casinos

The First Casino brings to mind scenes from an old Clark Gable movie, where the hero is a riverboat gambler of ill repute, and the heroine a dance-hall girl with the proverbial heart of gold (or the local virginal book-worm type, whom Daddy left just enough money to tempt "the wrong man"). The First Casino also calls up memories of the bright lights and flashing neon of Las Vegas, complete with Elvis Presley gyrating to a room full of Rock-n-Roll femme fatales. The First Casino carries with it connotations of danger and of excitement; of passion and of romance; of nations won and families lost.
Gambling has always carried with it both a fascinating sense of the forbidden and a touch of true nostalgia. The History of the First Casino, long and full of twisted fate, carries with it a great deal of each.
The First Casino aside, gambling in America is older than the government, and just as wide-spread. Americans gamble on everything - tossing a coin to see who receives the kick in the football game, rolling a die to see who will inherit (still legal in some states), using a lottery to determine who will be drafted. Long before the First Casino was built, and during eras when casinos were outlawed, gambling continued to be part of the National Pastime and the National Economy of the United States of America.
Long before the building of the first casino, Witch Doctors, Egyptian Pharaohs, Biblical Prophets, and American Indians used chance - and the roll of dice or bones or stones - to determine the fates of their people. The claim to the First Casino is shared by both the Nile Delta and in the Ancient Far East, where gaming houses existed even before the written word. Betting on arena sports, animal races, and other popular pastimes were common in China, India, Persia, Mongolia. In fact, every Empire - from the Sea People to theRomans to the USSR - has had gambling as an integral part of their culture.
Later, in the western world, the casini became the first casino houses. In the early 1700's, casini (meaning "little house" in Italian) were the rave of the Mediterranean Coast - a place for rich Venice merchants to meet and trade. These were the first gaming - first gambling casino - houses in Europe.