Mega Millions lottery: Winning numbers in Northwest, 'Lost' numbers also win
Lottery ticket sales operator Laura Szafranski takes a Mega Millions lottery ticket from the printer for a customer in Pittsburgh, on Tuesday, Jan. 4, 2011. The Mega Millions multi-state lottery jackpot prize was estimated at $350 million at the time of the ticket sale shown. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)
(Keith Srakocic - AP)
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Wednesday, January 5, 2011; 2:44 PM
The Mega Millions jackpot of $335 million induced quite the scramble. As Mark Carlson reported:
Thousands of people lined up in 41 states and in Washington, D.C., ahead of the Mega Millions drawing on Tuesday in hopes of buying the winning ticket for the lottery game's $355 million jackpot.
The prize is the fourth largest in U.S. history and the second largest in Mega Millions history, said Arizona Lottery spokeswoman Cindy Esquer. The lottery's prize of $390 million in March 2007 remains the nation's richest on record.
We got a pretty good, steady flow of traffic as far as buying the tickets goes," said Bill Evans, owner of Beaver Dam Service Station in northwest Arizona. "As the day progresses we'll have a line out the door, I'm sure."
When the winner was announced Wednesday, the jackpot had increased substantially, wrote Jessie Bonner:
After a nationwide frenzy for a life-changing chance to win a $380 million Mega Millions jackpot, the two winning tickets were sold in small Pacific Northwest towns just 125 miles apart.
Idaho Lottery officials said Wednesday that someone bought a winning ticket in the northern Idaho town of Post Falls. That's just across the border from Washington, where the other winning ticket was sold at a Safeway supermarket in Ephrata.
In a twist of fate, the full combination of winning numbers came close to those used in the show 'Lost', as Celebritology reported:
Yes, as "Lost" executive producer Damon Lindelof already noted via Twitter, some Mega Millions hopefuls actually dared to play Hurley's lottery numbers: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42. And this time, it didn't lead to the deaths of Grandpa Tito or Tricia Tanaka.
In a mind-blowing coincidence that once again proves the world revolves around "Lost" even though it's no longer on television, the winning numbers in the Mega Millions lottery came dangerously close to being those same numbers. In real life, they were 4, 8, 15, 25, 47, with Mega Ball number 42. As Geekosystem explains, anyone who correctly chose three of those numbers -- approximately 25,000 "Lost" nuts, by the blog's count, even more than Lindelof's estimate -- wins $150.
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