Quick Fact - Rabid Anti-Gamblers
1907 William Howard Taft (not yet the U.S. president) was in Manila, the Philippines on Secretary of War duties. His wife, Helen, or “Nellie,“ who’d accompanied him on the trip, was at a Saturday morning bridge…
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1907 William Howard Taft (not yet the U.S. president) was in Manila, the Philippines on Secretary of War duties. His wife, Helen, or “Nellie,“ who’d accompanied him on the trip, was at a Saturday morning bridge…
1940-1943 The Barn Club casino’s existence during World War II was rocky and, therefore, cut short. It began in December 1940, when Jack Fugitt, an entertainment machine business owner, and Walter Oswald, assumed the lease…
1953 On a weeknight in May, Louisiana state policemen surrounded a high-end home in the New Orleans suburbs. One of them knocked on a secret side door that contained a one-way glass window, allowing those…
1950-1953 During the 1950 federal hearings on organized crime, two Northern California gamblers — Walter “Big Bill” Melburn Pechart and David “Dave” Nathan Kessel — were uncooperative, according to the questioners. They were Senators Estes…
1966 The Silver Nugget casino announced it would debut topless, female, 21 (blackjack) dealers during the midnight to 8 a.m. shift. This, too, was the gist of the complaints the Nevada attorney general (A.G.) received…
1974 It was a successful scam that cheated the Aladdin Resort and Casino out of about $250,000 (about $1.2 million today) … while it lasted. Four men had some friends take junkets to the Las Vegas…
1933-1954 His unfavorable personal opinion about gambling notwithstanding, Patrick “Pat” A. McCarran (D-Nev.) — U.S. Senator between 1933 and 1954 — acted repeatedly on the industry’s behalf. Had he not, it’s likely gaming wouldn’t have…
1928-Today Members of English royalty unwittingly helped launch a new South American casino toward success in the 1930s. After Chilean President Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, in 1928, authorized creation of a gambling house, Viña del…
1931 When a Southern Pacific train stopped in Reno on a Friday in May at about 9:15 p.m., four passengers disembarked to squeeze in, before continuing on, a glance at gambling, which Nevada recently had…
1937-1938 Within a year of becoming the Maricopa County Attorney, John W. Corbin began work to expose the illegal gambling taking place in the Arizona region. He set his sights on busting the game operators and…
1988-1989 Tipped off by the contents of various lawsuits and complaints by employees, Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) agents raided the Imperial Palace Hotel and Casino* on September 27, 1988. The 2,700-room property located on…
1931-1932 Actors Clara Bow and Rex Bell gambled at the Meadows in Las Vegas in summer 1931 and racked up a $1,100 loss (about $18,000 today), for which they left an IOU. By December, the…
1961 This ad for the El Rey Club invited people to escape one sunny desert town (Palm Springs, California) for another (Searchlight, Nevada), as the enticement ran in the former’s newspaper, The Desert Sun. Owner Willie Martello began…
1948 When Pasadena, California vice squad officers got a tip that chef/restaurant owner Paul B. Weston, 56, was sidelining as an illegal bookie, they raided his home and found gambling paraphernalia — where else? —…
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…
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…