Did you know that . . . ??

Eight percent of the total population plays bingo games that include 10% of all women and 5% of all men.

An average British game of bingo takes between four and four and a half minutes to complete one round.

The average speed of a British bingo caller is 23 numbers per minute in a single bingo game.

The average time to check a winning claim is 30 seconds.

There is a caller of the year competition in which all the bingo callers compete against each other for a two week holiday.

The French were the first to play with Bingo playing cards, tokens and calling those numbers out loud.

Bingo became popular in Australia early in the 20th Century. It was known as Housie. Housie was held in large marquees before they moved into bingo halls.

In the 1800s educational Lotto games became popular. A German Lotto game of the 1850s was designed to teach children their multiplication tables.

In 1929, a game called ‘Beano’ was played in a carnival near Atlanta, Georgia. Dried beans, a rubber stamp and a cardboard sheet were all that the Americans need to get their minds off the sting of the Depression.

Mr. Lowe introduced the game to his friends in New York where one of them mistakenly yelled ‘Bingo’ for the first time in her excitement, and ‘Lowe’s Bingo’ was soon the talk of NYC.

By the late 1940s, Bingo games sprung up all over the country with thousands of games being played every week.

University of Columbia mathematics professor Carl Loffler is reported to have gone insane after coming up with 6,000 bingo cards with non-repeating number groups.

Ninety-six percent of bingo players have won at some point while playing bingo.

There are 2.5 million regular female bingo players.

There are 688 licensed bingo clubs in the UK.

The UK's biggest bingo win was £950,000 on Sunday 22 December 2002.