Short answers, pulled from the story.
The name blackjack originated between 1896 and 1899 during the Klondike Gold Rush. Prospectors associated the mineral zincblende with the top bonus hand of an ace of spades and a black jack, transferring the mineral name to the card game.
The Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes documented the game of veintiuno in his novella Rinconete y Cortadillo written between 1601 and 1602. This story described card cheats in Seville who were proficient at the game using the Spanish baraja deck.
Roger Baldwin, Wilbert Cantey, Herbert Maisel, and James McDermott published The Optimum Strategy in Blackjack in September 1956. This paper appeared in the Journal of the American Statistical Association and became the foundation for future efforts to beat the game.
Single-deck games have a house edge of 0.16% while eight-deck games have an edge of 0.66%. Players using basic strategy lose on average less than 1% of their action over the long run.
Seven members were inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame in 2002 at the Barona Casino in San Diego. The inductees included Edward O. Thorp, Ken Uston, Arnold Snyder, and Stanford Wong.