You can call the game of lottery a poor mans passion, a casino on the road or a tax on stupid people, the lottery has deep and historic roots. They have been around as long ago as Biblical times.
According to the Holy Bible, God commanded Moses to utilize the lottery to divide the land in Jordan. The Lottery was also mentioned in the other books in the holy bible, mentioning it as a vital tool in the history and development of the Jewish people back then.
The History of Lottery can also be traced in China to a Chinese Warlord named Cheung Leung who invented a numbers game to convince the citizens of his territory to help financed his army.
Today, the game is known as keno. Aside from that, showing a politicians dislike with taxes, early American founding fathers often used the lottery to raise funds. John Hancock held several lottery games including for the rebuilding efforts for Boston's Faneuil Hall.
Ben Franklin also used them during the war to buy a canon for the Continental army. George Washington used the lottery to pay for the construction of the road in Western Virginia. By the end of the civil war, the lottery in America had acquired such a bad reputation it was subsequently banned in most states.
But not in the state of Louisiana, where a corrupt legislature in 1869 gave the exclusive rights to a private firm named the Louisiana Lottery Company.
The company sold tickets across the country and for about 25 years, it earned millions of dollars while paying out small payouts and contributing little to the charities in New Orleans. Some of the problems and unusual stories connected are like what happened to Clarence Jackson.
His luck began to fade back in October 1995 where the Connecticut Lottery chooses the numbers on Jackson's ticket, making him the winner of $5.8 million dollars. But he does not know about it until 15 minutes later before the one year deadline to claim the prize, despite numerous attempts to find the winner.
In short, he did not make the deadline and the lottery officials threw out his claim. Jackson still tried to get the prize, to no avail. Mr. Andrew Jackson Whittaker was already rich when he won the Powerball Lottery backed in 2002.
But when he decided to get the lump sum of $170.5 million dollars instead of numerous payouts for 20 years he was robbed at a strip club of more than $500,000.
