July 1. 1991: Local residents Ed and Eva Tino, 69 and 60, respectively, hit the California Lotto game for $4.35 million.
July 2, 1971: Cans of Bon Vivant Vichyssoise Soup, suspected of containing deadly botulism, are hastily pulled from Las Vegas grocery shelves.
July 3, 1930: Pandemonium breaks out on our streets as the town’s fire siren and shop whistles sound off to celebrate news of President Hoover signing the appropriation bill to build Boulder Dam.
July 4, 2010: Kacey Barlow, 22, is killed when his heart is pierced by shrapnel from nontraditional fireworks, or “a metal pipe device,” while celebrating the holiday.
July 5, 1950: Officials report 1,174,490 tourists have visited Hoover Dam in the past nine months, breaking the record set for the same period in 1948.
July 6, 2000: The Education Research Service of Arlington, Va., announces that the Clark County School District is now the sixth-largest in the country.
July 7, 1905: School funds are exhausted as 250 students plan to attend the town’s only school this year — “a small tent house erected to accommodate last year’s 17 pupils.”
July 8, 1991: Resident comic Redd Foxx, 68, former television star of Sanford and Son, marries his fiancé, Ka Ha Cho, “in her 30s,” at a Strip wedding chapel.
July 9, 1930: Former ice company employee Art Shaw, “who has been ill for some time,” jumps from the second story of the hospital and, while escaping, is beheaded by a moving train.
July 10, 1950: Las Vegas publisher Hank Greenspun has been charged with violating the U.S. Neutrality Act for shipping weapons to Haganah, “a Jewish paramilitary organization” in Palestine.
July 11, 1991: State Sen. Joe Neal becomes the first African-American to serve as acting governor of Nevada, while the governor and lieutenant governor are out of state for the week.
July 12, 1962: The newspaper reports that Lt. Gov. Rex Bell, who died of a heart attack on July 4, has excluded his wife, former Hollywood star Clara Bow, from his will.
July 13, 1962: Gov. Grant Sawyer appoints veteran Vegas educator Maude Frazier to the post of lieutenant governor, making her the highest ranking female official in Nevada history.
July 14, 1907: The town is cleaning up from “the greatest calamity that has yet befallen Las Vegas,” a fire destroying the $125,000 ice station of the Armour Car Lines, along with 700 tons of ice.
July 15, 1943: According to the Nevada Health Department, Clark County has a death rate from “acute alcoholism” five times higher than the national average.
July 16, 1970: District Attorney George Franklin opposes local rock music festivals because their main goal “is not music but drugs and sexual promiscuity, with evidence of the Mafia backing these festivals.”
July 17, 1962: In town to witness a nuclear blast at the Test Site, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy, commenting that his office is not interested in investigating legalized gambling in Nevada, says: “What happens in Nevada should be decided by the people of Nevada.”
July 18, 1953: Barring the press and public, the Henderson City Council considers opening up its town to gambling.
July 19, 1990: Work on the Minami Tower, Japanese businessman Masao Nangaku’s proposed $90 million skyscraper for downtown, is permanently halted, leaving a very big hole in the ground.
July 20, 1932: An advertisement in the Las Vegas Age touts: “Chesterfield cigarettes are pure — just as pure as the water you drink.”
July 21, 1980: Linda Lovelace in Deep Throat, Bambi Woods in Debbie Does Dallas and Marilyn Chambers in Insatiable are playing at the “art cinemas” in town.
July 22, 2008: Catlynne Shaw, a 12-year-old California girl, dies from a heart attack while riding the Circus Circus Adventuredome’s Canyon Blaster roller coaster.
July 23, 1962: Parents in a North 10th Street neighborhood fear for their little children when five area dogs die violently after being poisoned by a serial canine slayer.
July 24, 1990: The Greek Food Festival celebrates its 18th anniversary at the Sahara Hotel.
July 25, 2002: The Clark County coroner says rock bass guitarist John Entwistle of The Who recently died in a Vegas hotel room from cocaine triggering a heart attack.
July 26, 1932: “Local marihuana fag sellers” Jose Orozco and Bulste Perez receive lengthy jail sentences “for possession of several marihuana cigarettes.”
July 27, 1966: The FBI reports that California has replaced Nevada, now in second place, for having the highest crime rate in the nation.
July 28, 1953: Southern Nevada Telephone officials predict dial telephones throughout Clark County by 1955.
July 29, 1929: The Las Vegas Mercantile Corporation invites the public to an open house at its first “carefully-planned modern home,” built at Seventh St. and Charleston Boulevard.
July 30, 1909: Newly-formed Clark County receives the state’s semi-annual apportionment of $5,085 for its 632 schoolchildren.
July 31, 1950: “The biggest show ever attempted in the city” — starring Patti Page, Mickey Rooney, Jimmy Durante, et.al. — is held at the Hotel Last Frontier’s Sportsdrome, to raise money for a school for local handicapped children.
Sources: Las Vegas Age; Las Vegas Morning Tribune; Review-Journal; Sun
