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200 B.C. - China
Keno originated about 200 years B.C. in China out of an ancient poem known
as "The Thousand Character Classic ". Rather than numbers 1 through
80, the first eighty characters of "The Thousand Character Classic"
were used in the body of the keno ticket.
The "Thousand Character Classic" was used in China as the second
primer for teaching reading and writing to children. By putting one thousand
characters into a more or less coherent rhymed form, learning was presumably
made easier and more interesting. It is something of a very great achievement
in that no character is repeated. This poem was so well known in China that
its one thousand characters, arranged in order, were often used as a fanciful
way of notation or counting from one to a thousand.
There are many legendary stories about the origin of the poem. One story
relates that the celebrated penman Wang Hi-Che wrote the thousand characters
on a thousand separate pieces of paper. The Emperor Liang Wu Ti then directed
Chou Hsing-Szu to arrange them in rhymed sentences to convey a meaning.
This task was accomplished in a single night, but such was the mental
effort that the compilers hair and beard were turned completely white
before morning.
1940s - America
According to an ancient scroll, Cheung Leung introduced the game we now
call Keno about 200 B.C. in China. Cheung's city was at war for several
years and supplies for his army were failing. The people of his city refused
to contribute any more to the war fund, so Cheung created a game of chance
to produce revenue to provision his army. The game was an instant success
and the city was saved.
1960 - Great Britain
Spreading throughout China, the game was used to help fund the building
of the Great Wall. The game became known as the White Pigeon Game because
carrier pigeons were used to send the results (winning numbers) from the
games in the larger cities to small villages and hamlets.
Today - The World
Remaining basically the same, the game was brought to the United States
by Chinese immigrants who labored on the railroad in the Old West.
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