» Keno Lottery Game

The game of keno, which has the features of Bingo and any lottery, is nowadays popular all over the world. 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 can be found several different opinions.
The most commonly taken opinion is that Cheung Leung invented this game when his army ran out of money during some war. 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. 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. If at first the game included 120 characters, this number dropped to 80 in the course of time.
Thousads of Chinese immigrants, who came to America to work in the mines in the mid 1800's, brought keno there. 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.