Monday is “Grab Bag” day here at Entertainment Legends Revealed, with each Monday featuring a different area of the world of arts and entertainment (that is not featured on the other four days of the week, that is). They’ll eventually repeat, but for now, we’re still on the initial installments of each of the various “Grab Bag” legends!

This is the first in a series of examinations of legends related to board games and whether they are true or false.

Let’s begin!

BOARD GAME LEGEND: Milton Bradley got into board games because Abraham Lincoln grew a beard.

STATUS: Effectively True

Milton Bradley (1836-1911) was a Massachusetts draftsman who turned to lithography to make a living in 1860.

In 1860, Bradley lucked into one of the hottest selling lithographs of the day, a popular portrait of the man who would become President of the United States that year, Abraham Lincoln.

Massachusetts was almost universally Republican at the time, so Bradley was selling the prints constantly, and with Lincoln headed for the White House, Bradley figured he’d have a cash cow for at least the next four years.

Then, something happened that would change Bradley’s life forever.

Abraham Lincoln grew a beard.

Suddenly, no one wanted a print with a BEARDLESS Lincoln, and Bradley’s newfound career was in trouble.

Now looking for something else to make a living with, Bradley turned his draftsman’s eye towards developing a board game called The Checkered Game of Life, where players would roll a die (or, at the time, a teetotum - a top that worked much like a die) to determine what would happen in their life.

Here’s what it looked like…

The game was successful, and soon Bradley had his own, fairly successful, board game company named after himself (a few decades after his death, the company’s fortunes were helped once again by the debut of the classic children’s board game, Candyland).

Years later, The Game of Life became a more traditional-looking board game.

And all because of Lincoln changing the way he kept his hair…

BOARD GAME LEGEND: Harry Nelson Pillsbury died due to the ill effects of playing chess blindfolded.

STATUS: False

Harry Nelson Pillsbury was one of the most successful chess players of the late 19th/early 20th century, holding the United States Chess Championship title for almost a decade (a title he lost only upon dying).

Pillsbury mastered a unique type of chess playing so as to make a little extra money while playing chess. Pillsbury was a master at “blindfold chess,” which is where a player plays a game of chess strictly by memorizing where they pieces are on the board.

Here are some players doing a game of modern blindfold chess (the computer tracks the pieces for them)…

As you might imagine, following an entire chess game just in your memory is quite difficult.

In 1902, just four years before his death at the age of 33, Pillsbury played 22 simultaneous blindfold games of chess!!

Playing that many games in your head can be pretty difficult, and there are those that say it all takes quite a hit on your nervous system.

In fact, due to health concerns, Russia has banned blindfold chess since 1930!

So when Pillsbury suddenly became sick in his early 30s and died in 1906 at just 33, people were looking for an explanation for his death, as he did not seek any treatment for his disease.

So when Pillsbury began taking ill, people assumed that it was the blindfold chess.

Another prominent chess player of the day, Emanuel Lasker, said that Pillsbury had “died from an illness contracted through overexertion of the memory cells.”

Well, if you switch “genitalia” for “memory cells,” Lasker may be right, because Pillsbury ACTUALLY died of syphilis. At the time, in the circles of society Pillsbury was traveling in, people tended not even to ADMIT to having a sexually transmitted disease. So instead, Pillsbury just seemed to slowly deteriorate until his death in 1906 - of syphilis, not “memory over-exertion.”

That mumbo jumbo about “memory over-exertion” was appropriate enough back then, but the idea that Russia has it STILL banned now, almost eighty years after the fact, well, that’s surprising and a little bit sad.

BOARD GAME LEGEND: For lack of a Scrabble tile, Trivial Pursuit was born.

STATUS: Also Effectively True

Scott Abbott and Chris Haney were two 30-year-old Canadian journalists who were also good friends. They would routinely play Scrabble with each other, evenly matched enough that both men got a more or less equal chance to brag. However, a little before Christmas in 1979, the two men decided that they would have a knockdown, dragged out grudge match Scrabble tournament for complete Scrabble bragging rights.

However, they were unsure that either man had a complete Scrabble set, so Haney went out to buy a new set, to make sure that the tournament would go smoothly.

Now here’s where most versions of the story go a bit astray - they usually go something like, “The two men wanted to play Scrabble, but pieces were missing.” I don’t believe that’s accurate - I think the version that Jeffrey L. Cruikshank told in his book Shaping The Waves: A History Of Entreprenuership At Harvard Business School is more accurate, as it comes directly from the two men. In THAT version, Haney remarked to Abbot when he returned with the set that, due to pieces continually going missing, this was likely the eighth copy of Scrabble that he had purchased.

That led to a discussion about how much money there must be in games, and THAT then led to the friends determining that THEY should create a board game. The basic rules for the game were settled that day, and Haney’s wife came up with the title for the game - Trivial Pursuit.

The new endeavor had a rough go at it originally, with their attempts to raise money mostly rebuffed, except for a few friends. The pair used their newspaper connections to go to Game Fairs pretending to be doing interviews for the news, but really gathering information.

Ultimately, though, the game became popular in Canada and eventually it was brought down to the United States where it became an absolute sensation. A copy boy who worked at the same newspaper of one of the guys had bought into the company using a savings bond and a gift from his mother - his $1,000 investment paid off at over $2 million!!!

And all because they thought that they were missing some Scrabble tiles!

Okay, that’s it for this week!

Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments, particularly other themes for future grab bag Mondays! My e-mail address is bcronin@legendsrevealed.com