Bingo! (Photo credit: jadensmommy)

Some interesting facts about your Gran’s favourite game:

1. Bingo has existed in some form since at least the early 1500s, when there were already established lottery games played in Italy.
2. In British slang, bingo wings is the name given to loose skin or flabby flesh on the undersides of the upper arms. It comes from the idea that bingo is largely played by overweight elderly women.
3. It is becoming quite popular to play bingo at bridal showers in the US, with cards depicting traditional gifts which are struck off, as numbers usually are, when the bride-to-be unwraps that item.
4. Bingo became a fad in early 30s New York when introduced by Edwin Lowe, who had seen the game played at travelling carnivals in the South. Numbers were covered with beans and winners shouted Beano! when all numbers were covered. Legend has it that when one of Lowe’s players wrongly shouted Bingo! he adopted this as the name of the game.
5. Cow chip bingo (aka ‘cow pie bingo’ or ‘bessie bingo’) is a game played in Australia and the US in which a field is marked off in squares, the squares are raffled off, and a cow is let into the area. The winning square is the one where the cow lays down a pat.

Related articles

• The Features That Help To Make Up A Good Online Bingo Web-site (leccoworkshop.com)
• 2013 Book Bingo Reading Challenge (thebookishsideofme.wordpress.com)
• Simply the Top 5 Best Places to Play Bingo (epicatravel.com)

Categories: Blogs

Tags: australia, bingo, Edwin Lowe, Game, games, Italy, Lowe, New York, United States