98 Fun Facts About Lottery

Legend traces the lottery-style game keno to which Chinese dynasty of over 2,000 years ago?

Han: legend credits the strategist Zhang Liang with inventing the game to fund a war, and it is said to have helped pay for the Great Wall, though no Chinese lottery is documented before 1847.

Which French writer grew rich in 1729 by helping to exploit a flaw in a government lottery?

Voltaire joined a syndicate formed by the mathematician La Condamine to buy up a badly designed state lottery, and his share of the profits is thought to have left him rich.

Which country's state lottery, running since 1726, is the oldest still in operation?

Netherlands: in 1726 the Dutch state merged a patchwork of separate lotteries into one national draw, and the Staatsloterij has been running ever since.

Modern lotto descends from betting in which Italian city on which five of ninety council members would be drawn?

Genoa chose five officials by lot from 90 candidates and citizens bet on the outcome; the game proved so popular that numbers replaced the names and the state took it over.

Roman emperors such as Augustus and Nero gave away prizes by lottery during which festival?

Saturnalia feasts ended with guests drawing lots for gifts to carry home, and every ticket won something, from fine dinnerware to, under the emperors, property and slaves.

Which English monarch chartered England's first official state lottery in the 1560s?

Elizabeth I chose a lottery over a new tax to pay for harbours and ships, but at 10 shillings a ticket most of her subjects couldn't afford to play.

What unusual perk came with every ticket in England's first official state lottery, held in the 1560s?

Immunity from one arrest was thrown in to sweeten the deal, though it didn't cover piracy, murder, felonies or treason.

From 1612 the Virginia Company of London ran English lotteries to support which American settlement?

Jamestown: the lotteries, drawn across England, propped up the struggling colony for years, but never covered its need for funds before they were stopped.

A New York lottery authorized in 1746 raised the first funds for which Ivy League university?

Columbia: New York's assembly voted the lottery after hearing that New Jersey was about to found the college that became Princeton, and King's College opened in 1754.

Benjamin Franklin organized a lottery to buy what for the defense of Philadelphia?

Cannons: Franklin's lottery paid for a gun battery below the town; by his own account he then coaxed New York's governor, over plenty of Madeira, into lending more.

Which Founding Father's signature made tickets from the failed 1768 Mountain Road Lottery prized collector's items?

George Washington backed the lottery to build a road over Virginia's mountains to a planned resort; it flopped amid a glut of rival lotteries, but his signed tickets now sell for thousands of dollars.

Which famous memoirist helped launch France's state lottery in 1757, months after escaping from prison?

Giacomo Casanova, a Venetian fresh from breaking out of the Doge's prison, became a trustee and star ticket-seller of the new French lottery and quickly made a fortune.

After the Civil War, which state chartered a private lottery that sold tickets nationwide and became a byword for corruption?

Louisiana: its lottery company paid ex-Confederate generals P.G.T. Beauregard and Jubal Early to preside over the drawings and lend the 'Octopus' some respectability.

Which US state launched the first modern state-run lottery in the contiguous United States, in 1964?

New Hampshire tied its Sweepstakes to horse races at Rockingham Park instead of drawing numbers, to get around federal anti-lottery laws.

Where was the first modern government-run lottery under the US flag established, in 1934?

Puerto Rico had held lottery draws under Spanish rule as far back as 1814; its 1934 revival came three decades before any US state followed.

Which of these casino states is one of only five in the US with no state lottery?

Nevada's casino industry has long lobbied against a state lottery as unwanted competition; Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii and Utah are the other four holdouts.

Powerball was born in 1992 as a rebrand of which earlier multi-state game?

Lotto America became Powerball in April 1992, switching to a then-novel two-drum draw that let it pair long jackpot odds with plenty of smaller prizes.

In Powerball, what colour is the Powerball itself, drawn from its own drum of 26?

Red: the game is named after this one ball, drawn from its own drum of 26, and matching it alone still wins $4.

What are the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot on a single play?

1 in 292 million: there are 11,238,513 ways to draw five white balls from 69, and 26 possible Powerballs multiply that to 292,201,338 different tickets.

