It was a slow Monday evening when Eddie Leeds, Howard Finkel, Allen Paulenoff and Sherman Fogel sat down to play a game of Monopoly. The four students at the University of Pittsburgh had been playing for several hours when they decided to pool their resources, grouping two teams to keep the game going.

Late into that Monday night on 27 November 1961, with no end in sight, the four students felt that to pack up their game would be a waste. How long could they keep playing for? They wanted to find out. Leeds rang KDKA, the local news affiliate, to tell them they were going for a record-breaking attempt. At 3am on Tuesday the local news crew arrived.

By Wednesday the game looked in jeopardy – the bank’s money had run out. The players wired Parker Brothers, the games manufacturer that published Monopoly before it was later absorbed into Hasbro. According to local news reports, the students received a reply from the company president which read: “Refuse to let bank fail. Rushing one million Monopoly dollars to you by airmail – carry on.”

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The toy money was flown to Pittsburgh International Airport before being delivered in an armoured truck.

The four students had inadvertently revealed an interesting loophole in Monopoly: the bank cannot run out of money. This is now written into the Monopoly rule book. But don’t get your hopes up for an armoured truck pulling up outside your house. Should the float ever run out, the rules dictate the bank can issue IOUs, which can be exchanged for cash when the bank becomes solvent again.

Soon, Life photographers, a journalist from the Wall Street Journal and local TV news crews had gathered at the student’s fraternity house to document the game.