A California player has won $2.04 billion in the lottery, a world record, the official Powerball website announced on Tuesday.
After months without a major winner, a single winning ticket, with numbers 10, 33, 41, 47, 56 and 10 for the “Powerball”, was identified across the United States, according to Powerball.
"California Lottery produces the FIRST billionaire in its history!” the California Lottery tweeted on Tuesday, noting that the "lucky ticket was sold at Joe’s Service Center in Altadena (California).”
The lucky winner will have to choose between receiving the full amount via payments spread over three decades, or being paid in one lump sum, to the sum of $997.6 million, according to a Powerball estimate.
Before Monday night, 40 consecutive draws had not produced a grand prize winner, leading the jackpot to climb to a staggering $2 billion-plus.
The unprecedented jackpot sparked gambling fever across the United States, and the drawing originally scheduled for Monday night had to be delayed by a few hours because the lottery in one of the participating states requested more time to process its data, according to a tweet on Tuesday from the California lottery.
The odds of winning the jackpot, by buying a $2 ticket, were only one in 292.2 million. By comparison, the chance of being struck by lightning is one in a million, according to US health officials.
