It’s estimated that 38% of all Americans have been to Las
Vegas in their lifetime!
17 of the 20 biggest hotels in the United States call Las
Vegas home.
There is one slot machine for every 2-½ resident of Las
Vegas!
Every year, nearly 20,000 conventions hold their meetings in
the city.
Las Vegas is the fastest growing city in the U.S.
Every year, players lose $6-8 billion betting and gambling
at Las Vegas casinos.
Las Vegas became a city in 1905, with 100 acres of land
bought at auction.
The first hotel and casino that opened in Las Vegas was the
Golden Gate Hotel and Casino in 1906.
Gambling wasn’t always legal in Las Vegas and Nevada: a 1910
law made it illegal, though that was later repealed in 1931 by the Nevada
Legislature.
Second only to South
Africa, Nevada is the next largest gold producer in the world.
The Golden Nugget Hotel displays the largest gold nugget
ever found, weighing 61 pounds!
During the era of gangsterism, the slot machines in Vegas
used to be fixed to give smaller and less frequent payouts. It was largely the
work of one engineer under employ of the mob, but when he threatened to go
public with the admission, he was found murdered.
Now, it’s mandated and carefully regulated that video slot
machines pay out a minimum of 75 percent on average.
Vegas Vic, the huge neon cowboy likeness on Fremont Street,
is the largest mechanical neon sign in the world.
There have been many notable eccentrics in the history of
Las Vegas, but non wackier than Howard Hughes. He once came to Vegas and stayed
at the Desert Inn. After a few months of not leaving the management complained
and asked him to leave…so he bought the hotel.
Hughes went on a hotel-buying spree, including the
Castaways, the Landmark, New Frontier, the Sands, and the Silver Slipper. Although
he also did some horrible, bizarre things, Hughes is largely credited with
ending the mob stranglehold on the Vegas gaming business.
Las Vegas has a dark history of racism and segregation that
largely has gone unrecanted. In the 1950s, the city was known as the
“Mississippi of the West” because of its brutal Jim Crow practices. At first in
the 1930s, it was partially racially mixed, but as Southern racist visitors
started complaining about black people in the casinos, hotels, and restaurants
– even if they were working – the black population was forced to West Vegas,
which had dirt roads, tents and shacks, and often no running water.
Even famous performers like Lena Horne and Nat King Cole had
to come and go through the Blacks Only exits in the back of casinos and hotels
when they performed.
It was actually the Rat Pack and Sammy Davis Jr. who can be
given some of the credit for shifting Vegas’ segregation. Davis suffered horrid
racist treatment like the rest of his less-famous black people, including the
hotel pool being drained after he swam in it at the request of white patrons.
In the 1950s the Rat Pack, with legendary headliner Frank
Sinatra, refused to keep playing at the Sands Casino unless Sammy Davis Jr. was
allowed to stay in the hotel like the rest of them. That brought some new
attention and forced a crack of progress on the issue.
In 1960, the NAACP planned a massive march down the Vegas
strip to protest the racial conditions. City officials met with hotel and
casino owners because they were worried the march would cripple their tourism,
so they decided to end formal racial segregation in the city.
The Moulin Rouge became the first racially integrated hotel
in Las Vegas in 1955.
Quite a few fortunes have been lost at the Las Vegas
casinos, but a few have also been made. In 1992, a man named Archie Karas
turned $50 into $40,000,000! Imagine that! But then he kept playing and ended
up losing it all.
Fred Smith, the CEO of Fed Ex, saved his young company in
1970 by gambling his last $5,000 in Vegas. He turned that 5k into $32,000 at
the Blackjack tables, which was enough to keep his company expenses and payroll
afloat a few days longer, at which time the company was saved with an $11
million investment.
In 2004, a British gambler named Ashley Revell sold all of
his possession and material things, including his wardrobe, and best his last
money in the world, $135,300, all on red for a single spin of roulette. He
actually won, doubling his money to $270,600!
