Here's a toast to gambling, from Blasts from The Ram's Horn, 1902.

Here's a roll of the dice from Diccionario Enciclopedico Hispano-Americano de Literatura, Siencias y Artes, 1887.  See also our guide to Astragalomancy (finally released from private circulation in the magical underground), which reveals for the first time the secret meanings of 21 discrete dice throws.

From Lavengro; The Scholar, the Gypsy, the Priest by George Henry Borrow, 1896.  The caption reads, "There is nothing like flinging the bones!"

"Loaded:"  an illustration from a 1918 issue of Life magazine.

Why does Prof. Oddfellow so often rag Big Science, and why does he so often back zero?  Here's a quotation (first posted to our Spotted in the Wild blog) that explains all:

"You should be aware that science, dealing only with the general, leaves out of consideration the individual cases that contradict the enormous majority.  Occasionally the heart is on the right side of the body, but you would not on that account ever put your stethoscope in any other than the usual spot.  It is possible that under certain conditions the law of gravity does not apply, yet you will conduct your life under the conviction that it does so invariably.  Now, there are some of us who choose to deal only with these exceptions to the common run.  The dull man who plays at Monte Carlo puts his money on the colours, and generally black or red turns up; but now and then zero appears, and he loses.  But we, who have backed zero all the time, win many times our stake.  Here and there you will find men whose imagination raises them above the humdrum of mankind.  They are willing to lose their all if only they have chance of a great prize.  Is it nothing not only to know the future, as did the prophets of old, but by making it to force the very gates of the unknown?" —William Somerset Maugham, The Magician