FLASHBACKS: WSOP’S YOUNGEST CHAMP, ‘FEAR & LOATHING’ RELEASED & TELEVISION MOB HEARING HELD IN VEGAS
November 8, 2002: Middleweight champ Laila Ali (Muhammad’s daughter) defeats IWBF and WIBA titleholder Valerie Mahfood in an eighth-round TKO at the Stratosphere to claim all three crowns. She holds them until she retires undefeated in 2007, though some critics say she dodged tough bouts.
November 9, 2009: Joseph “The Kid” Cada, 10 days short of his 22nd birthday, becomes the youngest player ever to win the World Series of Poker grand prize at the Rio Casino. The Michigan native, who began playing online poker at 16, takes home $8.5 million.
November 10, 2003: Actor Christian Slater is hospitalized with a gash in his neck, reportedly suffered in a scuffle with his wife, Ryan Haddon, in their room at the Hard Rock Hotel. She’s arrested for domestic battery, but charges are dropped after they say the glass she threw at him was a “misunderstanding.”
November 11, 1971: Rolling Stone publishes part 1 of Hunter Thompson’s wild, surreal, drug-addled memoir that becomes the groundbreaking book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream.
November 12, 2006: Madame Tussauds wax museum at the Venetian prepares to unveil a display featuring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt getting married, with George Clooney as best man and Elvis Presley and Liberace among the guests. They cancel the plan the next day when the unmarried Jolie and Pitt object.
November 13, 2005: Paris Hilton’s boyfriend, Stavros Niarchos, starts a wild pillow fight in his Hard Rock Hotel suite after a party celebrating Kelly Osborne’s 21st birthday. The revelers break a sprinkler, flooding rooms and forcing the evacuation of the hotel. His billionaire dad pays $25,000 to cover damages.
November 14, 1998: Basketball star Dennis Rodman and Baywatch babe Carmen Electra marry at Little Chapel of the Flowers. Both are reportedly drunk, and they file for an annulment after nine days.
November 15, 1950: Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee convenes a Senate committee hearing at the federal courthouse to investigate Mob influence in the city. The nationally televised hearings do more to publicize Las Vegas than damage the Mob, and the senators soon adjourn for a trip to Hoover Dam.
—RESEARCHED AND WRITTEN BY MIKE PRECKER