The LOTTERY

The word “lottery” comes from the Dutch word “lot” meaning “fate,” as in “It’s our lot in life.” Each year Americans spend more than $70 billion on various types of lottery games with hopes of winning their fortune. That’s more than all movie tickets, music, books, video games, and sports tickets combined. So grab your lucky charm and follow along as we venture into the curious world of chance!

• The concept of lotteries has a long history dating back centuries. The earliest recorded form of lottery was a game called keno (still popular in casinos today) played during the Chinese Han Dynasty between 205 BC and 187 BC. A large portion of the funds gained from these lotteries were used to construct the Great Wall of China.

• Caesar Augustus used revenue from the sale of public lottery chances to restore and rebuild parts of Rome.

• The Netherlands and Belgium used lotteries in the 1400s to bolster government funds. One such lottery held in 1445 offered top winnings equal to $170,000 in today's dollars. Funds raised were used to help their poor population and improve their cities’ infrastructure.

DOUBLING DOWN

• Shortly after Bruce Magistro won $1 million in 2012, his wife died of cancer. Much of that money was needed to cover her medical bills. Incredibly, Magistro hit a second $1 million jackpot four years later, in 2016.

• Kerry and Dianne Carmichael won $2.5 million in 1995 and another $1 million in 2013. To what do they attribute this good fortune? “It’s just persistence,” they say -- plus the $10,000 the couple spends every year on lottery tickets.

• Hard as it is to imagine, a former math professor won big in the lottery -- four times! His random numbers won him $5.4 million the first time, $2 million a decade later, $3 million two years after that, and finally another $10 million in 2010. He continues to faithfully buy his lottery tickets each week, hoping for yet another windfall.

LOTTERY FACTS

• A total of 44 states participate in Powerball, up from 14 states when it first became legal in the U.S. in 1980. The six holdouts are Utah, Alabama, Alaska, Mississippi, Hawaii, and Nevada. Nevada does not participate because the state already benefits richly from gambling profits, and even has no state income tax.

• The world-record Powerball jackpot of $1.5 billion was won in 2016 in South Carolina. Three people split the jackpot, with each opting for the $327 million lump-sum payment (before taxes).

• If you tried to buy every combination of numbers, at $2 per ticket, it would cost you over $584 million to guarantee a win, not including all the people you’d have to pay to fill out the 292 million tickets, each with a different set of numbers - with no duplicates.

• Men in the United States on average play the lottery every 18 days, while women on average will play every 11 days

• As much as $800 million in winnings go unclaimed every year. Sometimes unclaimed jackpots are plowed back into the lottery, while other times the money is donated to various public works funds

• The poorest third of American households buy more than half of all lotto tickets.

LOTTERY ANOMALES

• In 2010, the lottery in Israel drew the same six numbers it had drawn just three weeks earlier. The odds of this ever happening are astronomical -- just one in four trillion.

• Ren Xiaofeng, a manager of The Agricultural Bank of China, stole $26,000 from the bank in 2007 with the intention of buying lottery tickets, winning, and then repaying the initial theft. Against enormous odds, it actually worked. So he tried the method again, this time with $6.7 million. He lost all but $95,000. The government quickly discovered the huge deficit and had him executed in 2008.

• A New York City police officer offered to split a lottery ticket with a restaurant waitress as a tip in 1984. It won $6 million, and he kept his word. They each received a payout of $285,715 a year over 21 years. Their experience inspired the 1994 romantic comedy film “It Could Happen to You,” based on the true story.

Read even more funny and odd Lottery Winner stories in our online edition here.... (ALWAYS FUN, ALWAYS FREE):

https://issuu.com/home/docs/tidbits_cv_-_vol_16_-_no_29___lottery