How It’s Rigged: Most High Strikers in use today are honest, but, according to one manufacturer, some early models used several “guy wires” that held up the tower. Unknown to players, one of the guy wires led from a stake directly down the front of the tower. The striker traveled along this wire.
• The unscrupulous agent would lean up against the phony guy wire and keep it taut enough so a player could ring the bell on the first and second tries. But on the player’s third swing (the one that could win the prize), the agent would stop leaning on the wire. With the wire slack, the striker brushed against the tower as it traveled skyward, and friction prevented it from reaching the gong. The player had no chance to win the grand prize for three rings.
How to Win: “The trade secret is to hit the pad squarely, just as if you were splitting wood,” according to the manufacturer.
The Booth: “Basketball”
The Object: Toss the basketball into a hoop while standing behind a designated foul line.
How It’s Rigged: Some operators overinflate the balls, so they have more bounce and are tougher to get through the hoop. Others don’t attach the hoops securely to the backboard, so the rims vibrate when struck by the ball. This keeps rim shots from going in.
How many Bibles are sold or distributed throughout the world every minute? 47.
THE STORY OF
LAS VEGAS
Have you ever wondered how Las Vegas became the gambling capital of the world? Here’s the story.
NAME
“Las Vegas” means “the meadows” or “the fertile plains” in Spanish. The city acquired this name in the early 1800s, when it was a peaceful rest stop on the Old Spanish Trail.
HISTORY. Ironically, the Mormons were the first to settle Las Vegas, in 1855. They built the first church, first fort, and first school in Nevada, only to abandon them three years later. Pioneers were still using the site as a watering hole and, as one missionary noted, few could be induced to attend the church. “Only one man attended,” he wrote. “The rest of them were gambling and swearing at their camps.”
Las Vegas didn’t become a real town until almost 50 years later. Because of its central location and ample water supply, the railroad decided it would make an ideal stop on the transcontinental train line. They bought the land and, one scorching hot day in 1905, auctioned it off to 1,200 eager settlers. A few days later, the town appeared: a haphazard assortment of canvas tent saloons, gambling clubs, and drinking parlors that quickly established the city’s character and reputation.
Despite prohibitionist protests, Las Vegas maintained its early emphasis on night life and continued to flourish throughout the 1920s. “Such places as the Red Rooster, the Blue Goose, the Owl, and Pair-o-Dice were temporarily inconvenienced from time to time by raids from federal agents,” writes one local historian. “But they were, of course, as safe as a church from local interference.”
In 1931 the Nevada state legislature enacted two well-publicized “reforms”: They liberalized divorce laws, changing residency requirements from six months to six weeks, and officially legalized gambling. Now Las Vegas had two unique attractions. While the rest of the country was suffering through the Great Depression, Las Vegas casinos made a killing catering to the workers constructing nearby Boulder Dam, as well as the 230,000 tourists who came to see it. (Las Vegas also became a significant divorce center after movie star Clark Gable’s wife, Rhea, chose it as the place to divorce him.)
Every year, 5% of Americans go on cruises.
The first full-fledged resort, the plush El Rancho Vegas, was built in 1940. Another (the New Frontier) followed, and the notorious Vegas “strip” was established. A military base and a magnesium plant were installed nearby in the early 1940s, and both brought more people to the area and kept the town prosperous through World War II. By 1970 more than half of Nevada’s entire population lived in Las Vegas.
MAIN INDUSTRY. Las Vegas as we know it today might never have been born if it weren’t for gangster Ben “Bugsy” Siegel. Wanted for murder in New York, Siegel was sent out West to set up a booking service for the mob and became obsessed with the idea of creating a “glittering gambling mecca in the desert.” He borrowed $6 million in mob money and constructed the Flamingo Hotel, a lavish olive-green castle surrounded by a 40-acre garden that was planted literally overnight in imported soil brought in by truck.
Unfortunately for Bugsy, the Flamingo was initially a bust. To top it off, the mob found out he’d been skimming profits. They had him killed in 1947. But business at the Flamingo picked up, and over the next few years Mafia-owned resort casinos sprang up all along Highway 91, the Las Vegas strip.
According to The Encyclopedia of American Crime, for example:
Meyer Lansky put up much of the money for the Thunderbird.
The Desert Inn was owned by the head of the Cleveland mob.
The Dunes “was a goldmine” for the New England mob.
The Sahara “was launched by the Chicago mob.”
“Despite the huge profits,” the Encyclopedia adds, “by the mid-’50s the mob had started selling off its properties to individuals and corporations. In the 1960s billionaire Howard Hughes started buying one casino after another. In the early 1970s the mob’s interest in Vegas was reportedly at a low point, but by the close of the decade, many observers concluded, mobsters were returning to the scene.”
Fifty-eight percent of Americans believe they have above-average IQ’s.
MEET YOUR
COMMIE MASTERS
In 1984, when we were still fighting of the Cold War, Robert Conquest and Jon Manchip White wrote a book called What to Do When the Russians Come. We may laugh now, but at one time, the threat of a communist takeover seemed very real to oddballs like these guys. These excerpts give you an idea of what they thought life in the U.S. would look like...after the invasion.
