9 THINGS YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW ABOUT LAS VEGAS The city that puts everything on display actually has a few tricks up its sleeve Everybody knows Las Vegas. Everybody knew Elvis and Liberace and the Rat Pack back in the day, and everybody knows the city’s current icons, Cirque du Soleil and Celine Dion. You don’t even have to have visited here to know our nickname (Sin City), our slogan (“What happens here…”) or our raison d’être (yes, we even have slots at the airport). But you can’t possibly know everything. 1. The era of the topless showgirl began in 1957 with the debut of Minsky’s Follies at the Dunes. Competing resorts soon caught on. Lido de Paris opened at the Stardust in 1958 and ran for 31 years. Folies Bergere bowed the following year and ran for almost five decades before closing in 2009. Jubilee! is currently the city’s longest-running topless production, having opened in 1981 just eight months after the MGM Grand fire destroyed all of its sets and costumes. 2. The city’s name is Spanish for “the meadows.” It might seem odd for a desert city to be named after a lush vegetative feature, but that’s just what Rafael Rivera came across when he set foot in the Las Vegas Valley in 1829. A scout traveling on a Spanish expedition, he discovered springs that allowed the party to continue their journey to Los Angeles. 3. The Las Vegas Strip is officially Paradise. Before the city of Las Vegas could annex the burgeoning Strip in 1950, Clark County commissioners included it as part of a town called Paradise that was beholden to them rather than Las Vegas’ mayor. While Paradise and Las Vegas share resources like police, libraries and health services, they have separate officials, parks and recreation departments, fire departments and (best of all for Paradise residents) tax rates. Strip hotels south of Sahara Avenue are considered part of Paradise—even though the post office does not separate Paradise from Las Vegas. 4. The Rat Pack was never billed as “The Rat Pack.” You couldn’t just walk up to the box office and buy two tickets to see the Rat Pack at the Sands like you would a Celine Dion or Cirque du Soleil show today. Often one of the other members would drop in on, say, Dean Martin’s performance and sing a song or two or joke around. It got to the point where marquees would tease a possible appearance by additional members, but there was never any formal billing as “The Rat Pack.” 5. Las Vegas is home to 17 of the 20 largest hotels in the U.S. The 4,996-room MGM Grand is the largest, followed by Luxor, The Venetian, Aria and Excalibur. 6. Fremont Street used to be an actual street. Native Las Vegans remember the old Fremont Street (the original “Strip” and ancestral neon home of Las Vegas), but since 1995, a four-block stretch has been paved over with concrete and a giant video screen (VivaVision) erected overhead. You can still drive south on Fremont, but if you’re looking for the place where Sean Connery led police on a high-speed chase in Diamonds Are Forever, it’s right there underneath the Bon Jovi light show. 7. Las Vegas wasn’t always a gaming mecca. In fact, gambling was banned in the state of Nevada from 1861 to 1869 and again from 1910 to 1931. Can you imagine a Las Vegas without booze and gambling? 8. Las Vegas is the largest U.S. metropolitan area without a major pro sports team. We have minor league baseball (51s), minor league hockey (Wranglers) and the lingerie-wearing Legends Football League (of course), but no pro team—a distinction that will probably endure unless Nevada decides to ban gambling again. 9. Caesars Palace might be the luckiest resort in the city. While we don’t have the actual numbers to prove whether you can win bigger at the Palace, there are a few spots that have been said to bestow prosperity upon guests: the hand of the Caesar Augustus statue at the hotel’s entrance, the gloves of boxing champ Joe Louis outside Mesa Grill, the toe of Michelangelo’s David inside the Appian Way Shops, the chest of Cleopatra at the bow of Cleopatra’s Barge and the Brahma shrine near Serendipity 3. booklasvegasholidays.co.uk
Posted on: Fri, 02 Aug 2013 18:51:58 +0000
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