California: A lucky California ticket-holder hit the jackpot in the nearly $1.6 billion lottery bonanza in the United States on Wednesday, officials said, after millions tuned in to see the draw live on television.
The winning numbers were 8, 27, 34, 4 and 19, with a Powerball number 10, as lottery fever gripped the country, but there may also have been other jackpot winners in other states.
"We have a winner in California! A jackpot-winning ticket was sold in Chino Hills. We`re still awaiting results from other states," California Lottery tweeted.
The jackpot, which had stood at $1.5 billion -- a world record in the lottery industry -- for much of the day, eventually crept up to nearly $1.6 billion, ABC News said.
The winner can choose to be paid the full jackpot in annual installments for 29 years or take a one-off payment, after tax.
The odds of winning were at least one in 292 million.
Despite that, shops all over the United States did a roaring trade in frenzied last-minute ticket sales in the final hours before the live draw.
Office workers dashed out between meetings to buy tickets, fantasizing about what they would do with the winnings, and commuters joked about scooping the jackpot to save them from the deep freeze of winter.
For days, the talk of the nation, from coast to coast, and even from Canada to Mexico, was: will someone finally win the first Powerball in two months and, if you were to win, how would you spend such a whopping jackpot?
"I`m not a regular, but why not? Like the commercial says, `Hey, you never know,`" said Nick Friedberg, a carpenter and father of two drinking coffee on a bitterly cold street in Manhattan.