You will be anxious to know how someone of your particular professional and ethnic and political and temperamental background is likely to fare [under Soviet rule]. In the pages that follow, we look into the special conditions facing a wide variety of these, of a reasonable representative nature, From Academic to Farmer, from Realtor to Industrial Worker, from Homosexual to Feminist...
ACADEMIC. When universities reopen after the crisis, student numbers will have gone down. Some will be dead, some in prison, some in the partisan movement. Private, religious and racially or ethnically oriented institutions will have been taken over by the state. All departments...will be purged of “incorrect” teachers with great thoroughness. Colleges will be run by Communist-appointed functionaries, including representatives of the secret police, and there will be no “academic freedom.” If you are at the moment an academic with Communist or Marxist leanings, you can expect to become at least a dean or the head of your department.... Sneaking and denunciation will be the order of the day, and since the arrest rate will be one of the highest in any field, you will be hard put to trust your colleagues, for you will not be able to tell which of them have become police informers, either of their own volition or through blackmail....Be generous with your grades, otherwise disgruntled students will denounce you.
BARBER/BEAUTICIAN. Any but the most orthodox haircuts will be heavily discouraged. You...will become standardized and paid as a public servant, under a new Department of Internal Trade. Most beauty salons will close for lack of patrons with enough money to be able to afford such luxuries. A few will remain open to serve the new Communist elite and the wives of Soviet generals.
Most varieties of nuts can remain fresh in their shells for as long as a year.
DENTIST. The level of dental care in the population will fall. Dental stocks will dwindle and dental equipment will deteriorate for lack of spare parts. Dental techniques will become basic, with extraction taking precedent over filling. Dentures will be poorly made and ill-fitting when available. Extractions will be performed without anesthesia because of the absence of supply. Many dentists will give up in despair.
ENVIRONMENTALIST. No public organization, demonstration, or other activity will, of course, be permitted. As for nuclear power stations, they will be developed to the limit. No sort of objection to them will be permitted under any circumstances. However, there will be one area in which improvement will have been made: The shortage of private cars will mean less pollution from gasoline.
FUNERAL DIRECTOR. Services will be speedy, drab, and uniform. Atheist forms of committal will be encouraged, religious forms banned or perfunctorily performed. Only in rare cases will services be carried out in churches or other religious buildings, the majority of which will be closed. However, Communist burials, while lacking frills, will at least be inexpensive.
GARAGE EMPLOYEE. There will be very few cars on the roads and consequently no need for a large number of gas stations....Although there are fewer cars, production and servicing standards will be such that motor mechanics’ skills will be saleable on the black market. And you may also try your hand at, and profit by, the repairing and refurbishing of bicycles.
JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY MEMBER. Your life will, of course, be automatically forfeit.
LAWYER. Lawyers, will, in general, be regarded as a hostile class element. This will be more so in their case because so many of them are...concerned with rights, balances, constitutionality, and common law—all totally opposed to the Communist principle. Casualties, therefore, will be high.
If you’re average, your feet hit the floor 7,000 times a day.
LIBRARIAN. Your old reference books, such as encyclopedias, will be withdrawn and pulped. You should keep handy a pair of sharp scissors and a supply of paste, as you will have to cut out or replace those entries that become politically inconvenient—a normal Soviet practice. As the years go by, even the more harmless books on your shelves will be gradually replaced as works commissioned and printed by the State begin to appear in adequate numbers. If you can safely save and secrete some of the books that are being discarded, well and good; although your superiors will be on the lookout for this, and it may be hazardous for you or your friends to be caught reading them.
PET SHOP OWNER. It is unlikely that families will be able to spare any scraps of food for feeding pets, let alone extra money for grooming them or purchasing accessories. Most cats and dogs will have to be put to sleep or allowed to run free and take their chances. After the fighting stops, there will be a serious infestation of ownerless dogs running in wild packs with which authorities will have to deal. Owners of pet shops should lose no time in making plans for alternative employment.
PSYCHOPATH. If you are able and prepared to control yourself in all matters where you might offend authorities, a wide field of activity of a type you will find rewarding will remain open to you. Those not afflicted with consciences will be in demand not only to occupations offering opportunities of violence, but also in all other institutions, where it will always be possible to denounce anyone who stands in the way of your desires or to blackmail them into submitting. Indeed, the Soviet system...has been described as a psychopathocracy. If your condition is of the right type, you may rise very high indeed in the new hierarchy.
SADIST. Although the secret police will have some use for torturers, such positions are unlikely to be open except to men with political acumen and training, but low-grade thugs, known as “boxers,” are often employed for routine beatings....If you apply for the post of an executioner, you might be enrolled in one of the municipal firing squads. Your opportunity to carry out individual executions, if that is your taste, will probably be somewhat limited. The traditional Soviet method of executing single offenders is by means of a bullet in the back of the neck and is invariably conducted neatly and expeditiously by a specialist of officer rank. Mass executions are bound, of course, to occur, and you may well be given a chance to participate in some of them.
First million-selling album in U.S. history: the soundtrack to Oklahoma, 1958.
