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1970 When Connie Stevens, entertainer, departed after a stay at the Kings Castle hotel-casino in Incline Village, Nevada, she accidentally left $20,000 ($122,000 today) worth of jewelry in her suite. Linda Cooley, a housekeeping team…
1936-Present If it weren’t for gambler Ernest J. Primm’s nerve and fortitude, California’s nearly 90 card clubs wouldn’t exist today. With a gambling license from the City of Gardena (in Los Angeles County), he opened…
1961 Dick Seller boasted that, within a year, a new luxury gambling resort would be built 100 miles from civilization, on a 100-acre parcel he owned (and named Holiday) in Humboldt County in Nevada’s desert…
1946 Nebraska carnival workers dreamed up a strange variation of roulette, and quickly found themselves in court after police and the humane society objected to it. The game, however, gained at least a few fans.…
1905 Folklore has it that Wyatt Earp was the pit boss at The Northern in Goldfield, Nevada for George “Tex” Rickard, the proprietor. But it likely is false, according to Nevada historians, Jeffrey Kintop and Guy…
1958 Reverend Maurice D. Tulloch, 50, a Kansas man, gave up his Baptist ministry for shilling in a Nevada casino. Feeling as though his life was suffocating him, a month earlier he’d walked out of…
Today In the U.S. we call them slot machines and one-armed bandits. In Australia, they’re pokies. People in the United Kingdom call them fruit machines, or fruities. Other names? Photo from freeimages.com: by Tijmen van…
1960 Bookies throughout Nevada had been taking wagers right and left on who’d win the upcoming U.S. presidential election — Senator John F. Kennedy (Dem.) or Vice President Richard Nixon (Rep.). Suddenly, in November, they…
1860s & 1870s In Virginia City, Nevada’s heyday, gold miners and magnates alike sought out R&R — gambling, hot springs soaking and dining — at the nearby Steamboat Springs resort south of Reno, a stop…
1935 When two United States state governors made a friendly bet, neither knew it would become problematic. They wagered each other their state would win the upcoming football rivalry between the Minnesota Golden Gophers, a…
1952 When Ernest J. Primm owned the Monterey Club, a poker house in Gardena, California (a Los Angeles suburb), he claimed on his state income taxes the losses of his shills, up to $500 ($4,500 today) a…
1956 The Fremont in Las Vegas commissioned a large oil painting that depicted a “lady of chance” to grace a wall in its casino. The hotel’s press agent, Shelly Davis, asked aspiring actress Sandra Giles…