Nevada was admitted to the
United States on
October 31st,
1864 in a smart bit of slightly legal
gerrymandering by
Abraham Lincoln. The signifigance of this day to the rest of America, of course, is that it is
Halloween.
Growing up in Nevada, while exceptionally boring the rest of the year, was rather hip around this time. Carson City, the state capital, is a half-hour drive from the merged cities of Reno and Sparks. Seeing as how Carson is the capital, it was considered sacreligious or sacregovernmental or something to have Halloween and Nevada Day, a state holiday, at the same time. So Carson City's Halloween was usually on October 30th. Reno, on the other hand, didn't give a rat's ass when the state was born and kept Halloween on the 31st.
The ramifications of these developments were heavenly to a young child with parents willing to drive out to Carson City the day before Halloween to let their kids go trick-or-treating twice in two days. It also didn't matter much how late said child stayed up on the 30th injesting candy and watching zombie movies: Nevada Day was always a holiday. I remember one especially confused year when Sparks held its Halloween on November 1st, thusly increasing potential candy collection to THREE nights!
In 2000, the state, apparently run by a shadow government of dentists and not by the mafia as previously suspected, approved a measure that would curb this trend by letting Nevada Day always fall on the closet Friday, thus granting state workers an insured three day weekend. The sad outcome of this is now children only get the double trick or treat once every seven years, to which I can only give a Nelson Muntz-style "hah hah!"