A Great Way For A Cookie To Crumble

Published: Friday, May 13, 2005 Online-Casinos.com

A GREAT WAY FOR A COOKIE TO CRUMBLE

Eerie predictions from a New York fortune cookie

Quirky story of the week comes from Reuters with a report that 110 Americans scored bigtime in the multi-state Powerball lottery recently after using numbers they found in a Chinese fortune cookie.

Betting on the numbers recommended in fortune cookies, they won prizes ranging from $100,000 to $250 000 each, organisation director Charles Strutt revealed this week.

By the laws of statistical probability, there should have been only four or five winners among the 10.4 million ticket buyers in the lottery operated by the governments of 27 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

When big prizewinners came forward to claim on April Fool's Day, state lottery officials had instructions to examine each claim carefully, Strutt said.

The first hint that something unusual was happening came from Tennessee, where the first three winners told lottery officials they took their winning numbers from fortune cookies. Then the story was repeated across America.

An investigation was mounted, with officials visiting dozens of Chinese restaurants before tracing the cookies back to a bona fide distributor in the New York area.

The fortune cookie featured six lucky numbers. The first five were good enough for six-figure prizes. The sixth figure, needed for the jackpot of $25.5 million, was two numbers out at 40, when the winning number was 42.

Can anyone else hear that Twilight Zone signature tune?