Crazy but True! Amazing Lottery Facts and Stories

Here are 35 amazing facts about lotteries around the world. Enjoy!

1. Americans spend over $80 billion on the lottery yearly, which is more than any other form of entertainment.
2. You would think anyone would retire after a big win, but about 48% of people continue to do their day job.
3. 83% of lottery winners give some of their winnings to loved ones (siblings, parents, and children).
4. Some states usually make more money from selling lottery tickets than income tax.
5.  The biggest Powerball jackpot was $1.586 billion in 2016, split between three winners.
6. The five biggest jackpots in lottery history have been from Powerball and Mega Millions.
7. 32% of lottery winners end up gaining weight.
8. 99% of winners continue playing the lottery, with 70% believing they will win again.
9. Only seven states allow jackpot winners to remain anonymous. The rest of the US requires that winners go public.
10. One Chicago couple decided to stay anonymous after winning $30 million. They were so committed to this that they kept their jobs and hid the money from their two teenage children.
11. A California woman named Denise Rossi applied for a divorce from her husband after a $1.3 million win. She never told her husband, and he found out several years later. He took it to court and received his half-share of the win.

Lucky and unlucky winners

1. Powerball once had 110 second-prize winners, meaning the $19.4 million prize was split into 89 prizes of $100,000 and 21 prizes of $500,000.
2. A bartender in Oregon was once given a lottery ticket as a tip, which turned out to be a winner. The bartender attempted to pay the money back to the patron. Still, they refused to take it and insisted the bartender kept it.
3. If someone buys a ticket illegally, they will not receive any winnings. A woman in Oregon once bought a ticket with her boyfriend’s dead mother’s credit card. She was denied the winnings of $1 million.
4.  A former maths professor has secured a fortune of $20.4 million across four lottery wins. She claims her mathematical skill had nothing to do with these wins.
5. The National Endowment for Financial Education estimates that about 70% of winners will go bankrupt within a few short years of winning.
6. Each year roughly $2 billion of lottery winnings go unclaimed in the US alone.
7. 2% of lottery winners claim that winning has made them less happy.
8. An Australian man called Bill Morgan was in a car crash and declared legally dead for 14 minutes. He miraculously returned to life and celebrated by buying a scratch card, which won him a new car worth $27,000. A TV crew asked him to recreate the moment, so he bought another scratch card, which won him another $250,000.

A bit of history

1. Voltaire, alongside French mathematician Charles Marie de La Condamine, used a loophole in the French national lottery to win it multiple times, winning almost half a million francs.
2. The first lottery in England was about 450 years ago and was hosted by Queen Elizabeth I.
3. The biggest ever win in Euros was after the SuperEnalotto rolled over for more than a year and reached over €209 million.
4. The most jackpot winners of one lottery were in the Spanish El Gordo, which once had 180 winning tickets.
5. The biggest unclaimed win ever was in EuroMillions. Two tickets won the jackpot of $174 million, but only one prize was claimed, leaving a life-changing $87 million unclaimed.
6. Some of the earliest lotteries were around the year 200 BC. The Western Han Dynasty managed to fund repairs and additions to the Great Wall of China using lotteries.
7. In Ancient Rome, an emperor called Elagabus held a lottery by catapulting tickets into the streets, which people scrambled for. Mixed in with the tickets were venomous snakes. Some of the prizes included dead dogs and the execution of some of the ticket holders.

Around the world

1. The UK National Lottery has been known to fund films such as Billy Elliot, The Last King of Scotland, and The King’s Speech.
2. Canadian couple Violet and Allen Large won a jackpot of $11.2 million. For most, this would be the win of their dreams. Still, this couple donated all of it to hospitals, cemeteries, churches, the Salvation Army, and the Red Cross.
3. 1 in 4 lottery winners buys property abroad.
4. The Vatican has its own lottery. It is smaller than most lotteries, with €10 tickets and the top prize being a car. The Pope has several charities that receive 100% of the proceeds.
5. In Sweden, speed cameras capture the registration plates of speeders and drivers under the limit. Those obeying the law can win a portion of the fines paid by the speeders.
6. Every shopping receipt in Taiwan is also a lottery ticket with a top prize of more than $300,000. The government introduced this scheme to crack down on stores that weren’t giving customers receipts so they could avoid sales taxes.
7. Due to the rapidly growing population in India, the government implemented an incentive for people who volunteered for sterilization. These volunteers were given 600 rupees and a lottery ticket with prizes, including household products and a car as the jackpot.
8. Win Millions Lotto is running a similar offer giving new customers a free line when they buy their first line. Don’t worry, though; we have left the sterilization part out!

A new kind of lottery

Win Millions Lotto allows you to play the numbers of some of the world’s most popular and biggest lotteries. You can pick your numbers, buy tickets, and see all the results online.

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