Who invented solitaire?

Answer 1

I'm reading a biography about Franklin D. Roosevelt and in this book, it talks about how he liked to play solitaire with 5 decks of cards and he called it "spider." So I think it was FDR.

Answer 2

Although there have been some claims that the game of Mahjong is more than 2,500 years ago, those claims have been unsubstantiated. It is more likely that Mahjong was first played in the mid-1800's around the provinces of Shanghai, China. The oldest Mahjong tile yet found dates only to the 1880's.

There are similar card games that resemble Mahjong that date back much longer (to the 10th century), and other tile games such as dominos were played as early as the 12th century.

Interestingly, the game of Mahjong was banned in China after the Communist revolution of the 1940's (due to the belief that it encouraged capitalist gambling), and was not allowed until the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) was well underway.