The Lotto Winner
- Filed under: Casinos
- Date: Apr 29,2010
When, as is usual, a proportion of the money an individual spends on a lottery ticket,goes in part towards helping to fund a charitable project, gambling becomes much more than one person winning or losing. It transforms into something far more altruistic, charitable and beneficial to society as a whole. This happens more and more often these days.
The lottery was born as long ago as 100BC, when the game of Keno was invented in China, during the Hun Dynasty. The monies raised from this early prototype were allotted towards defense projects, including the building of The Great Wall of China. Many other civilizations operated lotteries: that of the Romans being the first in Europe. What began in Rome as an amusement for the wealthier members of society, became, during the reign of the Emperor, Augustus, a means of raising revenue to keep the city in good repair. Prizes at this early date were usually valuable objects rather than cash.
It was a long time afterwords, in 1434, that a public lottery is recorded as having taken place in the town of Sluis in the Netherlands. About a decade later. lotteries, which were gaining in popularity around Flanders( an area comprised of parts of modern France, Holland and Belgium) began to give away cash prizes. These lotteries , which were often regarded as a rather less painful way of paying tax, appear to have been in aid of both the poor of the towns and maintaining the towns defenses. In Belgium, in 1465, lotteries are down as a matter of record as being held to raise revenue to help in the construction of almshouses, chapels, ports and canals.
Western Europe clamored for an opportunity to play. In England, Queen Elizabeth I shrewdly began the English state lottery, the first of which sold four thousand tickets- showing the public appetite not only for gambling, but also for the rich prizes: tapestries, plate and cash. The government soon sold the rights to the lottery to brokers, who then hired middle men – agents to sell the tickets on to the public. It was a very successful undertaking, and continued to raise significant amounts of revenue until 1836, when the then government discontinued it.
Different forms of the lottery were invented and took hold, with lotteries played almost universally worldwide in some fashion or other. Soon, however, the initial noble intentions of the first lotteries were submerged in a sea of greed and corruption. Many private lotteries did not give the prizes as advertised, but maintained the right to substitute inferior prizes; inn the worst cases, no prizes were ever handed over to the unfortunate winners. The United States and Canada eventually banned all lotteries, and prohibiting all such. In time, however, new laws and regulations were decreed to ensure the fair running of the new generation of lotteries and games of chance.
Good practice dictates that today’s modern lotteries should apportion some of the ticket sales to charitable causes and institutions. Today it is easier than ever to lay a bet or buy a ticket to a game of chance, with the arrival of online betting sites.
If you need to see the results of the lottery then check out the National Lottery Results Checker.
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