» Where Appeared Keno

Keno, a bingo-like or a lottery-like gambling game, is played nowadays at practically every casino. Keno was introduced in China by its head of state more than 2000 years ago. But the appearance of keno is wrapped in a mystery. There exist several 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 citizens refused to contribute additional funds to the fruitless cause of the war. So Cheung was left scratching his head as to how to generate the necessary finances to continue his brutal battles. Cheung found an excellent solution to this problem: he created a very popular game - keno. Keno was so successful that it can be said to be the reason for Cheung's victory. The Great Wall was also built with the help of the money that gave keno! The game soon became known as the White Pigeon game, since carrier pigeons were used to inform 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. The total of 120 characters was used in the game but the number reduced to 80 in the long run.
Keno appeared in the US in the 19th century as a lot of Chinese people came there to work on the railroads. Although initially outlawed, Keno continued to be played in secrecy by these new immigrants. 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.