In 1992, a man named Stefan Mandel won a $27,036,142 jackpot, 6 second prizes, 132 third prizes, and 135 minor prizes in one lottery, by buying every single combination possible – Over 5.5 million tickets. All 44 US states with lotteries have since changed their laws to prevent this.
lottery
When the results began coming…
When the results began coming in from the 30 March 2005 Powerball drawing, lottery officials suspected fraud was underway because 110 players claimed second prizes of $100,000 or $500,000. All 110 players and the jackpot winner got their numbers from fortune cookies.
In 1728, the philosopher Voltaire…
In 1728, the philosopher Voltaire got rich by outsmarting the lottery. The prize money was larger than the cost of all the tickets combined, so Voltaire and his friend formed a syndicate, bought all the tickets, and won several times.
A woman named Glenda Blackwell…
A woman named Glenda Blackwell bought a scratch off lottery ticket to prove to her husband that buying lottery tickets was a waster of money and accidentally ended up winning $1 million.
Jawdat Ibrahim, an Arab Israeli…
Jawdat Ibrahim, an Arab Israeli man, won $22m the Illinois lottery in 1990 and used his winnings to develop his home village of Abu Ghosh. The hummus restaurant he opened there has been used to host Israel-Palestine peace talks, and set the world record for largest Hummus.
A woman has won the Lottery…
A woman has won the Lottery four times since 1993. She was outed as a PhD of Statistics from Standford University and had figured out the pseudo-number generator for the distribution of the winning tickets. She won a total of $17million, and has since moved to Las Vegas.
A California woman won $1.3 million…
A California woman won $1.3 million in the lottery and filed for divorce 11 days later. She didn’t tell her husband, and two years later her husband found out all about it and sued her. The Judge awarded her husband all of her winnings.
A lottery scratcher in England…
A lottery scratcher in England was cancelled because too many customers could not figure out which is the higher of two negative numbers.
Americans spend more on lottery…
Americans spend more on lottery tickets than on movies, video games, music and books combined.
In 2010, Israel’s weekly state lottery drew exactly…
In 2010, Israel’s weekly state lottery drew exactly the same 6 numbers as the draw 3 weeks earlier – an event statisticians said was a one in four trillion chance.