» Keno Lottery When Appeared

The game of keno, which has the features of Bingo and any lottery, is nowadays popular all over the world. Keno appeared in China in 187 BC. But the appearance of keno is wrapped in a mystery. There exist several opinions.
The most commonly taken opinion is that Cheung Leung invented this game when his army ran out of money during some war. The head of state had no money support of his subjects. So the emperor tried to work out a strategy of generating the necessary finances. Finally, Cheung had the brilliant idea of creating a game that would appeal to the huge numbers of people under his command, while simultaneously generating a bit of cash to cover his expenses. Thus Cheung's army was saved. It also contributed resources to 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. The total of 120 characters was used in the game but the number reduced to 80 in the long run.
The game arrived in the US in the mid 1800's when thousands of Chinese immigrants came to work in the mines and on the railroad. 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.