Take a walk on the Boardwalk

We've been hit with an true Canadian winter storm. School and roads have been closed off and on for the past two weeks. Up until now it's been great, but, I'm starting to panic, we still have some Christmas shopping to do, our food supply is starting to dwindle and one can only play so many games of Monopoly. The history of Monopoly according to Wikipedia can be traced back to 1903, when a Quaker woman named Elizabeth (Lizzie) J. Magie Phillips created a game through which she hoped to be able to explain the single tax theory of Henry George (it was intended to illustrate the negative aspects of concentrating land in private monopolies). Her game, The Landlord's Game, was commercially published in 1924. Other interested game players redeveloped the game, some changing its name to Auction Monopoly and later to plain Monopoly, and many making their own sets customized for their own cities. Several people, mostly in the U.S. Midwest and near the U.S. East Coast, contributed to the American version of the game's design and evolution. Phillips herself patented a revised edition of the game in 1923, and similar games of this nature were published commercially.

Charles Darrow is known to have played an Atlantic City variation of "Monopoly", created by his friends, the Todds, who lived in Philadelphia. He became unemployed in the 1929 crash and decided to sell copies of the game taught to him by the Todds. He launched it in 1933 and it quickly made him rich. In 1935 Parker Brothers bought the rights from Darrow and started manufacturing a slightly updated version.

By the 1970s, the game's early history had been lost (at least one historian has argued that it was purposely suppressed), and the idea that it had been created solely by Charles Darrow had become popular folklore. This was stated in the 1974 book The Monopoly Book: Strategy and Tactics of the World's Most Popular Game, by Maxine Brady, and even in the instructions of the game itself. As Professor Ralph Anspach fought Parker Brothers and its then parent company, General Mills, over the trademarks of the Monopoly board game, much of the early history of the game was "rediscovered".

The Monopoly board consists of forty spaces containing twenty-eight properties (twenty-two colored streets, four railroads and two utilities), three Chance spaces, three Community Chest spaces, a Luxury Tax space, an Income Tax space, and the four corner squares: GO, Jail, Free Parking, and Go to Jail.

It's been fun to play multiple games of Monopoly these past few days, and even though I tend to lose more games than I win; it's not about winning or losing it's about creating memories!

Blessings