Dominoes are small rectangular blocks that bear an arrangement of spots on one side, like the markings on a die. They are used for playing a variety of games.
The word domino comes from the Latin dominium, meaning “flip or top.” The first domino was set down on a soft surface like a tiled floor or a carpet and then knocked over with a stick or some other object. Its impact caused a chain reaction that brought down the rest of the set. The earliest recorded use of the word in print dates to 1640, and it appears several times in the works of Thomas Jefferson.
In the early 19th century, the game became popular in England. By the late 1860s, it was widely played in the United States as well. In 1868, a domino manufacturer named Richard Dawson created an improved version of the game that featured smoother surfaces. This change eliminated the rough edges and made the pieces more durable.
Since then, domino has become a favorite form of entertainment. People of all ages enjoy arranging dominoes in straight or curved lines and then flicking them to cause them to fall. The art of creating elaborate domino setups has attracted a number of professionals. Lily Hevesh, for example, has more than 2 million YouTube subscribers for her videos showing her amazing setups. She’s worked on projects involving hundreds of thousands of dominoes, and she helped create a Guinness World Record for the largest Domino Setup.
To play domino, players take turns placing a domino on a tiled surface and then removing it when their turn ends. The player who has the most tiles left takes another turn. In some variants, a player must pass his or her turn if the domino he or she lays cannot be matched to any other dominoes that have already been placed.
Each domino has a specific numerical value, which is called its suit. Every domino in a set belongs to either the suit of ones or the suit of sixes. For example, a domino with a 2 on one end and a 5 on the other is known as a 6-6. A domino with the same number on both ends is known as a double.
Before a game begins, the tiles are shuffled and placed in a boneyard on the table. This collection of unused dominoes is also sometimes called a “table of death.” The players then begin to place their tiles, taking care not to reveal which ones are theirs.
In the late 1960s and 1970s, the United States military deployed forces in support of the Ngo Dinh Diem regime in South Vietnam, hoping to create a Red Sandwich that would contain Communism in Asia. In the 1977 Frost/Nixon interviews, former President Richard Nixon defended this strategy on the grounds of domino theory. The Reagan administration later employed the theory to justify its intervention in Central America and the Caribbean.