YOUTH. You will find yourself under very heavy pressures of a type which your present life has not accustomed you....The special Communist effort to indoctrinate you will mean that you will be under considerably higher pressures than your elders....You will lose several hours a week at compulsory sessions in Marxist-Leninism, in addition to endless harangues about loyalty and the glorious future, which you will be expected to applaud. Still...you have one great point in your favor: unlike your parents, you may find that the overthrow of Soviet power will come when you are still in the full vigor of, perhaps, your forties, when you will provide the leaders to build a new America and a new world.
Just as the airlines hope that their passengers will never have to follow the instructions they give you on what to do in case of a disaster, so we, for our part, hope you may never have to follow the advice we have given you in the preceding pages. But time is running short. We would be deceiving you if we pretended that the nightmare we have described is not a real and deadly possibility. If it does come about, we have one last piece of advice:
BURN THIS BOOK.
“I didn’t intend for this to take on a political tone. I’m just here for the drugs.
—Nancy Reagan, referring to a “Just Say No” rally
“The press says that the public has a right to know everything.
That’s a load of garbage.”
—George Lauder, CIA spokesman
On any given day, 60 million U.S. females and 41 million U.S. males are dieting.
MORE EPITAPHS
More unusual epitaphs and tombstone rhymes from our wandering BRI tombstoneologists.
Seen in Oxfordshire, England:
Here lies the body of John Eldred,
At least he will be here when he is dead.
But now at this time, he is alive,
The 14th of August, 1765.
Seen in Plymouth, Mass.:
Richard Lawton
Here lie the bones of Richard Lawton,
Whose death, alas! was strangely brought on.
Trying his corns one day to mow off,
His razor slipped and cut his toe off.
His toe, or rather, what it grew to,
An inflammation quickly flew to.
Which took, Alas! to mortifying,
And was the cause of Richard’s dying.
Seen in Luton, England:
Thomas Proctor
Here lies the body of Thomas Proctor,
Who lived and died without a doctor.
Seen in Shrewsbury, England:
Here lies the body of Martha Dias,
Who was always uneasy, and not over-pious;
She lived to the age of three score and ten,
And gave to the worms what she refused to the men.
Seen in Marshfield, Vt.:
Here lies the body of William Jay,
Who died maintaining his right of way;
He was right, dead right, as he sped along,
But he’s just as dead as if he’d been wrong.
Seen in Lee, Mass.:
In Memory of Mrs. Alpha White, Weight 309 lbs.
Open wide ye heavenly gates
That lead to the heavenly shore;
Our father suffered in passing through
And Mother weighs much more.
Seen in Putman, Conn.:
Phineas G. Wright
Going, But Know Not Where
It took 14 years to build the Brooklyn Bridge.
FAMILIAR MELODIES
Some tunes are so familiar that it seems like they’ve just always been around. Of course, every song has its beginning. Here are the stories of how some old favorites were written.
DIXIE
Written in 1859 by Daniel Decatur Emmett for a blackface minstrel show. Ironically, though his song became the anthem of the South, Emmett was a northerner who detested the Confederacy. When he found out the song was going to be sung at Confederate President Jefferson Davis’s inauguration, he told friends, “If I had known to what use they were going to put my song, I’ll be dam
ned if I’d have written it.”
HERE COMES THE BRIDE
Composer Richard Wagner wrote the “Bridal Chorus” in 1848 for his opera Lohengrin. He used it to score a scene in which the hero and his new bride undress on their wedding night and prepare to consummate their marriage. It was first used as a bridal march in 1858, when Princess Victoria (daughter of England’s Queen Victoria) married Prince Frederick William of Prussia. Interestingly, because of the sexual nature of the original opera scene, some religions object to using the song in wedding ceremonies.
CHOPSTICKS
In 1877, 16-year-old Euphemia Allen, a British girl, published “Chopsticks” under the pseudonym Arthur de Lulli. Included with the sheet music were instructions telling the pianist to play the song “with both hands turned sideways, the little fingers lowest, so that the movement of the hands imitates the chopping from which this waltz gets its name.” Allen never wrote another song.
TAPS
As late as 1862, the U.S. military used a song called “Extinguish Lights” to officially end the day. General Daniel Butterfield disliked the song...so he decided to compose a new one to replace it. He couldn’t play the bugle, so he composed by whistling notes to his butler, who’d play them back for Butterfield to evaluate. They went through dozens of tunes before he got one he liked.
Tornadoes can last as long as nine hours.
MEET DR. SEUSS
Say hello to Dr. Seuss, a rhymer of rhymes both tight and loose. A BRI favorite he really is; the following story is really his.
VITAL STATS
Born: March 2, 1904
Died: September 25, 1991, age 87
• Although married twice, he never had any children. His slogan: “You have ’em, I’ll amuse ’em.”
Real Name: Theodore Seuss Geisel
• He adopted “Seuss” as his writing name during Prohibition, while attending Dartmouth College. The reason: He was caught with a half-pint of gin in his room and was told to resign as editor of the college humor magazine as punishment. Instead, he just stopped using Geisel as a byline.
Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader Page 20