Simply winning the lottery means that Lady Luck is on your side, but some winners have more luck than others and here we will look at some outrageous stories.
WARNING: these winners appear to be infinitely luckier than the rest of us and this has the potential to induce self-pity, wallowing and even manic shopping sprees! Don't say we didn't warn you.
Hakeem and Abiola Nosiru
Back in 2014 this lucky couple won a staggering $50 million lottery jackpot. A clear indication that Lady Luck was on their side, right? Wrong. With the winning ticket in hand, they set off for church only to find out that they had lost their ticket. The couple were miserable because after searching high and low, and retracing their steps they couldn't find the lottery ticket and with it they lost all hope. The Nigerian nationals were blessed with some sort of guardian angel because come April Fool's day, a few months after losing the winning ticket, a member of their church community returned the ticket to the couple who went on to collect their massive winnings. A win of this amount is rare but winning, losing the ticket and getting it back is almost unheard of!
Calvin and Zatera Spencer
Yet another incredibly lucky couple if we've ever seen one. For this Virginian couple, third time really is the charm - they won three times in one month! Well, in just over two weeks to be precise. "Baby, we did it again," the words uttered by Calvin Spencer to his wife when they had won the lottery for the third time and become unexpected millionaires. Their winning streak started mid-March of 2014 were they won $1 million Powerball, then two weeks later they won a further $50,000 in Virginia state's Pick Four Game. But they weren't finished yet- a day after collecting their second prize Calvin bought another ticket and won $1 million in the $100 Million Cash Extravaganza.
Lottery spokesperson, John Hagerty told the Virginian-Pilot, "I haven't seen anything like it in my 12 years here," and we share his gobsmacked reaction. What are the chances of winning? Compounded with the odds of winning three times? In under a month? The maths is mind-blowing and frankly, it hurts the brain.
Joan Ginther
Throwing it back to 1993, when Ginther won her first lottery of $5.4 million in a Lotto Texas drawing. She then went on to win no less than three scratch-off games; a $2 million prize in Holiday Millionaire in 2006, followed by a comfortable $3 million in Millions & Millions in 2008 and finally, a staggering $10 million in $140,000,000 Extreme Payoff in 2010. Resulting in a $20.4 million cumulative win. Ginther's winning streak stands apart from the rest, as of her latest win, because never before has there been a repeat winner, claiming winnings of over $2 million or more, an incredible 4 times. Her winnings surpass all other winners who have won again, but most impressively she even beats the odds of everyone from the crooks to the mathematicians. Remaining anonymous and rather elusive from the very beginning, the 67 year old has refused to answer any questions or interviews, leading to rumours and speculations that she cheated. However, it is known that all her tickets were bought in her hometown Bishop, Texas and she was also known for buying copious amounts of tickets, perhaps even tens of thousands, that were rather pricey. Mathematician Skip Garibaldi estimates that Ginther must have bought above $1.7 million worth of tickets, or she's up to something shifty. Either way The Google Machine recognises her as the luckiest lotto winner in history so, good for her. We hope she speaks out one day and shares any of her little secret tips and tricks to striking it lucky, again and again and again!
James Wilson
This warehouse worker won £51,232.90, but only realised this one day before his claim to the prize would have expired! For the past 6 months there had been attempts made to find him, with details of the missing winner being published in the press.
But he really had no clue that he had won until he just happened to be clearing out his wallet and saw the golden ticket. "
I had no idea. It was purely luck that I stumbled upon the lottery ticket before it expired," a relieved Wilson said. Once he realised, he frantically checked to see if he was still within the 180-day claim period and he really was just in the nick of time, with one day to go until it expired! The South Gloucestershire man recently got married and he plans to put a deposit down on a house and hopefully treat his wife to a new car. He really is one lucky lad!
