2 of the Biggest Lottery Jackpots in US History Were Won in New England

The Powerball jackpot has gone over $1 billion once again, and people are snatching up tickets left and right. Wednesday night's drawing, as of this writing, is estimated at $1.2 billion as an annuity, but the cash value is less than half that at $551 million.

What are the odds you would win a Powerball jackpot? Are you ready for this? One in 292.2 million. According to the Las Vegas Review Journal, the city that knows all about the odds, they aren't good. Let's put this into perspective:

• Your odds of dying in a plane crash are 1 in 20 million.
• Your odds of getting hit by a meteorite are 1 in 1.6 million
• Your odds of becoming a billionaire are 1 in 409,000.
• Your odds of getting a hole-in-one as an amateur golfer is 1 in 12,500

So as you can see, most people will never win a Powerball jackpot, but that's not stopping anyone from dreaming.

What was the largest lottery jackpot win in US history? You might remember, because it wasn't that long ago. Edwin Castro was the winner of the first U.S. jackpot to crack the $2.04 billion mark in February 2022. He bought his ticket near Los Angeles, California, and took the lump sum of just shy of $1 billion. He netted $997.6 million before taxes.

Here in New England, there have been some big lottery winners, and two of those payouts were some of the largest lottery jackpots in US history. One was in Massachusetts in 2017, where Mavis Wanczyk won a $336.6 million lump sum after taxes. It was the ninth-largest jackpot in US history.

The other was in Maine in 2023. The Mega Millions jackpot was won by someone anonymously by forming an LLC to claim their $1.35 billion. The winning ticket was sold at Hometown Gas & Grill in Lebanon, which got $50,000 for selling the winning ticket.