Did You Know ‘Monopoly’ Is Older Than You Think?

Monopoly, the board game that celebrates capitalism, will celebrate its 90th anniversary in 2025. Except the venerable champion of family game night is actually older than that.

While many have wrongly credited Charles Darrow in the early 1930s as the creator of the game, it was actually developed in 1903 by Elizabeth Magie as “The Landlord’s Game,” designed to show how rents enriched property owners and impoverished tenants. The game went through many iterations, including a version created by Darrow and in 1935 the game company Parker Brothers bought the rights to Monopoly from Darrow after rival game manufacturer Milton Bradley rejected it.

The game became so popular that it was even used at American colleges and universities as a teaching tool in business schools and became a perennial best seller.

Today the game is owned by Hasbro and comes in several versions, including as a card game, a kids edition, a cheater edition and even a Star Wars special edition.