Can you believe it? Bingo was originally called "Beano" and it was played at county fairs with a caller drawing discs from a cigar box and players marking their cards with beans to cover the numbers called. Once a player won, he or she would yell "Beano"!

A recorded history of bingo dates back to 14th Century in Italy. From there, in the late 1770's the game later moved to France, where it was mostly played by the wealthy elite. Soon after, bingo made its mark in Germany amongst children who played it for educational purposes. It was only in 1929 that bingo arrived in the United States, at which time it was still called "Beano." The name "Bingo" was coined by happy accident a beano player at a county fair yelled "Bingo!" instead of "Beano" and ta da.. BINGO was born!

A man named Edwin Lowe together with Carl Leffler redeveloped the game of beano into bingo. They also worked to diversify the game, so that by 1930 there were over 6000 different bingo cards and the game of bingo began to catch on in popularity. By 1934, an estimated 10,000 bingo games were played weekly around the world.

Today, bingo is played in many different ways by millions of people around the world. While some bingo players still use cardboard cards and markers to cover the called numbers, many land-based bingo halls now use paper sheets where bingo players use ink daubers to mark the called bingo numbers. Still other land-based bingo halls have video bingo machines that automatically post the called bingo numbers.

However, it is the Internet that is responsible for the latest evolution of bingo. Thanks to the Internet, online bingo games are now only a few simple mouse clicks away!