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The
sum reached a world record for lottery jackpots after there were
no winners claimed a $1 billion prize on Friday.
It is so much money that if you had it all in $100 bills, you
could make a stack about as high as the World Trade Center in
New York city, the lottery's website said.
"Mega Millions has already entered historic territory, but it's
truly astounding to think that now the jackpot has reached an
all-time world record," Gordon Medenica, lead director of the
Mega Millions Group, said in a statement.
But you are more likely to get killed by a shark than win, with
odds of a shark attack at 1 in 3.7 million, according the
Tucson, Arizona-based International Wildlife Museum.
After taxes, the cash value of the Mega Millions prize will be
an estimated $904 million, which is greater than the gross
domestic product of countries including South Africa, Columbia
and Switzerland, according to 2017 figures from the World Bank.
Wednesday's Powerball lottery prize stands at an estimated $620
million, making it the fifth largest jackpot in U.S. history,
officials said, after no one got all six numbers in Saturday's
drawing.
The lump sum cash payout is estimated at $354.3 million.
The current Mega Millions jackpot beats the previous record, a
$1.586 billion jackpot for a Powerball drawing in 2016, said
Seth Elkin, a spokesman for Mega Millions.
If there is more than one winner, the jackpot would be shared,
as happened when the previous Mega Millions record of $656
million was drawn in March 2012 and was divided between winners
in Kansas, Illinois and Maryland, a lottery official said.
(Reporting by Rich McKay; Additional reporting by Alex
Dobuzinskis; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
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