The second highest
jackpot in lottery history, 648 million dollars, has finally been won. There are two lucky winners who both take
will home over 120 million dollars after taxes are taken out. One of these lucky tickets was sold in San
Jose, California and another in Atlanta, Georgia. What will the winners do with all these
millions of dollars and will it be put to good use?
The odds were
previously one in 176 million but after recent changes the odds greatly increased
to 1 in 259 million. Just to put that into proportion for you, if every single
person in the whole United States pitched in two dollars, it still wouldn’t be
as much as the Mega Millions jackpot.
Even if everyone in North America pitched in a dollar to the pot it
still wouldn’t even come close to the Mega Millions jackpot. Also, the two lucky winners now have a net
worth of 120 million dollars which is almost the same as artist Miley
Cyrus. You are more than 1000 times as
likely to be killed by an asteroid or comet as you are to win the Mega Millions
jackpot. Also, you are equally as likely
to win the Mega Millions jackpot as you are to be getting struck by lightning
and eaten by a shark at the same time.
The Mega Millions
jackpot was so large because they made it a lot harder to win the jackpot. Each week someone doesn’t win the jackpot,
the money accumulates until someone finally wins, and nobody has won the
jackpot since October. But why would
people from Mega Millions want to make it much harder to win the jackpot. One good reason for the change one might
suggest is because it makes the jackpot a lot higher and therefore the winner
will get a lot more money. This can also
be a bad thing because I am sure people would rather have several people who
won a decent sized jackpot instead of one person winning one tremendously large
jackpot.
One main question is
still in the way, what will these lucky winners will do with their money. If you were lucky enough to win, despite
astonishing odds, there would be so much you could do with your money you
couldn’t control yourself. You already
have more money than most movie stars and a lot of professional athletes. Hopefully these winners put their money to
good use, meaning they donate a large portion of the fortune. It is already a given that they will go out
and buy a large mansion and a few sports cars.
If you had that much money, why not help out the community, full of the
very people who helped you make your millions.
Hanna, Jason,
Joseph Netto, Holly Yan, Chris Friedman, Christine Romans, Pamela Brown, Julie
In, Devon Sayers, and Eliott C. McLaughlin. "Georgia Woman Claims Half of
$648 Million Mega Millions Jackpot." CNN.
Cable News Network, 18 Dec. 2013. Web. 18 Dec. 2013.
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