Oh to win the lottery….
What would you do with the money if you won? New house? Flash car? Luxury holiday? Roman orgies and derelict mansions?
We’ve all got big ideas, but given that the odds of winning the jackpot are around 1 in 45 million, the absolute vast majority of us will have to dream on.
Mind you, one man in America could claim the title of luckiest person on the planet after landing his THIRD lottery jackpot win.
Okay, so the anonymous 52-year-old has been playing ‘minor’ lottery games where the top prize is $50,000 (around £40,000), but even so he is significantly better off after upsetting the odds not once, not twice but thrice.
The rather fortunate individual purchased his ticket at the fantastically-named Big Mouth Beer, Wine and Liquor in Waldorf, Maryland – incidentally using the same numbers as his two previous triumphs.
After landing the top prize once again, the winner revealed that he and his wife are going to go on holiday – and vowed to continue playing the lottery in a bid to land an incredible fourth jackpot.
“I play the lottery all the time. You never know. You can’t win if you are not in it,” he said. And never has a truer word been spoken….
So You Can Win the Lottery More Than Once Then?
There are absolutely no rules against former winners buying tickets again and again for a lottery draw.
Of course, if you had already won a life-changing sum of money, the pertinent question would be why are you continuing to play the lottery?
In the case of Dave and Kathleen Long, the decision paid off….a million-fold. They are thought to be the only people to win two major National Lottery prizes.
Back in July 2013, they landed a £1 million payout – for most people that alone would have been satisfaction enough. But two years later the Longs were at it again; this time scooping another £1 million and a Jaguar car courtesy of the EuroMillions draw.
And like the intrepid three-timer in America, Dave had something of a premonition that he was going to hit the big time. “I always knew I’d win, even the first time. I just had a feeling it was going to be me,” he said.
In a slightly ego-maniacal twist, he vowed to continue playing the lottery and declared: “I’ve got a feeling I’m going to win again.”
There has been one other dual-jackpot winner via the National Lottery – well, sort of. Gayle Say somehow managed to buy a ticket with the same numbers
on twice for a Thunderball draw back in November 2019, and as luck would have it the combination won; meaning she pocketed £500,000 twice and became a rather unlikely millionaire.
Twice as Nice
There’s plenty of folks that have won more than one lottery draw outside of the UK.
Bill Morgan is, and surely always will be, the best story when it comes to multiple lottery winners. After surviving a heart attack from which he was medically dead for some 14 minutes, the Australian had a feeling that somebody was smiling down on him – he went and brought a lottery ticket and, lo and behold, won a car.
Hearing of this good news story, a local TV station interviewed Morgan and asked him to recreate the scene of buying his ticket from the shop – incredibly this new ticket, purchased simply as a set piece for the interview, also won and scored him a $250,000 AUD (around £135,000) payout.
There must be something in the water down in Australia, as another remarkable lottery story unfolded there earlier this year. A couple from Sydney won the same jackpot twice in less than a week!
On the Monday, they won more than $1 million AUD from an NSW Lotteries draw, but purchased some tickets for the next Saturday draw anyway. And you can only imagine the incredulity in that household as they won again, this time $1.4 million AUD.
In the space of five days, they had landed a combined payout worth £1.3 million. And in typically Aussie fashion, the husband of the duo declared himself to be ‘quite stoked’ with the wins, and promised to invest the money into property – after he and his wife had jetted off to Honolulu, that is.
