» Keno How 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. Several different versions exist.
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 the emperor tried to work out a strategy of generating the necessary finances. After some considerations he created the game of keno, which immediately got very popular and thus profitable for the state. 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! Later keno was known as the White Pigeon game as people of surrounding villages were informed of the winning numbers by carrier pigeons.
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.