Hilton Hotels & Resorts - Historic Incidents

Historic Incidents

• Founded in 1919 by Conrad Hilton. Hilton bought his first hotel, the Mobley Hotel, in 1919 in Cisco, Texas.
• The first hotel to bear the Hilton name was the Dallas Hilton, a high-rise that opened in Dallas, Texas in 1925.
• In 1949, at the Caribe Hilton Hotel's Beachcomber Bar in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Ramon "Monchito" Marrero created the Piña Colada.
• In 1954, Hilton hotels bought the Statler Hotel chain, making it the largest hospitality company in the world.
• The Conrad Hilton Hotel in Chicago figured prominently in the 1968 Democratic Convention riots that occurred across the street in Grant Park. The hotel's doors were locked for the first time in its history. The hotel still suffered minor damage as a result of the violence outside as the street level windows gave way under the weight of hundreds of protesters on the street during the ensuing riot.
• John Lennon and Yoko Ono held their first Bed-In for Peace between March 25 and March 31, 1969 at the Amsterdam Hilton in Room 902. This room became a popular tourist destination.
• On April 3, 1973, Martin Cooper made the world's first handheld cellular phone call in public when he called Joel S. Engel at the New York Hilton with a 2 pound Motorola DynaTAC phone.
• The Beirut Hilton finished construction and was supposed to open on April 14, 1975. However, the Lebanese Civil War erupted exactly one day before the Grand Opening date on April 13. The hotel was never opened and was severely damaged during the war. The building was demolished in the late 1990s. In the 2000s, work on a completely separate Hilton Beirut Hotel was begun nearby, but it was never completed.
• The Hilton Nicosia in Nicosia, Cyprus, was the scene of the assassination of Youssef Sebai, an Egyptian newspaper editor and friend of Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat, on February 19, 1978. The assassination and the hijacking of a Cyprus Airways DC-8 at Larnaca Airport led to the Egyptian raid on Larnaca International Airport by Egyptian forces. The intervention by the Egyptians led to the deterioration of relations between Cyprus and Egypt.
• The Amsterdam Hilton hotel has had two more notable incidents. On June 27, 1991, Dutch drug kingpin Klaas Bruinsma, once a major drug dealer of Europe, was assassinated in front of the building. On July 11, 2001, Dutch artist Herman Brood committed suicide by jumping from the roof.
• In 2009, the company relocated its global headquarters from Beverly Hills, California to Tysons Corner, Virginia.
• In 2009 Hilton opened Canada's tallest hotel at 58 stories in Niagara Falls, Ontario
• In late 2010, Hilton Worldwide announced a name change of the Hilton Hotels brand to Hilton Hotels & Resorts along with a new logo design as part of a rebranding effort for the flagship brand.
• On February 11, 2012, multi-Grammy Award winning singer Whitney Houston drowned in the bathtub of room 434 at the Beverly Hills Hilton.
• In July 2012, tightrope walker Jay Cochrane walked from the Skylon Tower to the top of the Hilton in Niagara Falls, Ontario