FLASHBACKS: TYSON’S EAR-BITING OUTCOME, ELVIS ARRIVES FOR ‘VIVA LAS VEGAS' AND SINATRA MARRIES MIA
July 9, 1997: The Nevada State Athletic Commission revokes former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson’s boxing license and fines him $3 million for biting Evander Holyfield’s ear in their bout two weeks earlier. He gets the license back the next year and fights until 2005, but never regains his title.
July 10, 2000: The Imperial Palace settles with the last of six cocktail waitresses who sued for discrimination because they were removed from their jobs because they were pregnant. The deal ends a federal court trial that drew national attention over the industry’s right to enforce standards it deems sexy.
July 11, 2010: Jack Ury, a 97-year-old World War II veteran from Terre Haute, Ind., becomes the oldest person to play in the World Series of Poker. In his third and final WSOP, he lasts until the third day. He dies seven months later.
July 12, 2001: Baywatch babe Carmen Electra announces she has signed a two-year contract to star in Lumiere, a music-and-magic extravaganza with illusionist Hans Klok at the Aladdin beginning in early 2002. But the show never materializes because the hotel winds up in bankruptcy.
July 13, 2010: Las Vegas native and College of Southern Nevada star Bryce Harper wins the Golden Spikes Award, which goes to the nation’s best amateur baseball player. The 17-year-old prodigy isn’t an amateur for long: He’s the No. 1 pick in the 2010 draft and a Major League All-Star by 2012.
July 14, 1963: Elvis Presley arrives in Las Vegas to shoot Viva Las Vegas, checking into the Sahara with his entourage for two weeks of filming. He later admits to his girlfriend (and future bride) Priscilla that he had an affair with costar Ann Margret while making the hit movie. July 14, 1966: French film star Brigitte Bardot married German industrialist and playboy Gunter Sachs in Las Vegas. He had courted her by dropped 1,000 red roses from a helicopter on her home in San Tropez.
July 15, 2004: The Las Vegas Monorail, a 3.9-mile mass transit line stretching from the Sahara Hotel to the MGM Grand, opens. It eventually is planned to connect downtown Las Vegas with McCarren International Airport.
July 16, 2007: Lindsay Lohan, one day out of her latest rehab, makes a surprise visit to Pure Nightclub at Caesars Palace wearing an alcohol-monitoring ankle bracelet. She had planned to hold her 21st birthday bash there two weeks earlier, sponsored by Svedka vodka, but had the good sense to cancel it.
July 17, 2004: Linda Ronstadt ignites bedlam in the Aladdin showroom when she praises filmmaker Michael Moore’s documentary Fahrenheit 911, which is critical of President George W. Bush. Amid boos and a few people throwing drink cups, the singer is escorted out of the hotel.
July 18, 1994: A powerful thunderstorm packing 78 MPH winds sends the 362-foot-high sign and marquee above the Las Vegas Hilton crashing to the ground. What had been called the world’s tallest sign was just six months old. Dogs search the rubble for victims, but there are no injuries.
July 19, 1966: Frank Sinatra, 50, marries 21-year-old actress Mia Farrow at The Sands hotel, the favorite hangout of Sinatra and The Rat Pack. Frank’s third marriage (there was one more to come) lasts two years.
July 20, 2005: Las Vegas-based magician Criss Angel premieres his TV series Mindfreak on the A&E network. The popular series of illusions, escapes and other amazing feats runs for six seasons and helps make Angel one of the Strip’s leading attractions.
July 21, 1984: Jay Sarno, who built Caesars Palace and brought the fantasyland theme to Las Vegas, and then built Circus Circus and brought the family-friendly theme to town, dies at 62. The lifelong gambler had sold both hotels but was on a casino outing at Caesars when he suffered a heart attack.
July 22, 1953: KLAS, Channel 8 in Las Vegas, signs on the air as the first TV station in Nevada. Owner Hank Greenspun, who also owned the Las Vegas Sun, sells it in 1968 to Howard Hughes, who wants the station so he can order up his favorite movies at night.
July 23, 2011: Ethan Bortnick, a 10-year-old piano and singing prodigy, wraps up a two-night gig at the Las Vegas Hilton to become the city’s youngest headliner ever. His sold-out show, complete with sequined jacket and Elton style glasses, keeps him up a couple hours past his usual 9 p.m. bedtime.
July 24, 1947: Club Bingo, whose sign features a giant neon bingo card, opens on Highway 91, one of the earliest casinos on the road now known as the Strip. It’s popular, but the owners figure it would do better if bettors could stay overnight. So it’s sold and torn down in 1952 to make way for the Sahara.
