Reporters’ Notebook

OVERHEARD ON THE SCANNER: "We have a report of a (man) on the aircraft who was going to turn himself in for attempting to strangle his wife. And now, he's considering not turning himself in."

LAS VEGAS MAYOR OSCAR GOODMAN, WHO SITS ON A THRONE AT HIS DESK IN CITY HALL, felt like royalty on a recent trip to London.

He was accompanied by showgirls as he was ferried around town in taxis festooned with Las Vegas images, and they caused a stir everywhere they went, he said.

"If the queen was walking down one side of the street, and I was walking with the showgirls on the other side of the street, I know whose picture would be taken," Goodman boasted.

In fact, he said, firefighters on a fire truck, sirens wailing, on their way to an emergency, stopped in the middle of the street to gawk at the showgirls. So be thankful our responders here are immune to such things.

ALAN CHOATE

WHILE IN LONDON, GOODMAN -- WHO WAS THERE TO HELP INAUGURATE BRITISH AIRWAYS' NEW NONSTOP FLIGHT TO LAS VEGAS -- found a cure for jet lag.

It's gin, of course. He said he slurped down something like 20 mini-bottles on the 10-hour flight, although that seems high even for the Martini Mayor.

"They were looking for gin all over the plane," Goodman said. "I had no idea where I was."

ALAN CHOATE

OVERHEARD ON THE SCANNER: "You're good enough to pronounce it, but I'm not good enough to spell it. Could you spell it out for me?"

IN HONOR OF NEVADA DAY, WHICH WAS SATURDAY, HERE'S A BIT OF STATEHOOD TRIVIA COURTESY OF THE STATE LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES: Nevada voters approved a state constitution on Sept. 14, 1864, and after a canvass Territorial Gov. James Nye mailed copies of the document to Washington, D.C.

However, it became clear the mail would not reach the nation's capital by the Oct. 31 deadline, and President Abraham Lincoln would not issue a statehood proclamation without first reading Nevada's founding document.

So on Oct. 26, two telegraphers with the California Telegraph Co. sent the 16,543-word document from Carson City to Salt Lake City, a process that took 12 hours.

From Salt Lake City the constitution was telegraphed to Chicago and then to Philadelphia. Two days after the message began, Lincoln received the document at a cost of roughly $4,300.

DOUG McMURDO