9 Things You Didn't Know Were Paid For by a Lottery

by Kevin Flynn
author of American Sweepstakes: How One Small State Bucked the Church, the Feds, and the Mob to Usher in the Lottery Age

Most of us think of lotteries—with their cornucopia of scratch tickets and nine-figure jackpots—as creations of modern America. As I explore in my new book, American Sweepstakes (October 2015), after being severely curtailed by federal laws in the 1890s, New Hampshire launched the first state-run lottery in 1964. Since then, 42 other states have followed, with most dedicating proceeds to education.

But lotteries themselves—some legal, some not—have been around for centuries and have served as a popular method for raising funds for various causes and public works projects. Here is a list of things that likely would never have been built or accomplished without lotteries—the original crowdsourcing campaign:

1. The Great Wall of China

 

Around 200 BC, the Western Han Dynasty used a lottery to pay for repairs to and expansion of the Great Wall. They created an early form of Keno called the “white pigeon game,” named for the birds that carried results from village to village.

2. The roads to Rome

 

All roads may lead to Rome, but not all roads could be maintained without spare change from the plebeians. Booty from military conquests was raffled off, the proceeds going toward Imperial infrastructure.

3. Voltaire’s academic career

 

In the 1700s, a French national lottery was created after the bond market collapsed. To encourage bond purchases, lottery tickets were awarded against a fractional percentage of the purchase. Voltaire and his friend, mathematician Charles Marie de la Condamine, discovered a mathematical flaw in the program that allowed them to purchase large qualities of tickets with cheap bonds. Before the government caught on, Voltaire made enough on his winnings to live comfortably while pursuing philosophy.

4. Jamestown colony

 

In order to finance the privately held Virginia Company of London, King James I granted the company the authority to hold a lottery to raise funds for a grand exposition. Proceeds were used to create Jamestown, the first English colony in the New World. You can say that America itself is the offspring of a lottery.

5. The Ivy League

 

How did these frontier colleges become the elite learning institutions of America? During the 1700s, many of them raised money for new buildings or dormitories through lotteries (some running them multiple times). Among the schools that relied on games of chance to build their campuses include Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth, and the forerunners to Columbia and UPenn (whose motto was “Laws without morals are useless”).

6. The Continental Army

 

Running out of money to continue its revolution against the Crown, the Continental Congress authorized a national lottery to raise cash for the fight. General Washington bought the first ticket. It fell far short of its $10 million goal, but individual colonies did well financing their militias with lotteries. Massachusetts earned $750,000 to provide bonus for new volunteers.

7. Boston's Faneuil Hall

 

Because the early states had trouble collecting taxes and the bonds they issued were weak, many communities relied on legal gambling to pay for public needs. Proceeds paid for canals in Pennsylvania, aquafers in Kentucky, bridges in Connecticut, and fire-fighting equipment in St. Louis and Detroit. When Faneuil Hall, one of Boston’s most iconic landmarks, was leveled by fire in 1761, John Hancock helped organize a lottery for its reconstruction.

8. The estate of Thomas Jefferson

 

Deeply in debt at the end of his life, Jefferson petitioned the Virginia legislature to allow him to run a personal lottery with his effects and landholding as prizes. Jefferson had always been a supporter of lotteries, describing them as a tax “laid only on the willing.” However, before he could run his lottery, Jefferson died and these items were instead sold at an estate sale.

9. Washington, DC

 

Congress approved a $100,000 jackpot in the 1823 Grand National Lottery, profits of which were to be put toward restoring and expanding Washington, DC. After the winners were drawn, the broker contracted to conduct the lottery absconded with all of the proceeds—never to be seen again. The grand prize winner sued and the US Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had to pay up.


For more info about author Kevin Flynn and his new book, American Sweepstakes, visit his website at www.authorkevinflynn.com, and follow him on Twitter @kevinpflynn.