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1962 After the Seattle World’s Fair, or the Century 21 Exposition, the bronze coins used as trade dollars during that event appeared in slot machines throughout Nevada.
1972 In the mail on Monday, April 24, each of 21 Las Vegas hotel-casinos received an identical, typewritten letter that demanded they pay a total of $2 million (about $12 million today) or get blown…
1969-1971 Patron Alvin Glasky sat in the Stardust hotel-casino’s showroom in Las Vegas, Nevada, watching Lido de Paris on a Saturday evening in 1969. As one of the topless showgirls was being lowered from the…
1931 Soon after Governor Frederic “Fred” B. Balzar approved wide-open gambling for Nevada, three men applied for an initial gambling license from the City of Las Vegas to operate a craps game at Lorenzi Lake…
1931 After a brand new roulette setup was put in use at a Las Vegas, Nevada casino, it was discovered the number 28 was black on the wheel, as it should be, but red on…
1931 In April 1931, the month after the new, liberal gambling law went into effect (March 19), Washoe County Sheriff E. Russell Trathen, per his job description, collected $20,000 (about $330,000 today) in gambling license…
1950-1979 The Harolds Club casino, in Reno, Nevada, held an annual winter holiday party for employees at its Harolds Trapshooting Club in the neighboring town of Sparks, on the Pyramid Highway. The fêtes, which featured dancing,…
1945-1947 Ray Wherrit and Austin K. Wright of San Luis Obispo, California set out in 1945 to build a $120,000 hotel-casino in the Crystal Bay Park subdivision on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe. The…
1949-1979 Harolds wasn’t the only Northern Nevada club with gambling that the Smiths owned for decades. In 1950, the renowned gambling family purchased Jabberwock Gun Club, located on the Pyramid Lake Highway in what today is…
1952 “Someone very dear to you is being held and will be killed if you don’t give me the money.” This was the content of the note, a bluff, Frederick Charles Will, handed to the…
1952 “One of the members of the Journal news staff stopped in at a [Reno, Nevada] casino one night last week, put a nickel in a slot machine and hit the jackpot. The attendant came…
1968-1971 A couple and a third man approached a 21 table in the Frontier in Las Vegas, Nevada on a Monday afternoon. The husband, Douglas Anderson, distracted the dealer. In that moment, his wife, Beverly…