In 1966,
Howard Hughes begins his infamous stay at the Desert Inn. By 1968,
Hughes purchases the Desert Inn after being asked to leave by
Hotel management.
Seventeen
of the 20 biggest hotels in the U.S. are in Las Vegas..
Vegas Vic,
the neon cowboy that towers over Fremont Street, is the world's
largest mechanical neon sign.
Average number
of pillowcases washed daily at MGM Grand 15,000
The Dunes,
demolished in 1993, was the first resort to feature topless showgirls
in a show called Minsky's Follies.
Annual visitors
to Las Vegas, in millions 36.7
Champion
racehorse Secretariat was featured on the covers of "Time,"
"Newsweek," and "Sports Illustrated" in
the same week in 1973.
A "fruit machine"
is the British term for a slot machine, or "one-armed bandit."
The State of Nevada
first legalized gambling in 1931. At that same time, the Hoover
Dam was being built and the federal government did not want
its workers (who earned 50 cents an hour) to be involved with
such diversions, so they built the town of Boulder City to house
the dam workers. To this day, Boulder City is the only city
in Nevada where gambling is illegal.
The ancient Greeks
awarded celery to winners of sports events, and it often was
carried by marathon runners
Gamblers in ancient
Greece made dice from the ankle-bones and shoulder blades of
sheep.
During the football
season of 1905, at least 19 players died in college and high
school contests.
Roulette was invented by the great
French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal. It was a by-product
of his experiments with perpetual motion.
The
marquees of the fifty largest casinos and hotels in Las Vegas
use enough electricity to run more than a thousand average U.S.
homes.
In 1996, a Nevada
panel designated the Las Vegas Strip a scenic byway, saying
the glitzy neon lights and erupting volcano, sinking pirate
ship, pyramid, castle, and other casino attractions are culturally
enriching.
With the highly
publicized fiery 1998 implosion of the 17-story, the 31-year-old
landmark Las Vegas Aladdin hotel and casino became the fifth
casino to be brought tumbling down since 1993. Previously imploded
buildings along the Vegas strip included the once-opulent Dunes,
Sands, Landmark, and Hacienda hotels. All were destroyed to
make room for bigger, more-modern facilities
In eighteenth-century English gambling
dens, there was an employee whose only job was to swallow the
dice if there were a police raid.
A recent Gallup Poll Social Audit
on gambling showed that 57 percent of Americans have bought a
lottery ticket in the last 12 months, making lotteries by far
the favorite choice of gamblers.
The Stratosphere Hotel and Casino
in Las Vegas, Nevada, is 1,149 feet tall, making it the tallest
building west of the Mississippi River.
The State of Nevada first legalized
gambling in 1931. At that same time, the Hoover Dam was being
built and the federal government did not want its workers (who
earned 50 cents an hour) to be involved with such diversions,
so they built the town of Boulder City to house the dam workers.
To this day, Boulder City is the only city in Nevada where gambling
is illegal
No patent can ever be taken out
on a gambling machine in the United States.
Residents of Nevada bet an average
of $846 a year in gambling casinos.
If you add together all of the numbers
on a Roulette wheel (1 to 36) to result is 666, the mythical number
most often associated with the Devil.
There is one slot machine in Las
Vegas for every eight inhabitants.
The world's first slot machine "The
Liberty Bell" was invented by Charles Fey in 1899.
Did you know? 24% of all Americans
admit to having gambled illegally.
