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It is possible that the history of the lottery goes back as far as times of Moses. There is some contention among Biblical scholars about this. Certainly, it would not be all that seemly if a great religious character should profit from gambling. But in the Book of Numbers of the Old Testament it is written that Moses was awarded land near the River Jordan after playing a local lottery. No wonder so many people today still pray before picking their numbers. Appendix B Appendix B
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Appendix B
Appendix B
The History of the Lottery
It is possible that the history of the lottery goes back as far as times of Moses. There is some contention
among Biblical scholars about this. Certainly, it would not be all that seemly if a great religious character
should profit from gambling. But in the Book of Numbers of the Old Testament it is written that Moses was
awarded land near the River Jordan after playing a local lottery. No wonder so many people today still pray
before picking their numbers.
Lotteries are not mentioned in historical writings much until 200 BC in China, when the Hun Dynasty used
lotteries to raise funds for taxes. In 200 BC Emperor Cheung Leung invented The Chinese Lottery. Today this
game has survived as what we know as Keno. Revenue from the Chinese Lottery was used to build the Great
Wall of China. It is also thought that playing the lottery in Europe may date back as far as the times of Julius
Caesar, in the first century before Christ.
Renaissance Lotteries
It is likely that forms of lotteries and raffles existed in the intervening ages, but very little was written about
the subject. The first recorded lottery in Europe was actually a raffle held by the Flemish painter Jan Van
Eyck in 1446. He gave away his paintings as prizes. In 1465, lotteries were regularly held in Belgium to raise
money to build houses for the poor, chapels and canal systems.
This way of raising funds did not have a name until 1515, when an election gone wrong in Genoa, Italy used
numbers instead of names on its ballots. This left the choosing of the official up to fate. The word lottery in
Italian actually means a predestination or unchangeable fate.
Fifteen years later, the Italian city of Florence held a “Number Lottery” and gave away cash prizes. The idea
soon caught on in France, too. In 1539 King Francis I of France ran a lottery to get his kingdom's treasury out
of debt.
In 1567, Queen Elizabeth I established the first English lottery, when she offered 400,000 tickets for sale.
Prizes included china, tapestries and cash. The first London lottery is credited to King James I in England in
1612. The money from this game of chance was used to fund the building of the Jamestown colony in
Virginia, which was the first English colony in America.
Appendix B
Appendix B
Lotteries were also used to fund culture. In 1753, a lottery was held to help build the British museum. In the
same year, Casanova urged Louis XV to found the Loterie Royale, which later became the famed Loterie
National. This lottery was a keno style game that gave players the option of betting on one to five numbers
between 1 and 90.
The Lottery Comes to America
After American colonial times in the 1700's, the lottery was a favorite past time, especially of America’s
founding fathers. Benjamin Franklin financed cannons for the Revolutionary war using lottery money. George
Washington operated a Virginia lottery to finance construction of roads to the west. A debt-ridden Thomas
Jefferson once held a lottery to dispose of his property and find some badly needed cash.
Of course, all of these lotteries are now defunct. Amazingly, the Netherlands Lottery, which was founded in
1726, is still in operation today. It is officially the oldest lottery in the world.
Lotteries really took off in the United States after the adoption of the constitution and used to fund over 300
schools and 200 churches. The lottery helped found universities such as Columbia, Harvard, Princeton and
Yale. The game was used to fund civic improvements, including orphanages, libraries, hospitals, jails and
courthouses. This trend began to lose momentum in 1820, when corruption began to plague privately owned
lotteries, which often advertised big jackpots and then awarded no prizes at all.
After 1820, a civic battle began in North America to ban public lotteries. Church-led organizations often led
the fight for social reforms. The lottery was on a list of hot button issues, along with the prohibition of
alcohol, the abolition of slavery and workers rights. Through the rest of the 19th century and into the early
20th century, anti-lottery reformers sought to ban the lottery. This became an issue through most states and
provinces in the United States and Canada.
In 1819, the Province of Quebec made lotteries illegal. This was followed by the state of New York in 1820.
By 1856, all lotteries were banned in Canada. This was followed by a ban of lottery materials by mail in 1890
in the United States. In 1905, The U.S. Supreme court prohibited all gambling, ending the successful century
old reign of the Louisiana Lottery.
Twentieth Century Lotteries
Appendix B
Appendix B
The new century brought a revival of the lottery, beginning with the Queensland State Lottery of Australia in
1917. The establishment of the Irish Sweepstakes in 1930 followed this.
It wasn’t until 1964 that the United States would see a lottery again. Gambling was legalized in 1969 in
Canada, giving provinces the permission to operate lotteries and casinos that gave the proceeds to charitable
or religious causes. Manitoba and Quebec pioneered the first modern Canadian lotteries. This was quickly
followed by a legal state lottery south of the border in New Jersey where tickets costs 50 cents for a weekly
drawing. In it’s first year, New Jersey sold $73 million in tickets.
In 1973, The Olympic Lottery Corporation of Canada used the lottery to begin funding the 1976 Olympics
that were to be held in Montreal. That year, the popularity of today’s lotteries was sealed as the sales for all
lotteries in North America surpassed $500 million. 1973 was also a landmark year for the lottery, as
technology brought the game into the modern age. The first secure instant ticket was developed by a company
called Scientific Games.
Soon after this success, other laws followed that made playing the lottery more accessible to North
Americans. This included the incorporation of countless private, state wide, federal and (in Canada) province
run lotteries. This included amendments to allow state lotteries to once again advertise through the mail as
well as on billboards, radio and television. By 1999, more than 100 foreign lotteries were in operation. To this
day, the biggest lottery win in history has been $363 million, shared by two winners of a Big Game drawing.
References
Winning With Numbers. (2006). Retrieved from http://www.winningwithnumbers.com/lottery/history/