The Italian lottery
Italy ended a turbulent period after the rebellion in Florence fell in 1530. The Italian National Lottery, known as Lo Giuoco del Lotto d'Italia, was launched later that year. The lottery is still played weekly to this day, and contributes around 75 million dollars to the government annually.
The French lottery
It was reported in the French press in 1778 that a game, known as Le Lotto, was popular amongst the intelligentsia. The game was very similar to the modern game of Bingo. The players had cards with 3 horizontal rows and 9 vertical columns of numbers. Each row had 5 numbers and four blanks. The first column had numbers in the range 1-10, the second column had numbers in the range 11-20, and so on to the last row had numbers in the 81-90.
A card would have looked like this:
| 2 | 13 | 34 | 61 | 83 | ||||
| 7 | 27 | 44 | 55 | 75 | ||||
| 18 | 38 | 45 | 78 | 90 |
Players had to cover all 5 numbers in a row to win the game.
The German educational lottery
In the 1850s a Lotto game was designed in Germany to teach children their multiplication tables, and other skills such as spelling, recognising animals, and history.
Beano and Bingo in America
In the 1920s a game called Beano was played in American carnivals, which soon became the game of Bingo that we know today. For more information, see Why is Bingo called Bingo?
