GAME ON!

10 Intriguing Backstories Behind Your Favorite Board Games

Credit: Christopher Paul High

Board games have been entertaining families and friends for centuries - perhaps even millennia - but behind every game lies a fascinating story.

From the strategic depths of chess to the whimsical world of Candy Land, join us to learn how each of these 10 timeless games was made.

Credit: Joshua Hoehne

Surprisingly, Monopoly was originally known as "The Landlord's Game," and was invented by American anti-monopolist Elizabeth Magie in 1903 to easily illustrate the negative aspects of land concentration and private monopolies. It aimed to promote the ideas of Georgism, an economic philosophy advocating for the taxation of land to counteract social injustice.

Credit: Carlos Esteves

Dating back to the 7th century, chess originated in India as "chatrang," and soon became popular in the region. In fact, the word "checkmate" originated from the Persian shāh māt , meaning "the king is dead." As the game spread throughout the world, it evolved into the strategic masterpiece we know today.

Credit: Alexander Lyashkov

Also known as Cluedo, this murder mystery game was created by Anthony E. Pratt during World War II. Pratt, a solicitor's clerk, designed the game as a form of entertainment during air raid blackouts. Its original setting was a country house, but the successive versions of the game have introduced new locations, characters, and weapons.

Credit: Freysteinn G. Jonsson

Alfred Butts, an unemployed architect during the Great Depression, developed Scrabble in 1938. Originally named "Lexiko" and later "Criss-Cross Words," Butts combined the concept of anagrams and crossword puzzles to create a game that tested vocabulary and strategy. Soon, Scrabble became so popular that many TV networks began to make their own game shows based on the game’s rules, and today there is even a Scrabble World Championship.

Credit: omid roshan

Risk, conceived by French filmmaker Albert Lamorisse, emerged from the early 1950s. The gameplay simulates global domination through strategic conquests of different regions of the six continents. Originally titled "The Conquest of the World", the game reflected the geopolitical tensions of the Cold War era, and its mixture of simple rules and complex decision-making made it immensely popular among both adults and children at the time.

Credit: Alexander Grey

Candy Land is sometimes dismissed as an overly simple game, but that’s exactly the point. Eleanor Abbott, a polio patient in the 1940s, invented Candy Land as a distraction for children recovering from the harsh illness. The vibrant board and simple gameplay provided a colorful journey through a world of sweets, offering joy and imagination during difficult times. She partnered with American board game mogul Milton Bradley to manufacture it, and it soon became the most popular game among children in the whole country.

Credit: Aksel Fristrup

Designed by Klaus Teuber in 1995, Settlers of Catan revolutionized the world of board gaming. Teuber, a dental technician from Germany, created the game to provide an engaging activity for his family , inspired by the history of Viking settlers in Iceland and Norway. Its innovative mechanics and strategic depth propelled it to international acclaim, and it became a staple for board game enthusiasts worldwide.

Credit: JIP, CC BY-SA 4.0

Scott Abbott and Chris Haney, two Canadian journalists, conceived Trivial Pursuit in 1979 after becoming frustrated while failing to find all the pieces for their Scrabble game. Aiming to recreate the experience of a pub quiz , the duo combined trivia from various categories into a competitive board game where players raced each other to the finish line.

Credit: U.S. Navy, Public Domain

Thought to have been inspired by the French wargame "L'Attaque," Battleship began as a simple pencil and paper game , eventually being manufactured with plastic boards and pegs by Milton Bradley in 1967. Countless adaptations of the game have been made, introducing slightly different rules, but retaining the core concept of tactical warfare on the open seas.

Credit: Jono Winn from San Diego, USA, CC BY 2.0

While Twister is not exactly a traditional board game and more of a physical skill one, where players have to place their hands and feet in specific colored spots on a plastic mat, it deserves a spot among the classics. The popular game was created by board game designers Charles Foley and Neil Rabens in 1966, who wanted to make a game that tested players’ physical agility and balance. They eventually presented the idea to the Milton Bradley Company, who enthusiastically embraced the concept, propelling it into worldwide popularity.

NAVIGATING THE FACTS

Travel Through Time With These 10 Facts About The History Of The Internet

Credit: Franck

Picture yourself navigating through the city with a paper map or asking strangers for directions on the street. Today, it would be a bit unusual, right?

In the old days , those were some of the daily challenges. Staying connected with a friend was no easy task; you had to take the time to write a letter and wait days or weeks for the mail to cover the distances.

While life today seems impossible without the convenience of instant connection and communication, there was a time when these elements were not part of our reality.

To bridge the gap between yesterday and today, we're going to tell you these 10 interesting facts about the history–and the present–of the Internet that might surprise you.

Credit: Museums Victoria

Although nowadays creating a website is not so difficult, some 20 years ago it was a very challenging task, especially because no one had ever done it before.

http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html was the first website in the world and, of course, it was created by the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee.