In the United States (not just Vegas), the legal gambling
industry creates more revenue than all pro sports, theme parks, cruise ships,
movies, and music combined!
An estimated 87% of all people who visit Vegas gamble.
On average, those gamblers spend $580.90 on betting and
gamble 4 hours per day.
The largest age demographic to Las Vegas is actually the 65
and older crowd, at 22% of all visitors.
Only two decades ago, it was legal to gamble in only two
states. Now, gambling is legal in some form in 48 states, with only Hawaii and
Utah still strictly banning it.
Nevada is one of only seven states in the U.S. that does not
have a state income tax. The others are Alaska, Florida, South Dakota, Texas,
Washington, and Wyoming.
An astounding 84.4% of Nevada’s land is owned by the federal
government, by far the most of any state.
Counting cards at the blackjack table is the subject of many
movies. However, not many people realize that counting cards is not technically
illegal in Las Vegas. But it is considered cheating, and violators who are
caught may be suspended or banned from casinos.
Speaking of bans, the Nevada Gaming Control Board started
keeping a black leather-bound book in the 1930’s with the names of people with
a “notorious or unsavory reputation.” These people were blackballed from
playing, owning, or even entering any casino or gambling establishment within
the city limits. The book still exists,
though it’s called the List of Excluded Persons, and currently includes 66
cheats, mobsters, card counters, and other unsavory elements.
The minimum age to gamble in Las Vegas is 21, not 18. Minors
are allowed in the hotels and casinos but only to pass through to their rooms
or destination and they are prohibited from lingering around the gaming areas,
even if they’re with an adult.
While Vegas may be the gambling capitol of the world, it’s
not universally embraced in Nevada. In fact, only 25 miles off the strip in
Boulder City, gambling is illegal.
In Chinese culture, the number four is considered back luck,
so to cater to Asian tourists and gamblers, the Wynn Las Vergas and Rio hotels
and casinos have elevators that skip from 39 to 50 to exclude the 40s.
There are many famous handicappers in the history of Las
Vegas, but the one so good he was called King or Guru is Frank “Lefty”
Rosenthal. He started the first sports and race book at the Stardust Hotel and
Casino and his likeness was made famous as a character in the movie Casino
(played by Robert de Niro).
Las Vegas even has mayors larger than life, as Oscar
Goodman, who came to office in 1999, used to show up at public appearances with
two showgirls at his side, rejected the attempt to make Vegas family friendly,
called himself “The Happiest Mayor in the Universe,” and showed up at a Q and A
for 4th grader sipping martinis and responded to a question by
saying his favorite pastime was drinking gin.
If Las Vegas and neighboring Nevada aren’t famous enough,
Area 51 boosts its claim to the weirdest place on earth. Area 51 is a place in
a dry lakebed in central Nevada where the government operates a top-secret
military research facility, though it denied its existence until recently. Area
51 is where it’s rumored the government captured and researched aliens.
Area 51 employs hundred of civilian contractors, but as it’s
an 8-hour commute to the next city, the government flies them in and out on a
private plane for work every day. The fleet of private unmarked 737s is
nicknamed “Janet Airlines” due to the call sign they use.
The first casinos lacked safety features like water
sprinklers in the entire building. There was an epic fire in the MGM Grand
Hotel in 1980 where 85 people died, 679 were injured, and 2,000 people
airlifted to safety from the hotel roof on helicopters.
Despite rumors and even common practices, prostitution is
not legal in Vegas. In fact, the law only allows legal prostitution in Nevada
counties with less than 400,000 residents, which was originally made the cut
off number to keep brothels out of Clark County.
Speaking of legal, you are allowed to carry around an
alcoholic beverage in Las Vegas with some restrictions: you can only leave an
establishment with said beverage if they allow and it’s not in a metal or glass
container (no beer cans). Also, you can’t drink within 1,000 feet of a school,
hospital, or place of worship.
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