 Countless people died and an estimated 10,000 people lost their homes due to a ferocious fire started in a Chinese gambling den that razed a major street in the heavily populated city of Hankow. Numerous people drowned when they jumped into ponds to escape.
1961 It was hot inside and outside Harolds Club in Reno, Nevada on a Wednesday afternoon in the early summer of 1961. Indoors, people gathered around to watch high-roller Lonnie Joe Chadwick on a winning streak. In his two-day spree playing 21, he already had cashed in about $30,000 to $50,000 ($239,000 to $398,000 today)…
1961 In Nevada, where casino operators can employ shills to play in their clubs, it was established that a licensee may not act as a shill, gambling in their own establishment. Their spouse can’t either unless playing with money other than the licensee’s personal funds. Photo from freeimages.com: by Tanya Harding
1937-1947 The bustle and liveliness of this casino have long been dead. All that remains is a specter of the club’s former self in the form of a rundown, abandoned building — a state befitting its home, the now desolate ruins of Rhyolite, Nevada. Situated in the desert about 120 miles north of Las Vegas,…
1889 Nevada passed a law mandating that gambling houses couldn’t open any earlier than 6 a.m. and couldn’t close any later than midnight. The sentence for violation was a $200 to $500 fine and/or 30 days to six months’ jail time. Photo from freeimages.com: “Clocks” by bayek