Lotteries deliver the goods

High value lottery wins in several countries have been recently recorded.
In Pine Falls, Manitoba a Canadian woman came forward over the weekend to claim what is believed to be the largest lottery prize in the province’s history and one of the largest ever in Canada, according to the Canadian Press news agency.
Local resident Marie Fontaine won $50-million, buying her ticket in the Lotto Max draw at a local store about one hour before Friday’s cutoff.
Fontaine initially phoned the store on Saturday to check her numbers, then came down with her husband and several of her siblings to double check them.
The store owner reports that the family – with some justification – was jumping up and down, screaming, crying and laughing all at the same time after determining that Marie had captured the super jackpot.
Across the Atlantic in England, a record GBP 90 million was split between two tickets in Friday’s EuroMillions draw but it took 48 hours before the winners realised they were quite literally in the big money.
Once the wins and identities have been confirmed by the lottery, each will receive GBP 45,570,835.50.
The massive jackpot is the result of nine weeks of rollovers in nine countries including Britain, and the win represents odds of one in 76,275,360.
The National Lottery celebrates its 15th anniversary this month, having created 2,300 millionaires since its first draw on November 19, 1994.
In South Africa, a businessman in the Limpopo province claimed the Rands 30 million jackpot in the new Powerball draw, repeating the experience he had seven years previously when he took down a Rands 11 million main prize in the SA national lottery.
SA Lottery officials said that the winner, who wishes to remain anonymous – made his own way to the lottery offices in Johannesburg having checked his R7 Quick Pick ticket at a local Limpopo province store, where he found that he had beaten ‘galactic odds’ to scoop the top prize twice.
Statistics showed he beat odds of 14 million to one to scoop his first jackpot, and 24 million to one to claim the second.
Back in the United States, there was another double winner. A New Hampshire couple from Nashua, Bob and Diane Jaracz, became the first New Hampshire residents to win a lottery grand prize twice.
The couple won Tri-State Megabucks in 2005 for $1.9 million, as well as hitting the jackpot on Tri-State Weekly Grand more recently for $1,040,000 million. On both occasions the ticket numbers were Easy Pick generated.
Jaracz, a semiretired engineer, and his wife Diane, a retired New York City school teacher, used their winnings to pay off the mortgage, spruce up the house, and purchase a luxury car.
“This is the first time we know of that a New Hampshire lottery winner has won a grand prize more than once,” said Rick Wisler, executive director of the NH Lottery.

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