FLASHBACKS: ALADDIN IMPLODED, BON JOVI’S WEDDING, ELVIS GETS HITCHED
April 27, 1998: The Aladdin, whose checkered history included bankruptcies, mob connections, financial scandals, gambling license troubles, an owner’s death in a motorcycle crash – and Elvis Presley’s wedding – is imploded. The new Aladdin built on the site also goes bust and is now Planet Hollywood.
April 28, 1990: Erin Everly, daughter of singer Don Everly, ties the knot with rocker Axl Rose at Cupid’s Wedding Chapel after he threatens to kill himself if she won’t marry him. They separate after a month and then reconcile, but the marriage is annulled within a year.
April 29, 1989: Jon Bon Jovi and his longtime girlfriend Dorothea Hurley sneak off from a concert tour stop in Los Angeles to get married at the Graceland Wedding Chapel. Twelve years later they renew their vows there and he stages a concert in the parking lot for the 75 couples doing the same.
April 30, 1996: The Stratosphere hotel and casino opens with a midnight gala featuring 8,000 guests and a huge fireworks show. The 1,149-foot high observation tower, which sports heart-stopping thrill rides at the top, remains the tallest free-standing structure west of the Mississippi.
May 1, 1967: Elvis Presley marries Priscilla Ann Beaulieu in a small private ceremony lasting eight minutes at the Aladdin (now Planet Hollywood). He’s 32, she’s 21. After a press conference and breakfast reception, they honeymoon in Palm Springs, Calif. They divorce in 1973.
May 2, 2003: News reports reveal that former Secretary of Education William Bennett, a frequent lecturer on morality and virtue, is a high-stakes gambler who has lost millions in Las Vegas. He defiantly tells Meet the Press, “Apparently, ‘What Happens Here, Stays Here’ applies to everyone but me.”
May 3, 1844: John C. Fremont, known as the Great Pathfinder, arrives in the Las Vegas valley, leading a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers group of scientists, scouts and observers on an expedition to explore the American West. His journal reports that local springs “afforded a delightful bathing place.”
May 4, 2011: Marie Osmond remarries ex-husband Stephen Craig at the Las Vegas Mormon Temple. They first married in 1982, divorced three years later, but stayed friends as they raised their son. She wears the same wedding dress 29 years later, joking, “I can't breathe, but I'm in it.”
May 5, 2000: Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton, both wearing blue jeans, get married at Little Church of the West. It’s his fifth marriage, her second. Though they become famous for wearing vials of each other’s blood around their necks, they divorce three years later.
—Researched and written by Mike Precker