1976 “Next time try London. The odds are better,” boasted a sign in the McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas in 1976. The posting of this ad and possibly others resulted from an agreement between gambling industry representatives in London and Las Vegas to “swap promotions and high roller lists” (Las Vegas Sun, Oct. 15,…
1919 Outside many of Reno’s gambling saloons were benches, on which club-goers, typically men, whether or not they’d been gambling, were welcome to sleep the night. (At that time, some forms of gambling were legal in Nevada and the state’s Prohibition law had gone into effect on January 1 of that year.) “Upon leaving in…
1954 “If the Streeter suggestion should catch fire and the state took over gambling, it would be the damnedest experiment tried in the United States, and Nevada would have more hoodlums per square block than it has jackrabbits per square mile,” read a non-bylined Nevada State Journal op-ed piece, referring to the idea of Jack…
1946 Owners of the Casa Vegas gambling club in Southern Nevada, Duke Wiley and Eddie Alias, announced their plan to acquire and convert a surplus, four-engine transport plane into a casino in the air. Slated solely for the then three-hour flight between Las Vegas and Reno, it was to offer on-board roulette, music and entertainment.…
1948 The November 22, 1948 issue of Sports-Week roiled Nevada Wolf Pack fans and supporters. Bevy Of Allegations An article in that edition of the nationally circulated digest charged that the University of Nevada* (UN) football team had thrown the game against Santa Clara two weeks earlier, on November 7, “for the specific benefit…
1972 Twenty-six years after the gangland assassination of mobster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and his debut of the Flamingo in Las Vegas, a trap door was discovered in one of the hotel-casino’s offices when the carpet was pulled up during some remodeling. It hid a 15-inch-square safe encased in cement, which was believed to have been…
1947-1952 Despite New York mobsters trying to scare her off, an ambitious woman — Elaine Townsend (née Margaret Helgeson) — held her own as a gambling operator in the late 1940s. Bright, young and gorgeous, she parlayed her chutzpah, commerce degree and drive into making gobs of money in Cuba. Big Screen Worthy Her exploits…
1931 The Big Baccarat Table in Nice (France) was sketched by cartoonist, Pierre de Régnier, aka Tigre (1898-1943), and ran in newspapers with this description: “From left to right: Mme. Ephrussi, the French multimillionaire widow who lives at the gaming tables; Andre Citroen, the rich automobile manufacturer, whose fortune represents motor cars; Yves Mirande, the…
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…
1956 When auditors for Nevada reviewed its books, they discovered the El Rancho casino on the Las Vegas Strip had underpaid the requisite gambling taxes over nine quarters by $39,000 ($350,500 today). Despite the claims of owners , et. al. that they believed they’d paid the proper amount, tax commissioners assessed a 100% penalty, the…