The Man Who Almost Destroyed Las Vegas: Howard Hughes

Las Vegas is maybe the only town in the United States that can be said to have essentially been built by one man and nearly destroyed by another man. The man who built Las Vegas, of course, was famous gambler Bug-I mean, Benjamin Siegel-he hated to be called Bugsy. The story of how Bugsy Siegel-yeah, that's right, let's see him take me down now-found himself in the middle of the desert in a small community one day and foresaw a gambling mecca is the stuff of legend and great movies. Unfortunately, that great movie has yet to be made. Equally so, the movie about how Howard Hughes nearly destroyed Las Vegas has yet to be made.

Howard Hughes, for those of you haven't seen The Aviator may not know ,was once upon a time the richest man in the world. So rich was Howard Hughes that if you adjusted for inflation, he could hire Bill Gates to be his Kleenex box shoe taker-offer. We're talking richer than God. Not the Catholic God, of course-nobody's that rich-but certainly richer than a nice Seventh Day Adventist God. Howard Hughes was a famous aviator, obviously, as well as a movie mogul, but more than anything he was a smart businessman. So smart a business was Howard Hughes that he could take Merv Griffin to the cleaners and, remember, it was Merv Griffin who took Donald Trump to the cleaners.