The odds were intentionally made longer this lear, leading to swelling lottery jackpots and endless lines of ticket buyers.
Hours before Saturday night's drawing, the Powerball jackpot reached a whopping $900 million, reportedly the largest jackpot in U.S. history.
Gary Cameron / Reuters
These almost unfathomably large jackpots are no stroke of luck. Last fall, lottery officials changed the odds of matching the Powerball numbers from around one in 172 million, to one in 292.2 million.
This makes it harder to win, which makes the prizes grow larger and larger over time, which attracts more people to buy lottery tickets.
Nick Ut / AP
The three winners included Merle and Patricia Butler, a retired couple from Illinois. They received $218.6 million, and told Mega Millions they "are just everyday people who have worked hard all our life...We just happened to hit it big."
They said they used "part of the winnings to do some real good."
The other winners were a group of three from Maryland who asked only to be identified as The Three Amigos, and one anonymous winner from Kansas.
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/1RfqKsL
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