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.
In the West, there was great appetite for a lottery. Late in the 16th century, Elizabeth initiated the original English state lottery. That this was a great popular success can be seen in the fact that four thousand tickets were sold for the original lottery, with the prizes given away tapestries, plate and cash. After this, the government thought it expedient to sell the rights to brokers, who would then hire agents all over the country to sell on the tickets o the great unwashed. The lottery continued until 1826, when Parliament decided to discontinue it.
Lottery fever gripped the world, with the invention of many different forms of the game, played by different peoples the world over. However, this popularity led inevitably to the corruption of the noble ideals of the first lotteries, with money comes the temptation to the criminal nature. Some private lotteries substituted low value prizes to those advertised, or even refused to hand over any prizes aat all. The time inevitably came when Canada and The United States prohibited the playing of lotteries altogether. Where they were still allowed, laws and regulations were implemented to ensure the fair playing and winning of lotteries.
Current practice is for lotteries to allot a percentage of ticket sales to good causes, and the upkeep of public buildings and parks etc. The lottery has even come into the modern era, with the advent of convenient online playing and gambling websites.
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