Does Popular Game Owe It’s Name To New York?

The concept is pretty basic.

Get our free mobile app

Someone calls out a letter and a number. If you have the number, you cover it up on your card. Get 5 in a row and you are legally obligated (or not actually legally obligated) to jump up from your comfortable seat and yell.

And what do you yell?

Say it with me now.

"TOMBOLA!"

The origins of the game we call Bingo go back to the Sixteenth Century. The origins are not so shockingly rooted in a game called Lotto. Italians would gather and and gamble on this game of chance.

A home version would become popular in Naples in the 18th Century. The people loved finally being able to play the game they had watched for so long on Tv in their homes with their families. I made that last sentence up, but I figure it had to be similar to getting the home version of Jeopardy for kids of a certain age. This version added some of the things we know today like tokens, cards and someone annoyingly yelling a letter and numbers at the players.

The game would find it's way across the Atlantic Ocean with the help of an enterprising man named Hugh J Ward who immediately decided to copyright the game rather than just letting the people play and enjoy it and even published a rulebook, because what is more fun than rules?

A man named Edward Lowe would further popularize the game when he happened upon people in Atlanta playing a game by the same rules that monopolizer Ward had laid out. Although they called the game Beano. While that is a great way to slow down the gas in your body, it hardly sounds fun right?

Legend tells of a woman in New York who was so excited to achieve a win in Beano, that she accidentally exclaimed "Bingo" upon telling of her victory.  Is it possible he was just happy her Beano kicked in?

Whatever the actual story, the life of many a senior citizen was changed that day and now we all gladly exclaim "Bingo" upon victory, followed by rubbing it in the faces of our sad defeated loser friends as we claim our prize.