The $2.04 billion Powerball ticket of November 2022 was sold in which California town?

Altadena: Edwin Castro bought the only winning ticket at Joe's Service Center, which earned a $1 million bonus for selling it, and he took his prize as a $997.6 million lump sum.

In 2005, 110 Powerball players won second prize together after all playing numbers found in what?

Fortune cookies: officials suspected fraud until winners explained that their numbers came from fortunes printed at one New York factory; the payout came to about $19 million.

Which October 2015 Powerball change led to January 2016's then-record $1.586 billion prize?

A harder jackpot: ten extra white balls meant more drawings with no winner, so the prize kept rolling over until three tickets split $1.586 billion in January 2016.

Where are Powerball drawings held?

Tallahassee, Florida: the balls are kept in a vault at the state lottery's studio, where one of several Powerball machines is picked at random and wheeled out for each drawing.

Mega Millions launched in 1996 under what name?

The Big Game sold its first tickets in six states in 1996; the name gave way to Mega Millions in 2002, when New York and Ohio joined the group.

Until 2025, what was Mega Millions' $1 add-on that multiplied non-jackpot prizes called?

Megaplier: the optional extra was retired in April 2025, when the ticket price jumped from $2 to $5 and a multiplier of up to ten times was built into every play.

The $1.602 billion Mega Millions ticket of August 2023 was bought at a Publix supermarket in which state?

Florida: the ticket was sold at a Publix in Neptune Beach, and the winner chose to take the prize at once, as a single payment of $794.2 million.

Where are Mega Millions drawings held?

Atlanta, Georgia: weeks after Powerball staged draws at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, Georgia stopped selling it and helped launch this game instead, whose drawings are held at WSB-TV's studios.

Who presented the television programme for the first UK National Lottery draw on 19 November 1994?

Noel Edmonds fronted an hour-long special in which 49 contestants competed to be the one who started the draw; seven ticket-holders then shared a jackpot of about £5.9 million.

Which company ran the UK National Lottery from its 1994 launch until 2024?

Camelot named its first draw machines Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot and Merlin; after 30 years it lost the licence to the Czech-owned Allwyn, which took over in February 2024.

In the TV drama Lost, which character wins the lottery by playing the cursed numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42?

Hurley picks the numbers up from a fellow patient who keeps muttering them, and after his win everyone around him meets with disaster, convincing him the jackpot is cursed.

From 2015 to 2026, matching two numbers in UK Lotto won what?

A Lucky Dip: introduced in October 2015 alongside ten extra balls, the free ticket gave a two-number match a random line in a later draw, until a June 2026 revamp swapped it for £1 in cash.

After prizes, what takes the largest share of money spent on UK National Lottery tickets?

Good causes get about a quarter of ticket money, twice the Treasury's cut; the fund has paid Britain's Olympic athletes to train since the team won a single gold in 1996.

What did the UK change for National Lottery players in 2021?

Minimum age: it rose from 16 to 18 after 27 years, as ministers acted to protect young people while the lottery shifted towards online play and instant-win games.

EuroMillions requires five main numbers plus two of what?

Lucky Stars are drawn from their own pool of 1 to 12, separate from the main numbers, so the same number can turn up twice in one draw, once as a ball and once as a star.

In which city are EuroMillions draws held?

Paris: only France, Spain and the UK took part in the first draw there in February 2004; six more countries joined that October, and one draw now serves all nine.

EuroMillions draws are held twice a week, on Tuesdays and which other day?

Friday was the only draw day when the game began in 2004; the Tuesday draw was added in May 2011 to give players a second weekly chance at the top prize.

What nickname is given to the top prize in Spain's Christmas lottery?

El Gordo is strictly the first prize, though the name is often used for the whole draw; a full ticket costs €200, so it is sold in €20 tenths known as décimos.

Who announces the numbers and prizes in Spain's Christmas lottery draw?

Schoolchildren from Madrid's San Ildefonso school, once reserved for orphans, sing the results; its pupils have sung lottery draws since 1771, and until 1984 only the boys took part.

