» Keno Where Appeared

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. Still the origins of the game are really a bit of 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 city residents didn't want to give their money to support the unworthy aim of the emperor. So Cheung was left scratching his head as to how to generate the necessary finances to continue his brutal battles. 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 is also credited for providing resources and helping to fund the massive undertaking of building the Great Wall! 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.
In the middle of the 19th keno was brought to the US. Though the game was considered illegal, the new Chinese immigrants still played it. 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.