The Biggest Lottery Wins in Human History

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Don’t you dare say you’ve never wondered what is the biggest lottery win and never dreamed of winning it big yourself! Come on; such a thought must have visited you at least a couple of times throughout your lifetime. People love lotteries, yet we all understand that a chance of winning is incredibly small and you have better odds of being bitten by a shark and struck by lightning all at the same time. However, traditionally people are growing hope in their hearts, and who can blame them?

Top Lottery Wins

Even though the odds are never in your favor, you always think that somebody has to win that money eventually. Besides, what if this someone is you? A lottery is another exciting form of gambling; no wonder so many people buy tickets on a regular basis. It seems entirely harmless if you buy a couple of tickets every other month. Furthermore, even though you don’t win money, you get something more precious in return which is hope. Seemingly, people lack it on a grand scale.

Before we jump straight into the topic and tell you about all those massive winnings (meanwhile, you need to lessen your jealousy), let’s talk a little bit about a psychological side of a lottery which is fascinating. People go against mathematical odds and logic because they want to get their hands on the easy money. 99% of the world population wants to be rich, and only 1%, in reality, falls under a category of wealthy people. In the case of a lottery game, you don’t have to do anything in particular; you don’t have to get a higher education, work hard, look for business opportunities, and so on. All you need to do is to spend a couple of bucks on a magic ticket. Moreover, now, it’s time to see who those spoilt children of fortune are.

$648 Million

Such a large sum of money won`t let you sleep at night. Can you imagine being the owner of that much ready cash aka opportunities? Well, a winner of a lottery also thought that ownership was close, but it wasn’t the case. You see, the main problem with lotteries is that they are way too complicated. You must have heard about a crazy percentage of taxation, so it’s not supposed to come as a surprise. A lottery is technically a part of a gambling industry, and all representatives of it face some state duties including high taxes.

When we are talking about sizeable lottery wins, in most cases, it’s all about the USA. It has two major organizations which are involved in this business: Powerball and Mega Millions. These two fall into the category of the biggest lottery in history. However, it sometimes happens that Spanish Christmas Lottery (Sorteo Extraordinario de Navidad) becomes a winner in this race. However, let’s get back to that $648 million that made people so happy in 2013.

There were two winners (yes, in case you didn’t know, it is, in fact, possible and there are sometimes even three or more winners) so the win had to be split in half and if you think that both of the lucky people got $324 million, then boy oh boy, how wrong you are! Because taxes devoured almost a half of that sum and as a result, every person got $174 million which is still good enough, but in comparison to the initial amount, we bet winners were slightly disappointed. Moreover, this is an understatement.

The winners were: a 56-year-old woman from Georgia who played her lucky family numbers (the method, which is, by the way, not recommended using) and a woman named Ira Curry from Atlanta. They both could receive a larger sum but in small annual installments, so that the full amount would be paid in 30 years – as ridiculous as it sounds. Oh, and it was a Mega Millions lottery in case you were wondering.

$656 Million

This whole system got even weirder. So this time (it was 2012 by the way), three people won a lottery, and as we`ve already mentioned, it happens from time to time. That amount of money divided into three parts still seems like it would be enough to live through at least thirty luxurious lifetimes. Besides, after all, calculations were made, it turned out that each participant is getting $158 million. In this case, all three chose to remain anonymous. We only know that lucky tickets were sold in Illinois, Kansas, and Maryland, and that the cash amount given out on this occasion is still the national record. Hold on, when there were two winners, each of them got $174 million, and when the total sum is slightly more significant, three of winners get practically the same amount of money!

You`d think that now we`re going to give you a sufficient answer to this question. Yeah, right! We`ve been trying to crack this system to figure out what’s the deal but a lottery taxation system of the United States has way too many pitfalls. Moreover, nobody knows how it works. Even us! Probably, Mega Millions doesn’t know how it works either.

$758.7 Million

Get this; only one ticket won that whole sum of money! Only one person became an owner of all those millions. Can you believe it? This financial miracle happened in 2017, and as you must have already guessed, a lucky winner didn’t get what she expected. But it was still a record sum. A 53-year-old Mavis L. Wanczyk from Massachusetts quit her job the moment she discovered the news about the big win. A final Powerball payment turned out to be $336 million. If this woman were a cat, all nine lives would be financially secured in the most luxurious way possible. What is more, this win is holding a world record as `the highest jackpot and cash value for a single ticket.` We have more lucky representatives of lottery frenzy on this list. However, the following jackpots were divided among multiple winners.

$941.8 Million

Here we’re getting closer to a billion bucks, and things are getting even more exciting! It was the year of 2012 which made people as happy as larks. Mega Millions or Powerball? What are your guesses? Neither of them, because it’s the most significant European lottery Sorteo Extraordinario de Navidad which is a Spanish Christmas Lottery. However, the craziest part of this story is that a whole village of people appeared to be winners! No, it wasn’t a mistake. People from a small town in Spain, which has less than a hundred households, won it big.

Buying lottery tickets was (and still is) a long-lived tradition of Sodeto residents. Moreover, it was a Christmas miracle or a Santa Claus’ present, call it as you want, but almost all the people who lived in that tiny village became rich overnight. The smallest win was $120.000, and many turned into millionaires. Did those people practice black magic? Is it one of the biggest coincidences in the human history? Did they bribe someone? Let’s just leave this Sodeto lottery peculiarity lying calmly on a historical timeline.

$1.586 Million

2016 appeared to be a lucky year for three people. Also taking a look at this bedazzling, mind-blowing sum of money, it doesn’t matter how many people became winners, whether it was a one person or a dozen, one and a half billion bucks would be enough to live a happy, fancy, and luxurious life. It’s officially `world’s largest jackpot.’ Actually, it was three couples who won: John and Lisa Robinson in Tennessee, Maureen Smith and David Kaltschmidt in Florida, and Marvin and Mae Acosta in California. Robinsons admitted in the press that they were both happy and scared. The first thing they did was hiring an accountant, which is a reasonable move. Acostas also consulted advisers, and – believe it or not – donated a huge part of their money to charities.

As you know, the USA loves everything impressive and big so no wonder it was American Powerball that played the role of the king of lottery games in this case. Each winner got $321.7 million after all stages of taxation were paid. What would be the first thing you’d do if you all of a sudden won such a sum of money? You should probably stop dreaming. It may go too far, and this obsessive idea of becoming rich without putting any effort into it may end up haunting you for the rest of your life.