Wednesday, March 7, 2007
There are at least two big winners in Tuesday night’s US$370 million Mega Millions lottery drawing which is held in 12 U.S. states. The two winning tickets were sold in Georgia and New Jersey, but lottery officials say that no one has come forward to claim their millions.
One ticket was sold at a store called Campark Liquors, which is located in Woodbine, New Jersey. The other ticket was sold at what is called the Favorite Market, located in Dalton, Georgia.
The drawing, the biggest in Mega Millions history, was moved from its usual location in Atlanta, Georgia to Times Square, New York because at one point, according to New York’s lottery commissioner, Robert McLaughlin, at least 1,000,000 tickets an hour were being sold in the state of New York.
Some people in Ohio were not so lucky. In fact, the state’s lottery system, for reasons still not known, went off-line at 10:25 p.m., just over a half hour before the drawing was to be held.
At least one person was one number away from winning the jackpot, matching five of the six numbers. That ticket is worth $250,000 and was bought at Burtonsville Crown Beer & Wine in Montgomery County, Maryland.
The previous record for the highest multi-state lottery was set back in 2006 when the Power Ball jackpot paid out at least $365 million dollars to eight people in Nebraska. Another multi-state lottery, The Big Game (which was later named Mega Millions) has the third highest jackpot of $363 million dollars which was paid out in 2000.
The lottery numbers were, 16-22-29-39-42 and the Mega Ball was, 20. The odds of actually winning the jackpot, by yourself, was at least one in 176 million. Each group of numbers costs only one dollar.