Lottery: Winning tickets sold in Georgia, New Jersey

[gldstwmn]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/03/07/meg....ap/index.html

ATLANTIC CITY, New Jersey (AP) -- At least two people can claim a share of a record $370 million lottery jackpot, and there could be more -- California was still checking its Mega Millions results, officials announced Wednesday.

One winning ticket was traced to a liquor store in Woodbine, New Jersey, and another to a market in Dalton, Georgia, lottery representatives in the two states said Wednesday.

California's results were slowed by the high volume of sales, and state lottery spokesman Rob McAndrews said it would be at least midmorning before he knows for sure if there are more winning tickets out there. The other nine states struck out, said Mardele Cohen of the Ohio Lottery, which compiles all the states' information.

The winning numbers: 16-22-29-39-42, with the Mega Ball 20.

The odds of hitting it: about 1 in 176 million.

Georgia Lottery Corp. spokesman J.B. Landroche said one winning ticket was sold at Favorite Market in Dalton. New Jersey Lottery officials said another was sold at Campark Liquors in Woodbine, in Cape May County at the state's southern tip.

"It's the most wonderful thing," said Campark Liquors manager Fern Gandy. "We have so many wonderful customers here. I'm just glad it was one of them."

Tuesday night's drawing was held in New York's Times Square in ABC's television studio rather than Atlanta after brisk sales pushed what had been an estimated $355 million jackpot estimate to a record $370 million.

Even though the temperature was just 16 degrees, a handful of hopefuls showed up in Times Square to watch the drawing.

Millions of others had lined up at lottery agents in the 12 states to buy tickets Tuesday. New Yorkers bought more than 1 million tickets an hour, said Robert McLaughlin, the state's lottery director. Virginia retailers sold about 8,550 tickets per minute.

'Go to the moon'
New York construction worker Andelko Kalinic had an idea of what he would do if his Mega Millions ticket paid off.

"Go to the moon," he said. "Why not?"

Some lottery hopefuls in Ohio never had a chance. Ohio's lottery ticket system went down statewide at about 10:20 p.m., 25 minutes before the deadline, Cohen said. The cause hadn't yet been determined.

"For those people who wanted to make a wager and didn't get a chance, we're very, very sorry," she said.

The largest previous multistate lottery jackpot was $365 million in 2006, when eight workers at a Nebraska meat processing plant hit the Powerball lotto. The Big Game lotto, the forerunner of Mega Millions, paid out a $363 million jackpot in 2000.

Mega Millions tickets are sold in California, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Texas, Virginia and Washington state.