Tuesday 1st of December 2009
Birthdays and bingo
Countless players have celebrated birthdays at their local bingo clubs down the years.
Arranging to meet friends and family by the bar, buying a couple of books and settling down to play some lines together - all are time-honoured traditions.
But it may have escaped your notice that today marks the birthday of the humble bingo game itself.
In fact, it's a real biggie because December 1st 2009 marks the 80th anniversary of the creation of bingo.
Of course, plenty of variations were played across Europe beforehand.
The Italians are thought to have pioneered the concept of bingo with a lottery game that began way back in the 1530s, followed a couple of centuries later by the French and the Germans.
Edwin S Lowe - inventor of bingo
However, it wasn't until 1929 that an American travelling toy salesman would develop the modern version that we all know and love.
Edwin S Lowe came across a bean-based game called Beano in a carnival tent in Georgia and resolved to create his own version.
He tested the prototype out on some friends in New York and, when one of whom accidentally shouted "bingo" instead of "beano", a legend was born.
All that was needed now was for the game to be introduced to a wider audience.
A Catholic priest from Pennsylvania provided the tipping point when he decided to use it to raise funds for his church.
Bingo, established as the game of choice for all good Christians, was well on the road to taking over the world.
Happy birthday bingo!
