Did you know?

¨        More than 3 million people regularly play bingo in the UK.

¨        In 1440, Johann Gutenberg of Germany printed the first known deck of playing cards.

¨        The name ‘Craps’ is believed to be a French pronunciation of the word crabs, which means a pair of ones.

¨        In eighteen-century English gambling clubs, which were illegal at the time, one employee was hired for the specific job of swallowing the dice if the police raided the place.

¨        There are still more than 300 ten thousand dollar bills in circulation today, although they have not been printed since 1944.

¨        About 30 percent of the 39 million visitors to Atlantic City arrive by charter bus and stay for less than a full day.

¨        Between 1790 to the Civil War, fifty colleges, 300 schools and 200 churches were erected with lottery proceeds. Most notably, universities such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Columbia were funded by lotteries.

¨        Taxes on European casinos can be extremely high; 50 to 90 percent, while US taxation on casinos runs between 6 to 8 percent.

• From space, the brightest man-made place in the world is Las Vegas, Nevada.