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In the early 1930s, Charles Darrow, an unemployed heating salesman in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia, made adaptations to a board game on high finance–including color coded properties and playing pieces modeled on household items–that he sold in department stores in Philadelphia. The demand proved so great that in 1934 Darrow sold his "Monopoly" game to Parker Brothers. By 2000, more than 500 million people around the world had played this game of cutthroat finance.
