Gambling 25 Crazy Facts You Didn't Know About Casinos & Gambling  

Here's an inspiring story for aspiring gamblers and small business owners: the founder of FedEx saved his floundering company by gambling in Vegas, earning $27,000 in blackjack! The company only had $5,000 in its coffers when Frederick Smith decided to fly to Vegas in 1973 and risk it all. Though this isn't good investment or business advice in general, Smith's gamble paid off, allowing the company to last long enough to raise $11 million and eventually earn its first profits in 1976.

If your addiction to gambling is getting out of control, several states allow you to ban yourself from casinos, making it a crime to step foot on the gaming floor. Ohio, for example, has a so-called "Voluntary Exclusion" program for gamblers looking to kick the habit that allows them to ban themselves for either a year, five years, or life. If you choose the lifetime ban you better mean it: there is no way to get your name off the list once you commit to quitting for good.

Gambling is such a huge industry in Nevada that even the state prison had a casino inside it for 35 years. That's right: inmates could play blackjack, craps, poker, and even bet on sports inside the "Bullpen," a stone building on the prison's grounds in Carson City from 1932 to 1967. A new warden from California shut it down that year, saying gambling was a "degradation" to the inmates.

Some gamblers simply take things too far: addiction counselors say that some problem gamblers are so impaired by their addiction that they simply urinate all over themselves or wear adult diapers rather than step away from the table or slot machine. For instance, in Indiana in 2007, a gambler filed a complaint with the state's Gaming Commission after he sat in a pee-soaked chair at a slot machine. And in 2015, a New Jersey man urinated into a slot machine's coin slot rather than leave the gaming floor.