strung together, and lots of piles
of coins strung together. (Merci-
fully, the inventor stopped here.)

Each card in a suit was num-
bered 1 through 10 and bore an
appropriate illustration (e.g., the
eight of coins had a drawing of
eight coins), except for the suit of
piles of coins strung together,
which was represented by pictures
of guys with funny hats. Who are
they? Who knows. Maybe they're
the emperor's 121 brothers-in-law
saying, "Hey man, I really need a
new transmission. Could you lend
me a pile of coins strung together
till next March?"

Not to be outdone, the nobility
of India invented their own playing
cards in the 10th century using
discs of lacquered wood that were
anywhere from 2 to 5 inches
across. Like the Chinese cards they
were divided into various suits,
each based on a different incarna-
tion of the Hindu god Vishnu. Deck
sizes ranged from 96 to 120 cards,
but history does not record just
how you were supposed to shuffle
120 wooden discs. No word either
on whether it was okay to use an
incarnation of Vishnu as a coaster.

One of the Indian cards showed
the Hindu deity Ardhanarisvara hold-
ing a sword, a cup, a coin and a
wand, and while no one knows for
sure if there's a connection, these
happen to be the four suits in early
European cards and tarot decks. (See
the sidebar for more on the tarot.)

By the way, if you're curious
about the Chinese emperor's sleep
schedule, it went like this: The
emperor spent one night alone
with the empress, then one night
with the three consorts as a group,
one night with the nine spouses
as a group, three nights with dif-
ferent groups of nine concubines,
nine nights with different groups of
nine assistant concubines, then
back to the empress again. Tired?

Read 'Em and Weep,
My Liege

Playing cards first appeared in
Europe in the second half of the
14th century. Early Italian decks
had anywhere from 52 to 60 cards
divided into the sword, cup, coin
and wand suits, and each suit had
pretty much the same cards we
have today: ace, two, three and so
on all the way up through king.
Decks with 60 cards had additional
court cards in each suit; sometimes
they were knights, sometimes they
were attendants to the queen.

Historians believe European
cards were inspired by cards from
the East. Italian merchants may
have come across Chinese decks
in their dealings (so to speak) with
silk and spice traders, or crusaders
may have picked them up from
Arabs in the Holy Land. ("Look,
honey, I've brought back cards.
And here's the head of the guy
who gave 'em to me!") However
they got there, they spread quickly.
By the middle of the 15th century,
cards could be found in every
country in Europe.

The oldest surviving cards
were made in France around
1440. They are a set of 10 face
cards found in the cover of an
old book. They'd been glued into
the binding to help stiffen it, and
they have the first known exam-
ples of hearts, diamonds, clubs
and spades. Why hearts, dia-
monds, clubs and spades?
Nobody knows. Stop asking so
many questions.

European playing cards used to
have plain backs, which meant that
if Olaf down at the paper factory
sneezed while making the sheet
your cards were cut from, your ace
of spades could wind up being per-
manently marked with, say, a piece
of spinach. It wasn't until the mid-
dle of the 19th century that it
became common to cover up
imperfections in the paper by print-
ing card backs with either a solid
color or a design.

Another card innovation, the
double-headed face card, didn't