Doesn't Have a Chance

Playing cards have existed for at least six hundred years in Europe, and for many centuries more in Asian countries. Although the history of playing cards has fascinated scholars since the seventeenth century, a definite date of their invention remains difficult to establish. One theory posits that playing cards were invented in China for a concubine of the emperor S'eun Ho in the year 1120. Another sets the date of invention at 969. And long before that, early in the T'ang dynasty, paper existed that so resembled Chinese cards that the latter could not have been far behind. It is generally believed that playing cards evolved with the graphic arts in all countries where those arts emerged, and so could have originated in any or every country (being Egypt, India and China) to which the invention has been attributed. The time and place of the introduction of playing cards in Europe is also unclear. They may have been carried home by returning crusaders, or brought into Eastern Europe by gypsies or Tartars. In any event, playing cards are today enjoyed around the world, even by the policeman in this photograph, who clearly doesn't have a chance against his opponent's winning hand.