In a classic 6-from-49 lotto, what are the odds of matching all six numbers?

About 1 in 14 million: six numbers can be chosen from 49 in exactly 13,983,816 ways, and a single ticket covers only one of them.

SuperEnalotto, with jackpot odds of about 1 in 622 million, is which country's lottery?

Italy: players must match six numbers from 90, so a jackpot can go unwon for over a year; a record €371 million prize in 2023 was shared by 90 people who had each bought a €5 stake.

Shirley Jackson's short story 'The Lottery' was first published in which magazine in 1948?

The New Yorker drew more mail over the story than over any fiction it had run; readers threatened to cancel subscriptions, and some asked where such lotteries were held so they could go and watch.

In Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery', what happens to whoever draws the marked slip?

She is stoned to death: Tessie Hutchinson arrives late and joking, and protests that it isn't fair only once her own family is picked; the old saying runs 'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.'

In the comedy Waking Ned, why can't the lottery winner claim his prize?

He died of shock holding the ticket, so two old friends talk their whole village into passing one of them off as Ned and sharing the winnings.

Which 1994 Nicolas Cage film was inspired by a real policeman who split a lottery win with a waitress?

It Could Happen to You retells a 1984 story: Yonkers officer Robert Cunningham offered waitress Phyllis Penzo half his lottery ticket instead of a tip, then shared the $6 million when it won.

ERNIE, the machine that picks winners for Britain's Premium Bonds, stands for what?

Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment: engineers behind the wartime Colossus codebreaker built the first ERNIE, which made its first draw in 1957 and became so famous that people send it Christmas cards.

Which British Chancellor introduced Premium Bonds in his 1956 Budget?

Harold Macmillan's scheme was denounced by Labour's Harold Wilson as a 'squalid raffle', yet the bonds were an immediate hit when they went on sale that November.

The advertised Powerball jackpot is the sum a winner receives only by choosing which payout?

Thirty yearly payments, each 5% bigger than the last, add up to the headline figure; the lump sum is far smaller, as when a $2.04 billion jackpot paid $997.6 million in cash.

In which of these countries is even the biggest lottery jackpot paid free of tax?

United Kingdom: lottery prizes there are not treated as income, so a winner keeps the lot, while the United States taxes winnings as income and Portugal and Switzerland tax their big prizes.

The 1980 Pennsylvania Lottery scandal rigged the Daily Number draw by doing what?

Weighting the balls: every ball except the 4s and 6s was made heavier so only those could rise, and when 666 came up the ringleader turned out to be the draw's own TV host, Nick Perry.

Which Canadian province's gaming corporation sold the scratch game Mohan Srivastava cracked in 2003?

Ontario: Toronto statistician Mohan Srivastava found he could spot winning tic-tac-toe tickets about 90% of the time from their visible numbers, and told the lottery instead of cashing in.

In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, which group is devoted to the weekly state Lottery?

The proles treat the Lottery as the one public event worth their attention, yet Winston knows the Ministry of Plenty pays out only small sums and invents the winners of the big prizes.

The illegal 'numbers game' paid about 600 to 1, against true odds of roughly what?

1,000 to 1, or 999 to 1 to be exact: a three-digit pick has 1,000 possible outcomes, so the bankers kept about 40 cents of every dollar staked, on bets as small as a penny.

Economists tracking Swedish lottery winners found that a big prize had what long-run effect on life satisfaction?

A lasting rise: winners of large prizes were still more satisfied with their lives more than a decade later, and they went on working, trimming their earnings only modestly.

Which UK-only raffle, included with every EuroMillions line, guarantees at least one £1 million winner per draw?

Millionaire Maker gives every UK line a raffle code at no extra charge, so at least one British player wins £1 million in each draw even when the jackpot itself goes abroad.

George Adams ran his first public Tattersall's sweep in 1881 from a hotel in which Australian city?

Sydney: Adams ran the sweep on a local horse race from his Pitt Street hotel; when New South Wales and then Queensland cracked down, he moved to Tasmania, which legalised his lotteries.

