» Keno Lottery In Ancient Times

Keno, a bingo-like or a lottery-like gambling game, is played nowadays at practically every casino. This game originates from China where it was first introduced by Cheung Leung in 187 BC. But the appearance of keno is wrapped in a mystery. There can be found several different opinions.
One theory is that Cheung Leung of the Han Dynasty introduced the game when his city was at war for several years and was beginning to run out of money and supplies. The head of state had no money support of his subjects. Cheung had nothing else to do but to develop some new way of taking money out of the people. Cheung found an excellent solution to this problem: he created a very popular game - keno. Thus Cheung's army was saved. It is also credited for providing resources and helping to fund the massive undertaking of building the Great Wall! Keno was later given a different name - the White Pigeon game. That was not for nothing: carrier pigeons informed the surrounding towns and villages of the winning numbers.
In the past rather than having a board of just numbers on the original keno boards, they used classic Chinese characters. Originally, as many as 120 characters were used in the game, and only after it left China would the number drop to a more familiar 80.
Keno appeared in the US in the 19th century as a lot of Chinese people came there to work on the railroads. The fact that gambling games were forbidden didn't prevent the Chinese from playing and spreading it all over the States. It continued to use Chinese characters and thus obviously didn't enter popular mainstream American culture until it was modified to include the numerical system.