July 25, 2008: Jerry Lewis is detained at McCarron International Airport when screeners find a .22-caliber handgun in his carry-on bag. His manager says it’s a comedy prop, but Lewis says it’s real, a thank-you gift for doing his charity telethons. Either way, charges are dropped in December.
July 26, 1993: Kevyn Wynn, the 26-year-old daughter of hotel mogul Steve Wynn, is kidnapped from her Las Vegas home. She is released unharmed the same day when Wynn pays a $1.4 million ransom. The kidnappers are caught when the ringleader tries to a buy a Ferrari and get long prison terms.
July 27, 1954: Ageless bombshell Mae West premieres her lounge act at the Sahara, singing and making sexy wisecracks with 15 G-stringed musclemen in tow. The act runs on and off for five years. “Mae is the greatest ego booster to mature women since the invention of the girdle,” one critic writes.
July 28, 1978: Actor Mickey Rooney marries country singer Jan Chamberlin, his eighth wedding and the seventh in Las Vegas. Unlike all the others, this marriage lasts.
July 29, 1971: Christina Onassis, 21-year-old daughter of Greek magnate Aristotle Onassis, marries Los Angeles real estate developer Joe Bolker, 48, in Las Vegas. Her furious father demands they break up – which they do nine months later. She marries and divorces three more times before dying at 37.
July 30, 2008: In a live episode of his TV show Mindfreak, Vegas-basedillusionist Criss Angel appears to escape from an imploding building in Florida. Skeptical video analysts question just how dangerous the stunt really was, but his $100 million Luxor show “Believe” opens huge two months later.
July 31, 1969: After a nine-year hiatus from live performances, Elvis Presley performs at the International (which later becomes the Hilton), igniting a major comeback. He returns to the hotel periodically for the rest of his career.
August 1, 1997: Pepsi, Fox and KB Home unveil The Simpsons House in nearby Henderson, a house built and furnished to resemble Homer and Marge’s cartoon home. Thousands tour the attraction and the contest to win it attracts 15 million entries, but the winner doesn’t want it so it’s repainted and sold.
August 2, 2008 : Joshua Clottey of Ghana beats Brooklyn’s Zab Judah to win the IBF Welterweight Title at the Palms Casino Resort. Eighteen months later Clottey picks up a big payday by fighting Manny Pacquiao at Cowboys Stadium in Texas after a Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweathersuperfight falls through, but loses by unanimous decision.
August 3, 2007: On Craig Ferguson’s show to promote their Vegas magic act, Pamela Anderson says she and Hans Klok are in a “very physical, very loving” relationship, and he agrees. That makes headlines in his native Holland, where Klok is known to be gay. He later concedes it’s a publicity stunt.
August 4, 1963: Barbra Streisand, just 21, wraps up her first Las Vegas engagement, a month-long gig opening for Liberace at the Riviera. “Her make-up made her look like something that just climbed off a broom,” snipes the Hollywood Reporter. By her next visit in 1969, a star had been born – and she was the headliner.
August 5, 1966: Caesars Palace opens with a three-day, million-dollar gala that includes 50,000 glasses of champagne and two tons of filet mignon. Leggy cocktail waitresses in Roman attire greet guests by saying, “Welcome to Caesars Palace. I am your slave.”
August 6, 1987: The Erickson family of Hot Springs, Ark., lawyers up to challenge Caesars Palace, a day after the casino refuses to pay a $1 million slot machine jackpot that 19-year-old Kirk had won. He wasn’t old enough to pull the handle. The legal battle lasts four years, but the Ericksons lose.
August 7, 1999: Tiger Woods hosts a benefit concert at the Rio featuring Glenn Frey and Celine Dion to raise money for his foundation benefiting youth charities. The “Tiger Jam” started in Los Angeles the year before, but relocates to Las Vegas and becomes an annual star-studded gala.
August 8, 1990: The Landmark Hotel, once the tallest building in Las Vegas and a distinctive part of the skyline for three decades, closes after years of financial woes. The 31-story tower, formerly owned by Howard Hughes, is imploded in 1995, with the footage featured in the movie Mars Attacks!
August 9, 1976: The body of Johnny Rosselli, once the most powerful mobster in Las Vegas, is found in a 55-gallon drum off the Florida coast. At his Vegas pinnacle in the ’60s, Rosselli controlled interests in several hotels, ran a talent booking agency and helped the CIA’s effort to kill Fidel Castro.
August 10, 1960: Ocean’s 11 premieres, with Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack – Sammy Davis, Jr., Dean Martin, Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford – masterminding a simultaneous heist at five Las Vegas hotels. The Rat Pack had filmed all day and caroused all night, adding to the film’s iconic status.
August 11, 1986: Liberace performs his last Las Vegas show at Caesars Palace, 42 years after his Vegas debut. He dies six months later.
--Researched and written by Mike Precker