Which Indian state set up the country's first state-run lottery department in 1967?

Kerala banned private lotteries in 1967 and started its own on the idea of finance minister P. K. Kunju, and its success inspired other Indian states to follow.

A lottery held in the 1440s funded which city's war with Venice?

Milan: the banker Cristoforo Taverna is credited with devising the draw, held in the square of Sant'Ambrogio to refill the treasury of the short-lived Golden Ambrosian Republic.

Which Asian country held its first lottery in 1874, to mark King Chulalongkorn's birthday?

Thailand, then known as Siam: the king let his Royal Bodyguard run the draw for his birthday, but lotteries stayed occasional until 1933, when the state made them a regular earner for the treasury.

Which animated sitcom joked that jackpot hunters had borrowed every library copy of Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery'?

The Simpsons ran the gag in the 1992 episode Dog of Death, where Homer throws his copy on the fire after learning it holds no tips for winning.

Shirley Jackson, author of 'The Lottery', jokingly claimed to be the only practising what in New England?

Witch was the label she played up, and she later wrote a book for young readers about the Salem trials of 1692.

Which country banned Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery', a ban her husband said made the author proud?

South Africa banned the story, and Jackson took it as a compliment. Her husband recalled her saying the censors there had at least understood it.

A 2008 South Park episode parodying Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' shows crowds hounding which pop star?

Britney Spears is the target in Britney's New Look, an episode that lifts several lines of dialogue straight from Jackson's story.

Which villager in Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' scoffs at news that the north village may give up the ritual?

Old Man Warner, taking part for the seventy-seventh time, snorts at the idea and warns that dropping the custom would only bring trouble.

Why does Tessie arrive late to the gathering in Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery', hurrying in after everyone else?

She forgot what day it was and remembered only while washing dishes, then made her way through the crowd to stand beside her husband.

Which novel by Shirley Jackson, author of 'The Lottery', became a ten-episode Netflix series in 2018?

The Haunting of Hill House, her 1959 novel, was a National Book Award finalist. Stephen King ranks it among the most important horror novels of its century.

Besides writing angry letters, how did some outraged readers punish the magazine that ran 'The Lottery' in 1948?

Cancelled subscriptions and name-calling filled the postbag, yet Jackson's biographer found that most letter writers were simply confused.

The ritual in Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' survives from an old belief that it guarantees the village what?

A good harvest is the supposed reward, recalled in an old rhyme about heavy corn that the oldest villager still repeats.

Roughly how many people live in the village of Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery', few enough to finish by lunch?

About 300 people live there, so the drawing can start at ten in the morning and still be over in time for lunch.

In Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery', Mr. Summers, who conducts the drawing, runs which local concern?

A coal business is his trade, and the prepared slips are locked overnight in the safe at his office.

Which official helps Mr. Summers make the paper slips the night before the drawing in Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery'?

The postmaster, Mr. Graves, shares the work, and critics note how his sombre surname shadows the sunny one of his partner.

What colour is the shabby wooden box that holds the slips in Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery'?

Black and badly worn, the box is older than the village's oldest man, yet nobody will agree to build a replacement.

Which family is singled out in the first round of Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' when its head draws the marked slip?

The Hutchinsons are picked when Bill draws the marked slip, and because they form a single household the usual second round is skipped.

Mrs. Dunbar draws for her family in Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' because her husband is laid up at home with what?

A broken leg keeps Clyde Dunbar at home, and with no grown son to stand in, his wife is the one woman who draws in the first round.

The surname of Mrs. Delacroix, the friend who turns on Tessie in Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery', means what in French?

Of the cross is the meaning, a hint of sacrifice that the villagers blur by mispronouncing the name.

Which member of Tessie's family in Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' is so young that an official must help him draw?

Davy, the youngest of the family, has to be taught how to take a slip by Mr. Summers, which makes the grim ritual look entirely normal.

In the final round of Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery', whom does Tessie try to add to her family's draw?

Her married daughter and son-in-law should take their chance too, Tessie insists, but the rule is that daughters draw with their husbands' families.

Which group reaches the gathering place first in Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery', ahead of the men and then the women?

