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The Surprising History of Las Vegas and the Rat Pack! - Mental Floss Scatterbrained | Mental Floss
Aug 11, 2026
Today on Scatterbrained: VEGAS. How do you pronounce Nevada anyway? Who designed the "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign? Why were they called the Rat Pack? What are the biggest Vegas misconceptions? And how do you get better at gambling? We're learning it all!
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0:00
Hello and welcome to Mental Floss Video. Today we're going to be talking about Las Vegas and
0:04
we're not even going to make one what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas joke. You're welcome
0:10
Let's get started. Before we even start to talk about Las Vegas, we got to talk about Nevada or Nevada. How do you say
0:28
This subject has gotten many a public figure in trouble over the years from Brian Williams to John Kerry to President George W. Bush to
0:35
me. Most people living in Nevada consider that to be the correct pronunciation, not
0:41
Nevada, which is how most people I know say it. In the Midwest, you may even hear Nevada
0:46
which, by the way, is the correct pronunciation of Nevada, Missouri. It's confusing
0:52
Anyway, it's worth noting that the state's name is actually a Spanish word that sounds more like Nevada
0:58
According to Michael Green, a history professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, it's really only people from the state who pronounce it their preferred way
1:06
Everyone else in the U.S. says Nevada, and UNLV linguistic professor Valerie Friedland claims that we don't know when this pronunciation split happened
1:15
It's not an indication of a Nevada accent. She thinks it's probably just the people outside the state started pronouncing it like they think it looks
1:22
But Nevadans take it pretty seriously. Like in 2016, President-elect Donald Trump gave a speech in the state
1:28
He said, I said when I came out here, I said nobody says it the other way
1:32
It has to be Nevada. But if you don't say it correctly, it happened to a friend of mine
1:37
He was killed. Maybe we finally know why all these guys from country songs are getting shot in Reno
1:42
No doubt you've seen the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign at some point in your life
1:51
either in the city itself or in a movie or on some souvenir. What you might not know is that
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the sign was designed by a woman, one of the few working in the neon sign industry at the time
2:01
Betty Willis. Betty was born in the town of Overton, Nevada in 1923 and moved to Las Vegas
2:06
when she was just a couple weeks old. Her parents had lived in the state since 1905
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And when Betty was young, her family would take trips out to California, which was where she grew a fondness for neon
2:18
Back then, there was more neon in LA, thanks to theater marquees, than on the Las Vegas Strip
2:24
Betty started drawing early, producing a newspaper at age 10 with a hand-drawn fashion section
2:29
She went to art school in LA, but left early and moved back to her home state
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She had a handful of jobs after that, but she also worked at night drawing newspaper ads
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Of course this was Vegas, so she got very good at drawing dancing women
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During the 1950s, Western Neon had her design the fabulous Las Vegas sign
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In 1959, it was put on Highway 91, the only way you could arrive in Vegas from LA The letters in welcome sit in circles which intentionally look like silver dollars for good luck There a large star at the top which Betty called a Disney star for happiness
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One part of the sign she didn't love was the imperfect look of the word fabulous. She once
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said, I sweat blood when I take a good hard look at it. Betty designed more signs in her career
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including ones for some other famous Las Vegas locations like the Moulin Rouge
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the Bow and Arrow Motel, and the Blue Angel Motel. She got in a little trouble for the last one
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a sign featuring an angel holding a wand. In Betty's words, I got criticized for depicting
3:28
a super well-endowed angel. I said, well, show me an angel and I'll draw her. Betty retired at age
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77, but continued to work part-time for her daughter's silkscreen business. She died in 2015
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at age 91, but her iconic Las Vegas sign lives on. There were a couple attempts to get rid of it
3:46
over the years, which resulted in loud objections from the public. In 2009, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places
3:57
So when you think of famous Las Vegas entertainers, you might think of the Rat Pack
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Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop
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But have you ever wondered why they were called the Rat Pack? Well, that's today's big question
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So before those men made up the Rat Pack, there was a different Rat Pack in Hollywood
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But it was a group of people who socialized, that is, partied together, led by Humphrey Bogart
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Bogart famously loved to drink, but he didn't like to go out much, so he would often entertain
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friends at his home in Holmby Hills alongside his wife Lauren Bacall
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Their friends included Judy Garland, David Niven, Angie Dickinson, and Frank Sinatra
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Bacall often gets credit for naming the group the Rat Pack. There's a story in which she walks in on the intoxicated group either in Las Vegas
4:41
or at their house, sources vary, and she says something along the lines of
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you look like a pack of rats. Another version you might hear is that their house was named the Holmby Hills Rat Pack
4:50
Regardless of how it originated, the name stuck and the group embraced it, giving themselves
4:54
a coat of arms as well as a motto, never rat on a rat
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Here's how Lauren Bacall described the group in her memoir. In order to qualify, one had to be addicted to nonconformity, staying up late, drinking
5:07
laughing, and not caring what anyone thought or said about us. We held a dinner in a private room at Romanoff's to elect officials and draw up rules
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Bogie's way of thumbing his nose at Hollywood. Bogart died in 1957
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At the age of 57, all that drinking and heavy eating at Romanoff's caught up with him
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and that's when Frank Sinatra became the new Rat Pack leader. But he apparently actually kind of hated the name
5:30
There's a rumor that he pretended to like it because he had a crush on Bacall, who was briefly his fiancée
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Regardless, Sinatra was responsible for turning the group into what it eventually became
5:40
It's said that Sinatra wanted to call the group The Klan, but for obvious reasons Sammy Davis Jr. was opposed to that
