Last draw of the Euromillions lottery this year brought 7.5 million euros ($12.75 million) to unnamed 50-year-old “Mister Luck” who has become the envy of millions of Europeans.
But the lucky winner who lives in Riemst, a small Flemish town near the Dutch border, decided to give half of his multi-million-euro prize for heating to the people in need.
From MSNBC:
WELLINGTON, New Zealand - A “nagging” wife who pushed her husband to buy a lottery ticket helped scoop the $4.2 million ($7.7 million New Zealand dollar) first prize — with only minutes to spare. The man from New Zealand’s biggest city, Auckland, bought his ticket just two minutes before ticket sales closed Saturday night.
“My wife had been nagging me all week to get a ticket, so I when saw the Lotto sign … I sprinted in to get the ticket before they closed,” said the man, who asked not to be identified — normal practice among lottery winners in New Zealand.
“I must have been their last customer of the night,” he said, adding that the young married couple had had a “rough” couple of years, reduced to one income after having children.
This Saturday, there’s a rollover on the National Lottery. £31 million is up for grabs!
Feeling lucky? Play Lotto online now
A Colorado Springs woman who bought scratch tickets with no chance of winning the top prize is suing Texaco, the owner of the gas station where she bought the tickets a decade ago.
LaVonne Bazemore Watkins said she bought a $2 “Luck of the Zodiac” scratch ticket in hopes of winning the top $10,000 prize. However, she later learned that the last $10,000 award had been claimed more than two months before.
“I’ve been cheated, I’ve been lied to, and I’m not the only one. I want somebody held accountable,” said Watkins, who still buys the occasional scratch ticket.
About 20 states, including Colorado, continue to sell scratch tickets after all of the top prizes have been given away……
From: Buy Your Ticket To Lottery Knowledge Here:
1) Lotteries of yore (They’re older than you think!)
Lotteries have been around as long as arithmetic. According to the Bible, God ordered Moses to use a lottery to divvy up land along the River Jordan. That story came from the Book of Numbers (naturally), but lotteries are also mentioned in Joshua, Leviticus, and Proverbs.
The concept can also be traced back to China, where a warlord named Cheung Leung came up with a numbers game (today known as keno) to persuade citizens to help pay for his army.
Other famous lotteries? Augustus Caesar authorized one to raise money for public works projects in Rome. The Chinese used one to help finance the Great Wall. And in 1466, in what is now the Belgian town of Bruges, a lottery was created to help the poor — a fund-raising effort they’ve been doing ever since……
RICHMOND, INDIANA - The only winning ticket for a $314.3 million Powerball lottery prize was sold in this city near the Indiana-Ohio state line, lottery officials said Sunday.
Lottery officials won’t know who holds that ticket until someone comes forward, said Marc Sirkin, a spokesman for the Hoosier Lottery.
The ticket was sold at a Speedway convenience store.
A man from Cornwall won an extra share of the £2.5m Lotto jackpot - after he bought two tickets with the same numbers.
Derek Ladner, 59, from Redruth, Cornwall, bought a ticket after forgetting he already had one, meaning he had two wins for the same draw.
He and his wife Dawn, 60, reaped the rewards on Wednesday after being presented with a cheque for £958,284.
It is the first time the same person has won twice in the same draw.
The lucky numbers on both tickets for the draw on 11 July were 3, 9, 10, 12, 46 and 47.
A Camelot spokesman said: “It must have been a huge and happy surprise.”Two days after the draw was made, on Friday 13 July, delivery driver Mr Ladner claimed his £479,142 share of the £2.5m jackpot.
It was not until a week later he remembered he had bought another ticket with the same numbers for the same draw.
Mrs Ladner said it took her husband a little while to convince her they had hit a double jackpot.“I just couldn’t believe it - I kept telling him he’d got it wrong and to check it again,” she said.
The couple plan to have a holiday to give themselves time to contemplate what they will do with the money.
Mr Ladner is planning to give up work so he can spend more time on his favourite hobby of playing bowls.