The children arrive first, freshly released from school, and gather quietly for a while before breaking into noisy play.

Where do the residents assemble for the drawing in Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' on a warm, clear morning?

The town square is the stage, a peaceful public setting whose calm makes the story's ending all the more shocking.

From which point of view is Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' told, in a tone critics call detached and objective?

Third person narration keeps the telling matter-of-fact, which lets a barbaric act pass as something perfectly ordinary.

The cheerful opening of Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' set against its brutal ending is a classic case of which device?

Irony runs through the whole story, right down to a title that promises a prize and delivers the opposite.

The shabby box at the heart of Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' is usually read as a symbol of what?

Refusal to change is the usual reading: the box is falling apart, yet the villagers cling to it just as they cling to the ritual itself.

When her husband draws the marked slip in Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery', Tessie protests that Mr. Summers did what?

Rushed his choice is her charge, meaning he had no time to pick the paper he wanted, but others in the crowd reply that the risk was the same for everyone.

How often does the village in Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' hold its drawing, a custom older than anyone living?

Once a year the slips come out, and some in the crowd grumble that the last drawing seems only just over.

In Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery', the paper slips drawn from the box replaced which older tokens as the village grew?

Wood chips had served for generations, but Mr. Summers argued that a village of its present size needed something that would fit the box.

How does Mr. Summers decide which family steps forward first in the opening round of Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery'?

Alphabetical order puts Steve Adams at the head of the line, the same man who mentions that a nearby village may give the ritual up.

In the first round of Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery', what must each man do with his slip until every name is called?

Keep it folded is the rule, so every family learns the result in the same instant, after a long pause before Mr. Summers gives the word.

Shirley Jackson said she set 'The Lottery' in her own village, which lay in which New England state?

Vermont was home: she wrote the story in North Bennington and reportedly told a friend that its characters were modelled on real people there.

In which West Coast city was Shirley Jackson, author of 'The Lottery', born before her family moved east to New York?

San Francisco was her birthplace, and her debut novel drew on a childhood spent in the nearby suburb of Burlingame.

Shirley Jackson wrote 'The Lottery' just three years after the end of which conflict, whose horrors critics see in it?

World War II had only just ended, and critics read the story against the Holocaust and the atomic bomb as proof of what ordinary people will accept.

What did some curious readers write to ask after 'The Lottery' appeared in 1948, convinced such rituals were real?

Where they could watch one was a common query, Jackson recalled, from readers who wanted to know which places still held such drawings.

Why did so many readers in 1948 take Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' for a report of real events?

Fiction was not labelled as such in the magazine at the time, so a Harvard sociologist and a Hollywood producer were among those who took it as fact.

Commentators liken the drawing in Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' to which practice, revived by US law that same week?

The military draft returned when President Truman signed the Selective Service Act on June 24, 1948, two days before the date of the issue that carried the story.

Which actress played 'The Lottery' author Shirley Jackson in Josephine Decker's 2020 film Shirley?

Elisabeth Moss took the role in a largely fictional drama that finds Jackson, already notorious for her shocking tale, struggling to write a novel.

The authorised 2016 graphic-novel adaptation of 'The Lottery' was drawn by which relative of Shirley Jackson?

Her grandson Miles Hyman, an illustrator, trimmed the wording and let his pictures carry much of the tale.

Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' was chosen in 1949 for the prize anthology named after which American author?

O. Henry gives his name to the prize collection that reprinted the story in 1949, the same year it gave its title to Jackson's first book of stories.

Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' was reworked in 1953 as which unlikely kind of stage performance?

A ballet version appeared in 1953, an adaptation that Jackson admitted she found baffling.

Critics citing Frazer's The Golden Bough read the victim in Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' as which ritual figure?

A scapegoat takes on a community's ills so the new season can start clean, a rite to which Frazer gave an entire volume of his study.

Which comic memoir did 'The Lottery' author Shirley Jackson write about raising her own four kids?

Life Among the Savages, published in 1953, is as sunny as her famous story is dark, a brand of domestic comedy later made popular by Erma Bombeck.