Three centuries of patience games, from Napoleonic myth to the most-played computer game ever written.
It was never meant to be a game. It was a mouse tutorial with a green baize disguise — and it ended up on more desks than any piece of software ever written.
The story is too good to check: a defeated emperor on a rock in the Atlantic, dealing cards alone. It is also almost certainly wrong — and the truth is stranger.
Solitaire