He said they will continue to play the lottery - keeping the same numbers.
“They say lightning never strikes twice but it did, so perhaps it’ll strike three times,” he added.
IN the week that the prize-winning money in the lotto reached record levels, one Northside (Dublin) pensioner thought he had hit his own jackpot.
Ciaran Boland (79), from Seabury, Malahide, visited the National Lottery headquarters in the city centre last Monday week (July 23) believing he may have had the winning ticket to a near €800,000 fortune in his hand.
Ciaran had received the ‘prize’ in his post that morning, stating that he was the lucky winner of €785,510 in an international promotions lottery.
However, the supposed lottery does not actually exist and is part of an intricate scam by fraudsters hoping to gain access to people’s bank account details.
Speaking to Northside People, Ciaran said he always believed his prize-winning money didn’t exist, but, at the back of his mind, he just had to find out for sure.
“That is why I went into the National Lottery, because even if there was only a one in a thousand chance that I had won this money, I needed to know,� he stated.
“But it did always seem like it was too good to be true.�
When Ciaran produced his winning ticket to the National Lottery, an official advised him that it was a scam.
“They told me that I would be best off if I told the gardai about it,� he said.
“Naturally I was disappointed because you do begin to think that there is just maybe a slight chance you have won the money.�
From Spiegel Online:
A Dutch woman was so traumatized when her neighbors won the lottery that she decided to sue for emotional damages. But an Amsterdam court ruled that she had no claim, and that sometimes life is just not fair.
The lottery can be traumatizing. Especially if your neighbor wins.
A Dutch woman claimed that she had suffered emotional damages because she hadn’t win the lottery, but her neighbors had. Helene de Gier explained that she was traumatized after seven of her neighbors won €13.9 million ($18.6 million) each in the National Postcode Lottery.
In this particular Dutch lottery, postal codes are selected at random and people living in that area can enter for prizes ranging from a few euros to millions. Proceeds generated by the lottery go to charity.
When de Gier’s lucky neighbors in the small town of Heusden hit the jackpot, she hadn’t even entered. She then filed a suit, arguing that the lottery was an invasion of privacy because of the media attention surrounding the town’s selection.
She also claimed that her newly rich neighbors had rubbed her nose in her bad luck, with one cruelly parking a brand new Porsche in front of his house.
She says that she became obsessed with the lottery, and was confronted with her loss every time she had to write her address. According to de Gier, the lottery advertisements were in effect “emotional blackmail,” by threatening to cause disappointment if someone’s neighbors won and they didn’t.
In a TV interview she tearfully recounted how she came to dread the next lottery draw, which “felt like a noose around my neck being tightened.” And she said this lottery was not any ordinary game of chance. “In other lotteries you would never know for sure that if you had only participated you would have won,” she insisted.
The court was not convinced. The judges ruled on Wednesday against her claim, and said the postcode lottery was no different to any other lottery or game of chance. After all, anyone can say after the results are in that if they had bet on the outcome they would have won.
The judges sympathized with the divisions caused in de Gier’s village, but said that it was to be expected in a “small community.”
In a summary of their written ruling, the judges said: “Things happen that have unpleasant consequences for someone, but that doesn’t automatically mean the one causing them can be held liable.”
But de Gier defended her legal battle. “I’m not a sore loser. Absolutely not.”
Did you know the Elgordo draw is just around the corner?
Elgordo is famous for its massive prize fund and is known for making more millionaires than any other lottery.
The billion dollar prize fund is arguably the biggest in the world and people from all over buy tickets each year in the hope of winning a prize - have you got your ticket yet?
First prize payout is: $24 Million USD
37,814 Prizes worth over US$168 Million USD
AND a 1 in 3 chance of winning a prize (please note: this is a sweepstakes and although the odds are 1 in 3, this does not guarantee that you will win a prize, please play responsibly and do not overspend on this game).
BUT - TIME is running out, if you do not have your tickets then snap them up here: Buy Elgordo tickets now!
Good luck for the draw!