The board game Monopoly is one of the most misunderstood games ever made.

    There’s a pretty good chance you’ve played Monopoly as a kid, just like me. Perhaps you still play Monopoly with your kids. It’s a fairly complicated game, but with a startlingly simple idea that anyone can grasp—roll a pair of dice, make investments, collect rent, accumulate wealth, win. It’s a game that describes what you need to do to win right there in its name, in one word. That’s how you win.

    But that’s not how it began at all.

    Before Monopoly became a family game that taught you important lessons like convincing your kid sister to buy Electric Company and Water Works while you saved up cash to buy houses at Park Lane and Mayfair to bankrupt her, put her in jail and make her cry, it was another game altogether.

    The story of Monopoly originated as a game in the mid 19th century, and it was created by a strong-willed, progressive woman named Elizabeth Magie who’s lost in history. And it was created not to glorify and encourage capitalism and monopolies, but as a cautionary tale against it.