1967

When the owners of the Ponderosa — Reno, Nevada’s newest major hotel (at 515 S. Virginia Street, now the Wild Orchid) — were about to debut gambling, with a celebratory first throwing of the dice, they ran into a snag.

It seems the casino bankroll was locked in the hotel safe … along with the safe key.

Two of the proprietors hotfooted it to the bank downtown to borrow replacement cash until they could get the safe opened. Though delayed, the festivities ensued without further trouble.

1964

The Dunes in Las Vegas, Nevada switched from writing off unpaid IOUs to claiming them as income, allegedly to keep Internal Revenue Service agents from harassing its customers — asking guests in the hotel if they paid what they owed.

On its fiscal 1965 income tax return, the hotel-casino reported as income $1.3 million (about $7.2 million today) in markers it considered not collectable. 

Photo from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ University Libraries

1964

For its eighth anniversary, the Mint hotel-casino in Las Vegas, Nevada baked a mega, 6,527-pound cake in the shape of the hotel-casino. About the size of 1,363 regular 10-inch cakes, it required:

• 12,960 eggs
• 2,400 pounds of sugar
• 1,218 pounds of whole milk
• 1,104 pounds of shortening

It was designed to serve about 40,000 people.

Photo from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ Special Collections