1860s-1960s “The loose buckle in the Bible Belt” and “Las Vegas before Las Vegas had water” — these were Hot Springs, as described in the press (Hot Springs, 2013). This Central Arkansas city boasted illegal, yet wide-open, gambling for about a century, from the late 1860s until the late 1960s, making it the only United…
1961-1990s “As a boy in Chicago, [he] learned to cook standing on a milk crate in his mom’s kitchen, where Mrs. Capone — Scarface Al’s mom — would join them,” reported the Las Vegas Review-Journal (May 8, 2009). That youngster was Joseph D. Pignatello. Once an adult, the nascent chef prepared meals for his boss,…
1960 A cheap, spiral notebook held great power in Nevada’s gambling world for decades. It contained known U.S. mobsters whose underworld statuses and histories were such that the state gambling authorities didn’t want them anywhere near The Silver State’s casinos. This was a problem as these undesirables frequented major gambling operations in the state. Nevada…