Before talking about Las Vegas, let's talk Nevada, the state this city is in. Are you sure you know its correct pronunciation? "Nevada"? Maybe "Neveda"? Or even Nevaida? Many famous people made mistakes on this, including George W. Bush.
Most residents of the state consider the correct pronunciation to be “Neveda” – definitely not "Nevada" as most people say.
Actually, “Nevada” is a Spanish word, and its correct pronunciation is closest to “Neveda.” However, it is only common in the state itself. In the rest of the United States, they say "Nevada" based on how the word should be read. One poorly chosen letter hides the correct pronunciation!
Nevadans are very strict with those who choose the wrong option. Let's quote one of Donald Trump's speeches during his visit to Nevada: “Nevada. And you know what I said? I said, when I came out here, I said, "Nobody says it the other way. It has to be Nevada, right?" And if you don’t say it correctly – and it didn’t happen to me, happened to a friend of mine, he was killed,”
Well, now it’s clear why they kill everyone who comes to Reno in country songs.
You've probably seen the "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign, but you probably don't know that it was designed by a woman – Betty Willis. She was born in Overton, Nevada, in 1923, but within two weeks her parents moved to Las Vegas. The family often traveled to California, and it was there that Betty fell in love with neon signs – there were many more of them in Los Angeles than on the Strip.
After dropping out of art school in Los Angeles, Betty returned to Las Vegas and began designing neon signs and drawing newspaper advertisements. In the 1950s, Western Neon was awarded the right to design the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign, and in 1959 it was erected at the entrance to the city.
The letters in the word Welcome are located in circles stylized as silver coins, recalling that Nevada is the “Silver State.” Betty called the big star at the top "Disney's Happy Star." But she didn’t like the way the word Fabulous was written – she later said that she broke out in bloody sweat at the sight of these letters.
She created many other famous symbols of the city, including an angel with a magic wand for the Blue Angel Motel.
This work was criticized for the large size of the celestial creature's breasts. To this, Betty replied: “Well, show me a real angel, and I will draw one.”
Betty Willis died in 2015 at the age of 91, but her most famous creation lives on. Several attempts by city officials to replace the symbol with something else met with extremely fierce resistance from residents, and in 2009 it was included in the National Register of Historic Places.
The Rat Pack is an informal creative community of the most famous stars of American cinema and show business, which formed around Humphrey Bogart, one of the best actors in American cinema history, and his wife Lauren Bacall in the late 1940s.
In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, community leaders—Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis—frequently appeared in Las Vegas concert halls and on television performing impromptu comic and musical acts. But where did this nickname come from?
Humphrey Bogart loved to drink and did not like to go far, so he often gathered friends at his home. Regular guests included Judy Garland, Ava Gardner, David Niven, Angie Dickinson, and Frank Sinatra. Bacall came up with the name. One day, entering the house and finding a cheerful company of drunk stars, she said: “In my opinion, you all look like a pack of rats.”
And it stuck. They even had a coat of arms and a motto: “A rat won’t give up a rat.” Bacall formulated the rules of membership in the group in her memoirs: “A passion for nonconformity, late feasts, drunkenness, and fun, as well as a disregard for the opinions of outsiders.”
In 1957, at the age of 57, Bogart died, and Sinatra became the new head of the pack. He, however, was not delighted with the name, although he pretended otherwise for a long time due to his passionate love for Bacall, who became his bride for a short time.
He once tried to rename the Rat Pack the Clan, but Sammy Davis vetoed his proposal.
In 1960, Lewis Milestone cast members of the Rat Pack in the heist film Ocean's Eleven, set in Las Vegas.
The famous Strip, where most of the famous casinos are located, is not actually located in Las Vegas, but in the city of Paradise. The same goes for the “Welcome” sign we talked about above. At the same time, Las Vegas appears in the mailing addresses of hotels on the Strip.
The real Las Vegas is downtown, Fremont Street. This is where the World Series of Poker was born.
The idea that oxygen is added to the air in casinos to keep people awake longer is also a myth.
High spirits and alcohol are what keep them from actually sleeping. In 2013, Troy Stromming, Ameristar Casinos' senior vice president of government and public affairs, went on record as saying, "I can't imagine the size of the oxygen tank that would be needed for a change in oxygen levels in the air to have any effect on patrons of a huge casino. In addition, oxygen-rich air is too dangerous for fire.”
Some people believe that prostitution is legal in Las Vegas. However, this is not so. Prostitution in Nevada is only legal in counties with populations below 700,000 that have not banned it, and advertising is completely illegal. Twelve counties meet the criteria, but only eight of them have brothels. Neither Las Vegas nor Reno are one of them.
The architects of some skyscrapers incorrectly calculated the angle of the windows, which is why they act like parabolic mirrors on a bright sunny day. When focused and reflected in them, the sun's rays can cause significant harm. Thus, in 2010, several tourists in Las Vegas received burns and their hair was singed due to the glass of the Vdara Hotel.
There is a fast food restaurant in Las Vegas that claims to be the most unhealthy in the world. Its name is the Heart Attack Grill.
The hit on the menu is the 900-gram Quadruple Bypass Burger (playing on cardiovascular surgery in the name), the energy value of which is approximately 8,000 kilocalories (it was not possible to find exact data on its ingredients, and the stated calorie content per gram raises reasonable doubts).
The ButterFat Shake drinking cream, as written on the menu, contains a world-record amount of cholesterol. The establishment's waitresses wear nursing uniforms with stethoscopes, and those who order the largest burger are given the right to ride in a wheelchair. Customers weighing 160 kg and above eat free.
The restaurant's slogan is “Food to die for.”
Las Vegas residents and visitors consume more shrimp and crustaceans in a day than the rest of the United States in a year. Strip classics – shrimp cocktails, endless seafood buffets throughout the city, and so on, have long been the hallmark of the city. Seafood is a luxury in itself, and especially so in the middle of the desert. There is so much brought to Las Vegas that there is enough even for average restaurants, and the prices are more than reasonable. If you love seafood, you're in a good place!
(At GGPoker, you progress through different levels of seafood in your loyalty program. As you play, you'll get paid out more rakeback for each level you reach)
The eccentric rich man and aviator Howard Hughes, staying at the Desert Inn in Vegas in 1966, ordered 200 gallons of Baskin-Robbins banana nut ice cream. After a few days, he became fed up and announced that from now on he would only eat marshmallow and chocolate-flavored ice cream. As a result, the hotel gave out free banana-nut ice cream to everyone for a whole year.
Hughes rented two floors there. His reservation had long since expired, but he had no desire to leave the hotel. When the hotel owner asked him to vacate the property, Hughes bought the entire hotel from him for $13 million.
Did Homer Simpson cheat on his wife?
From an interview with Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, for Playboy magazine:
– "He (Homer) and Ned Flanders went to Las Vegas and got drunk and woke up in a hot tub, married.
I wanted Homer and Flanders to be naked in the hot tub, but we ended up being cautious. They woke up married to Vegas floozies and fled. There were no consequences whatsoever.
We did later refer to Homer’s “Vegas wife,” and last season we had a funeral for her. Marge was mad, but she went.
(We've got a couple of poker scenes from the Simpsons and other cartoons/animes in this next article)
