Caesars Palace The Caesars Palace is a hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. It is a member of the Caesars Corporation; arguably, the corporation's most well known property. Caesars Palace has sister hotels in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, Atlantic City, New Jersey and other points of the United States. History In 1962, Jay Sarno, a cabana motel owner, used ten million dollars that had been lent to him by the "Teamsters Central States Pension Fund" to begin plans for a hotel on a terrain owned by Kirk Kirkorian. Sarno would later act as designer of the hotel he planned to construct. Building of the Caesars Palace hotel began in 1965. Sarno struggled to decide which name to call his hotel. But he made the decision of calling it Caesars Palace with his thinking that the name Caesar would evoke thoughts of royalty because of Roman dictator Julius Caesar. Sarno thought that people should feel they were at a king's home while at his hotel. Sarno contracted many companies to built the hotel, from the Roman landscapes it presents, to the water fountains that have been stages of various events and the hotel's swimming pools. On August 5, 1966, the hotel was inaugurated, with Andy Williams and Phil Richards providing entertainment; they both played Julius Caesar at a play that night. Soon after, Sarno bought the entire property from Kirkorian for five million dollars. On December 31, 1967, Evel Knievel unsuccessfully tried to jump the hotel's water fountain with his motorcycle. On July 15, 1969, executives lay ground on an expansion area of the hotel, and they buried a time capsule in the area, but the time capsule was stolen days later. In 1973, Del Webb company was contracted to make a 16-story building to add to the Palace's number of rooms. That project was finished in 1974. In 1980, Gary Wells gained much media coverage, and much physical suffering, when he unsuccessfully tried to leap over a water fountain at the Caesar's Palace. He sustained injuries in many different parts of his body. By the 1980s, the Caesar's Palace had become a boxing and gambling Mecca. Joe Louis, the former world Heavyweight champion boxer, worked at the Caesars Palace as a greeter until his death in 1981. A statue of him would be erected soon after inside the hotel. In addition, the Palace's casino was bustling with gambling machines. Betting was not limited to machine gamblers, however: During fight nights, people would go to gambling gates and place large sums of money in betting for their favorite boxers. Among the Caesars Palace's most famous fights were The Battle of the Little Giants, the Sugar Ray Leonard vs. Thomas Hearns fights, the Larry Holmes vs. Gerry Cooney battle, Marvin Hagler versus Thomas Hearns, the fight in which Mike Tyson became world Heavyweight champion by knocking out Trevor Berbick and the fight between Leonard and Hagler. Most boxing fights were held at the hotel's parking lot. Extra security measurements had to be taken for the fight between Holmes and Cooney, as both the KKK and black groups had threatened to shoot the boxers before the fight began; there were snipers at the roof of the Caesars Palace and adyacent hotels on the fight's night. Also during the 1980s, the hotel opened an Atari game room that had over 60 Atari video game arcade machines, and in 1989, Robby Knievel successfully completed what his father could not do years before. The hotel's management wanted it to have a new, family oriented atmosphere as the 1990s approached. This move was not strange to Las Vegas hotel owners, as most hotels there were planning to modernize anyways by adding more children features and making Las Vegas hotels seem more family friendly and less gambler oriented. As a consequence, big time boxing was one of the first things to leave the Caesars Palace. In 1992, inside the Forum Shops at Caesars opened. The fourth phase just opened on October 22, 2004. It now has the 2nd built circular escalator in the USA. Over the years, the hotel has been owned by various companies, including Sheraton and The Hilton International Corporation Its current owner, the Caesars Entertainment(formerly known as Park Place Entertainment, bought the property in 1999. Caesars has just opened the Roman Plaza, an open-air area with a cafe on the corner and the Coloseum, which is where Celine Dion and Elton John perform. They are in the process of another expansion including a new hotel. Many star performers, such as Liberace, Julio Iglesias, David Copperfield, Céline Dion, Gloria Estefan, Hilary Duff and Britney Spears have performed at the hotel. On October 4, 2004, big time boxing returned to the Caesar;'s Palace hotel, as Jeff Lally, a former Olympic boxer, knocked out Syd Vanderpool in eight rounds of a fight between Cruiserweight world title challengers that was televised on Showrime. External Sites Las Vegas travelog. Photos of Caesars Palace. Caesars Entertainment Homepage Caesars Palace Web Site See Also/Caesars Entertainment's Properties Bally's Las Vegas Bally's Park Place Flamingo Las Vegas Flamingo Laughlin Caesars Tahoe Caesars Atlantic City Caesars Indiana Caesars Africa Paris Las Vegas Reno Hilton Atlantic City Hilton FAVORITE ARTICLES: History of the World    History of the United States    History of Europe    Ancient History    History    Military History    World War I    Bombing of Dresden    California    US Constitution    Frank Sinatra    Boston    Marbury v. Madison This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html You may copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license. You must provide a link to http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html To view or edit this article at Wikipedia go to http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesars_Palace