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…
1972 Recognize these cars? A Pinto, Chevelle, Javelin and Datsun 240Z? Harrah’s hotel-casino in Reno, Nevada gave them away as well as cash in four weekly drawings for $35,000 worth of prizes ($205,000 today) over the winter holidays in 1972.
1959 In February, The New York Times outed Clifford A. Jones. It brought to light that he held gambling interests in and out of Nevada, which The Silver State’s gaming law then prohibited. It was no secret that Jones owned shares in the Thunderbird, Palace Club, Golden Nugget and Lucky Strike casinos in Las Vegas.…
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,…
1956 She wouldn’t budge. C. Johnson was playing a slot machine from a stool that was blocking the aisle in a downtown Reno, Nevada casino. When employees asked the Oakland, California resident to please shift a bit so others could pass, she adamantly refused. They offered to move the game to a spot with a…
1949 Casino owners balked when the question of going on daylight saving time (DST) arose in Nevada in 1949. Gamblers’ Outcries Charles Mapes, owner of the Mapes hotel-casino in Reno, made a few arguments: • “It’s difficult to put on a floor show at 9 p.m. with the sun just going down. A spotlight…
1931 Twenty-six miles southeast of Las Vegas, the United States government, in 1931, developed Boulder City as the place to house men working on the Hoover Dam (originally Boulder Dam). The Bureau of Reclamation required the town to be a model community that afforded a clean living environment. To achieve this, federal legislators officially designated…
1840s-Today Gambler Francois Blanc, at his casino in Bad Homburg, Germany, introduced roulette in the early 1840s with only 0 and no 00 on the wheel and table layout, a choice he stuck with when he assumed control of the Monte Carlo in Monaco two decades later. This roulette version became the European standard. In…
1970s Caesars Palace in Las Vegas extended $160 million in credit to players in 1977. This was more than the then-considered staggering $106 million cost of the original MGM Grand (early ’70s), also in Sin City, and equals roughly $641 million today. Offering credit to players who were deemed able to repay it was a common practice among…
1947 John Clark Bosworth, of Reno, 47, was sentenced to 10 days in the local jail for playing with fake $25 chips in a Las Vegas casino. ————————– What do you think? Was this a light or heavy sentence? Photo from freeimages.com, by John Nyberg