There are people who plan their lottery numbers for years, examine every detail of their tickets, and drive hours out of the way to purchase lottery tickets from supposedly lucky lottery counters. Sure, sometimes they win, but the funnier lottery wins are those that happen completely by mistake. A forgetful man accidentally bought 2 tickets for the same jackpot draw. When his lucky numbers proved to be a perfect match, he ended up winning £2,395,710 instead of £479,142. Sometimes it pays to forget. Here are a few more comical lottery anecdotes that highlight the absurdities of life and the fact that anybody could be a winner.
Bobby Guffey had been using his children’s ages and birthdates as his Hoosier Lotto lucky numbers for years. On August 6, 2008, Guffy forgot his bifocals when he went to the lottery counter and he struggled to decipher the numbers as he filled out his lines. In dim lighting and without his glasses, Guffy accidentally marked the number 48, instead of 46, on his ticket, which could have been a huge mistake. It just so happened that his usual numbers and 48 (not 46) matched the winning Indiana lottery numbers and Guffy was soon $3 million richer.
In February 2010, the winner of a $2.5 million Hoosier Lotto jackpot was still at large. The winner had purchased a winning ticket the previous August, and apparently had not checked the lottery results. All Hoosier Lotto fans and the entire state of Indiana were in a cleaning frenzy, checking their cars and drawers for the winning ticket before the ticket expired, but to no avail. Meanwhile, Lori White casually suggested to her husband, Eric, that he check his old lottery tickets, stashed away inside his desk. It took him two days to get around to checking and it’s good he didn’t wait any longer. Lori and Eric White collected their $2.5 million jackpot mere days before it expired.
Ryan Kitching learned to listen to his nagging mother when she pestered him to clean his room in March 2012. This messy teenage boy had just been dumped by his girlfriend and he was feeling down in the dumps. He begrudgingly picked up the mess in his room and as he sifted through trash and papers under his bed, he found a UK National Lottery ticket from February 8th in the rubbish. Instead of throwing it away with the discarded receipts, he took it to the shop where he worked and checked the draw’s results. Ryan Kitching won £52,981. Good thing he cleaned his room!