A tontine is an investment vehicle which combines features of a group annuity, group life insurance, and a lottery. An annuity (from Latin annus, a year), is an investment that provides a defined series of payments in the future in exchange for an up-front sum of money. ... It has been suggested that Life assurance be merged into this article or section. ... A lottery is a popular form of gambling which involves the drawing of lots for a prize. ...

The scheme is named after Neapolitan banker Lorenzo de Tonti, who is generally credited with inventing it in France in 1653. Some sources claim that similar schemes already existed in Italy, but there is no dispute that the popularity of the form was due to Tonti. A Neapolitan is a resident of Naples, Italy or the language of Naples, the surrounding region of Campania, and most of southern Italy. ... Lorenzo de Tonti (1602?-1684?) was a governor of Gaeta, Italy and the Neapolitan banker that invented the tontine, a form of life insurance. ... Events February 2 - New Amsterdam (later renamed New York City) is incorporated. ...

The basic concept is simple. Each investor pays a sum into the tontine. The funds are invested and each investor receives dividends. As each investor dies, his or her share is divided amongst the surviving investors. This process continues until only one investor survives. Originally, the last surviving subscriber received only the dividends: the capital reverted to the state upon his or her death and was used to fund public works projects, which often contained the word "tontine" in their name. In a later variation, the capital would devolve upon the last survivor, effectively dissolving the trust, and it is this version that has often been the plot device for mysteries and detective stories. A dividend is the distribution or sharing of parts of profits to a companys shareholders. ... The notion of internal improvements or public works is a concept in economics and politics. ...

While once very popular in France, Britain, and the United States, tontines have been banned in Britain and the United States due to the incentive for investors to kill one another, thereby increasing their shares. Nevertheless, there are underground organizations in the US that still use the tontine, and ownership of a business or property by joint tenancy with right of survivorship has much the same effect. Co-tenancy or joint tenancy is a concept in property law, particularly derived from the common law of real property, which describes the various ways in which property can be owned by more than one person at a given time. ...

Tontines have often appeared in fiction, usually, but not always, as a motive for murder. In The Wrong Box, a novel by Robert Louis Stevenson, the object is to conceal the death of one of the last two investors. A more innocuous tontine was the subject of a M*A*S*H episode in which Colonel Potter, the last survivor of his World War I unit, inherits a case of brandy with which to toast the memory of his old comrades. In an episode of The Simpsons, Grandpa and Mr. Burns, having entered into a tontine during World War II, struggle with one another over the treasure, a safe filled with contraband paintings. The Wrong Box is a 1966 British comedy film directed by Bryan Forbes based on a story by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne. ... Robert Louis Stevenson Robert Louis (Balfour) Stevenson (November 13, 1850 – December 3, 1894), was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer. ... Inspired by the 1970 20th Century-Fox film of the same name, M*A*S*H (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) was an American television series about a team of medical professionals and support staff stationed at the 4077th MASH in Korea during the Korean War. ... Combatants Entente Powers Central Powers Commanders {{{commander1}}} {{{commander2}}} Strength {{{strength1}}} {{{strength2}}} Casualties > 5 million military deaths > 3 million military deaths {{{notes}}} World War I, also known as the First World War and (before 1939) the Great War, the War of the Nations, War to End All Wars, was a world... The Flying Hellfish squad was a fictional army unit from The Simpsons. ... The Simpsons is the longest-running American animated television series and overall sitcom, with 17 seasons and 367 episodes since it debuted on December 17, 1989 on FOX. The TV series, created by Matt Groening, is a spinoff of a series of animated shorts originally aired on The Tracey Ullman... Combatants Allied Powers Axis Powers Commanders {{{commander1}}} {{{commander2}}} Strength {{{strength1}}} {{{strength2}}} Casualties 17 million military deaths 7 million military deaths {{{notes}}} World War II, also known as the Second World War (sometimes WW2 or WWII or World War Two), was a mid-20th century conflict that engulfed much of the...

A tontine is also used as a plot device in the novel "Seventy Seven Clocks" by Christopher Fowler, and in one of the Dr Syn books. Christopher Fowler (born 1953) is an British horror writer. ... Doctor Syn is the smuggler hero of a series of novels by Russell Thorndike, who was was the brother of the celebrated English actress Dame Sybil Thorndike. ...

In cryptography a tontine is a secret sharing algorithm which allows n people to share secret data, such that any k of them can reconstruct it by combining their keys. The Enigma machine, used by Germany in World War II, implemented a complex cipher to protect sensitive communications. ... Each secret share is a plane, and the secret is the point at which three shares intersect. ...