1936 An $11,800 gambling win (about $205,000 today) was the largest ever in Las Vegas to that point. The payout went to a man named A. “Blacksmith” Sweitzer after playing 21 (blackjack) for two hours, starting with a $5 wager. “He ran a series of five phenomenal blackjack hands, in which he showed two ‘blackjacks’ —…
1974-1983 A revolt of the performers — athletes in this case — threatened to close a popular attraction at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas — jai alai. Unique to the Strip at the time, it was designed as part of the Nevada resort’s entertainment package to lure visitors into the casino. Jai alai…
Today A casino is a place that houses and facilitates various gambling forms, according to the English, but a casino or kasino is an officers’ mess hall to the Germans, Spanish and others. In Italian, the language of origin, the word derives from casa (house) and translates to little house. Casino first referred to a…
1855-1856 Charles and Arabella “Bell” Cora were a colorful, rich and well-known San Francisco couple whose lives jolted into misfortune one Saturday night in 1855. He, 39, had made his money from dealing faro in Northern California mining camps and the city during The Gold Rush. Prior, he’d broken numerous faro banks in Louisiana and…
1955 At least 10 hotel-casinos on the Las Vegas Strip offered entertainment, typically marquee names like Liberace and Mario Lanza, who’d played Sin City time and again. The Royal Nevada, though, changed it up with a first. They put on the musical, Guys and Dolls, featuring a number of the original Broadway cast members, including Vivian…
1911 At midnight on June 19, a ban on slot machines took effect in Sacramento, California. The new law made it a misdemeanor to have the devices in one’s possession or on one’s property. The machines were collected from cigar stands and saloons and removed in wagons to be sent to a locale where they…
1947-1962 A wild burro sauntered into the popular gambling spot, the El Rey Club in Searchlight, Nevada at about 11 o’clock every morning. It approached the proprietor, Willie Martello, who always fed it something he had in his pocket. Then the donkey retreated back into the desert. Photo from freeimages.com: “The key is the donkey,”…
1952–1958 When Fulgencio Batista returned to power as president in Cuba in 1952, he aimed to foster a gambling empire from which he could generate revenue for his coffers. To facilitate casino development, he and his administration: • Restricted gambling licenses to hotels or nightclubs worth $1 million or more • Waived taxes, which were…
1913 During an era of reform in the United States, the American-Hawaiian Steamship Co. tried to discourage gambling by raising the freight rate on poker chips transported from New York to the West Coast by 50 cents. It bumped the cost from $1.75 to $2.25 per 100 pounds (from about $42 to $54 in today’s…
1957-1962 Perhaps it was a bird-brained idea, perhaps not. In 1957, Dick Graves, the owner of the Nugget, in Sparks, Nevada, commissioned a handcrafted, solid gold rooster for display in one of his hotel-casino restaurants, the Golden Rooster Chicken House, then under construction. The final product was 9 inches tall and embodied about $40,000 worth…