This site was born in 1991 , when we were still very young, and was designed to share and classify information about the World Wide Web project.

The interesting fact is that you can still access this webpage . But be careful, don't expect it to be like today's sites. Entering there will feel like taking a trip to the times when the web was taking its first steps.

Credit: Merve Sehirli Nasir

In the early 70s , visionary Ray Tomlinson was working on a messaging system for the ARPANET, the predecessor of our familiar Internet. His intention was to enable different computers to communicate with each other. And so he did. He is now credited with the creation of the email.

But one thing was missing: a symbol that separates the user name from the domain name in email addresses without creating confusion. This is where our @ comes in. Although the @ symbol is everywhere now, it was not very popular then, making it an unlikely choice for users to include in their email names. Smart choice, right?

Credit: Alexander Shatov

Some brands achieve what every brand wants: to create unmistakable logos . Just remember the bold red of Coca-Cola, the bright yellow of McDonald's golden arches, or the green and white of the Starbucks logo.

In the world of social media, Facebook's blue stands out as one of the most recognizable colors. But there's more to this choice than mere marketing.

There is another reason why Mark Zuckerberg, the famous creator of Facebook , chose this color: he is colorblind to green and red hues. As he stated in a 2010 interview with the New Yorker, blue is the color he perceives most vividly.

Credit: Karen Grigorean

Imagine someone from centuries ago arriving in our time and discovering that we need to click on a box to confirm that we are not robots . It would undoubtedly blow their minds.

This little window when entering a website, prompting you to identify images, is a CAPTCHA, and it basically gives you a test to prove that you are not a bot trying to break a site's or an account's security.

While you might recognize the name, few know what this acronym truly stands for.

Well, it's a specific description of its task. CAPTCHA stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart." With that extension, turning the name of this tool into an acronym was inevitable.

Credit: Dreamlike Street

Let's bust some myths here. Unlike CAPTCHA, the word WiFi doesn't have a meaning. At least it didn't when it was invented.

Commonly, WiFi is thought to be an acronym for "wireless fidelity," as a nod to Hi-Fi (High Fidelity). Although this makes sense (you know, because it is indeed a wireless connection), its name is not an acronym.

In fact, WiFi was created as a simple, catchy word that everyone could easily remember but with no specific meaning. Marketing at its best!

Credit: Sara Kurfeß

Creating content for YouTube has evolved into a full-time job nowadays. Most videos are now polished productions that can span hours. But the platform's beginnings were quite different.

Jawed Karim, one of YouTube's founders, uploaded the very first video in 2005 , more than 18 years ago! Titled "Me at the Zoo," this pioneering piece lasts just 19 seconds and is still on the site.

The short video of Jawed speaking at the San Diego Zoo has already more than 300 million views, and that number is increasing every day!

Credit: Tingey Injury Law Firm

Over the years, the Internet's explosive growth has revolutionized the way we present ourselves to the world and interact with each other.

It also allows people to share their insights and talents, unlocking opportunities for everyone.

In today's world, the Internet is extremely important. It's not just about keeping in touch; some of the crucial stuff in our everyday lives relies on it.

Those who truly got it are the Finns because, in 2010, Finland proudly became the first country to ensure every citizen has the right to access the Internet. Let's hope other countries join the party!

Credit: Brett Jordan

If you've recently made a mistake or find yourself worrying about potential errors in your life, relax. We all make mistakes, even the greatest geniuses . And that's what happened to the creators of Google , or should we say the creators of Googol ?

When Larry Page and Sergey Brin created the search engine, the name they thought for it was "googol," which is the term for the number 10 ¹⁰⁰ (1 followed by one hundred zeroes). However, due to a misspelling, the official name ended up being Google.

Who says mistakes can't lead to amazing things?

Credit: Goran Ivos

The first webcam owes its existence to coffee . Well, that's one way to tell the story!

Most of us appreciate a good cup of coffee during working hours. Quentin Stafford-Fraser and Paul Jardetzky knew this well while working in a Cambridge University lab in 1991 . But they had a problem: the coffee maker was on another floor.

To solve the major issue of walking all the way to that room just to find an empty coffee pot, they came up with a great idea.

They developed a device that kept an eye on the coffee pot and transmitted the action to their lab computer. Thanks to the cam, the coffee maker became famous on the World Wide Web two years later!

Credit: Firmbee.com

Being popular on the Internet has its advantages these days. The number of followers or clicks to your content can be a game-changer.

With millions of users navigating millions of websites daily, having the title of the most visited is a remarkable feat. You likely already know that the crown for the most popular site goes to our beloved Google, which got more than 85 billion visits just in 2023!

According to Forbes magazine, up until 2023, the G giant remained firmly in first place, with the renowned YouTube and Facebook following , though at a bit of a distance.