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Regardless the Rat Pack stuck even though Sinatra never came around to it In 1987 a reporter mentioned Rat Pack and Sinatra called it a stupid phrase
5:58
A city like Las Vegas with such a wild history and reputation is bound to have a few misconceptions out there
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so you know we have to debunk those for you. First, it's not true that Las Vegas Strip is in Las Vegas
6:09
You're technically in Paradise, Nevada while gambling at your favorite hotels on the Strip
6:13
Same goes for when you pass the fabulous Las Vegas sign we mentioned earlier
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But, despite being a paradise, mail does get delivered to places on the Strip under Las Vegas addresses
6:22
Confusing, I know. When you go to downtown Las Vegas, like Fremont Street, you're officially in Las Vegas
6:27
It's my favorite spot. Moving on to another misconception about a place not quite in Las Vegas, the Hoover Dam
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The rumor is that while concrete was being poured, one or more people fell, and they were left there to suffocate and die
6:38
Not true. The Hoover Dam was put up during the 1930s. It was made out of five-foot-tall blocks that fit together
6:45
Concrete was poured into the blocks from buckets, but those buckets only raised the level of concrete by two to six inches
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And in between each bucket, workers had to get rid of air pockets. So each block took hours
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It would be pretty unusual for someone to get stuck in a couple inches of concrete and then just left there to be buried
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They had both the ability and time to just stand up and get out. And besides all that, bodies would have affected the structural integrity of the dam
7:08
If they didn't want air pockets in their concrete, they probably certainly didn't want decomposing bodies in there either
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Interestingly, people who did work on the Hoover Dam believed this misconception. The director of the University of Nevada Oral History Program, Tom King
7:21
interviewed some of them in 1986 who claimed that there were bodies in the dam
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But he was able to deduce that they had also learned this information from rumors
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because they'd never seen it happen and didn't know anyone who it happened to personally
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It was all just made up. People did die during the project, though. The official count is 96, but there are also about 16 unofficial deaths
7:40
although some of these were from eight years before construction began. Some causes of both official and unofficial deaths include drowning, falling rocks, pneumonia, and truck accidents
7:50
We like to try to debunk curses here on Mental Floss, but you know, we can never really know for sure
7:55
Just kidding. There's no Megabucks curse. This is a slot machine that allegedly gives its big winners bad luck
8:01
So it is true that in the early 2000s, a woman won a Megabuck jackpot of $34.9 million and then got hit by a drunk driver and was seriously injured
8:10
But rumors of a curse actually existed before that even happened. Usually they involve someone winning and then dying via heart attack, overdose, plane crash, gang fight, you name it
8:20
One of these alleged tragedies occurred in 2003 after a man won $39.7 million
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But it turns out he's alive and well. Like, very well probably
8:30
There are other Megabucks misfortune rumors, like underage gamblers winning, then not getting the money
8:35
and people not paying enough money to get the full prize when they landed on the jackpot
8:38
That second one actually did happen once, but let not just get all hasty and start calling it a curse At least not yet It is not true that casinos have extra oxygen pumped in so that people feel awake and gamble more That just a side effect of having a good time In 2013 Troy Streming the senior vice president of government relations and public affairs at Ameristar Casinos
8:59
rejected this theory. In his words, I can't imagine the size of the oxygen tank it would
9:03
take to really have any impact on the level of oxygen that is in the air of a casino this size
9:08
It also might be a fire hazard by making objects in the casino way more flammable. And finally
9:13
it is a misconception that prostitution is legal in Las Vegas. Prostitution is legal in Nevada
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brothels, but only in counties that have a population below 700,000 and have not prohibited
9:23
it. They can't even advertise in the places where it's illegal. That means no legal prostitution or
9:28
advertisements for it in Las Vegas or Reno. There are 12 Nevada counties that allow it
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but as of 2015, only eight had brothels. So now you know
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After hearing all of this, you probably want to go to Las Vegas, maybe even gamble a bit
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So I want to give you a little help with your poker game based on a study conducted in 2010
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Don't worry, I did not conduct this study. The researchers wanted to know how the faces of our poker opponents affect our bets
9:58
To do that, they had participants play simplified games of Texas Hold'em on a computer
10:03
They'd see their hand and the face of their supposed opponent. and they'd had to decide whether to call or fold
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The opponent's faces were taken from a database which had neutral faces that were then adjusted to levels of how people perceive trustworthiness
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So there were three levels of trust that a face could display. Neutral, trustworthy, or untrustworthy
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Those aren't the faces. The study had 14 participants. They were all between the ages of 19 and 36
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To determine how the faces on the computer affected the participants, the researchers took into account the optimal decision for each hand
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That means they should fold if there was a 49% chance of winning and call if it was over that
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You might think that the neutral faces caused the participants to make the most mistakes
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As the researchers wrote, It's popular belief that the optimal poker face is neutral
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but it was actually the trustworthy faces that tripped the participants up
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And not only that, participants even reacted slower while playing against the trustworthy opponents
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and they generally called less in those hands. So here's your Vegas gambling tip straight from the study itself
11:07
Poker players who bluff frequently may actually benefit from appearing trustworthy since the natural tendency seems to be inferring that a trustworthy looking player bluffs less
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Thanks for watching Mental Floss Video, which is made with the help of all of these nice people. Please subscribe to our channel if you'd like to see more scatterbrained videos
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And as they say in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome. Thank you
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