The Campaign to Destroy Pinball
In January 1942, New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia officially banned pinball machines in New York City and then executed Prohibition-style raids to round up all pinball machines and arrest their owners. The raid resulted in thousands of pinball machines being confiscated, smashed with sledgehammers by the Mayor and the NYPD, and dramatically dumped into the city's rivers.
http://www.bmigaming.com/pinballhistory.htm
http://pacificpinball.org/articles/campaign-destroy-pinball
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/01/the-mayor-who-took-a-sledgehammer-to-nycs-pinball-machines/267309/