Read about the reaction when, in Iowa 2005, fortune cookie lucky numbers caused 25 times more players to win the state lottery than anticipated.
You know how at the end of a Chinese restaurant meal you get a little fortune cookie to crack open with some lucky numbers and wise words of oriental counsel inside?
Surely those lucky numbers couldn’t be so lucky as to win you the lottery? But this actually happened to dozens of state lottery players in Iowa, 2005.
In one of the mid-week ‘Powerball’ draws the expected number of Level 5 Prize-winning tickets – $100,000 or $500,000 prizes – was 4.
State Lottery Directors were absolutely flummoxed to find out that this time there were a whopping 110 winners, and most had apparently used the numbers included in a fortune-cookie message.
Doug Orr, Powerball Marketing Director reported “With the systems reporting so many plays of 22–28–32–33–39 and Powerball 40, it is likely that most drew their luck from a very fortunate cookie. The cookie was one number away from winning the $25.5 million jackpot.”
The odds of winning the $100,000 prize were about 1 in 2.9 million, yet the seers at the cookie factory smashed those odds.
They no doubt garnered a lot of fans of their cookies and sure made it a very expensive week for the good people of the Multi-State Lottery Association too.
History and Things 
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