Powerball fever is at an end, after two tickets were reported to contain the winning Powerball combination yesterday.
The Associated Press reports that two tickets with the numbers 5,16,22,23,29 and a Powerball of 6 are the lucky winners. The tickets were sold in Arizona and Missouri. The winners have not yet come forward to claim their prizes.
With the Powerball jackpot at $579.9 million, the largest in Powerball history, thousands flocked to the ticket counters to buy their chance at a fortune Wednesday.
Tickets were selling at a rate of 130,000 per minute on the final day, according to AP, a rate six times higher than last week’s Powerball drawing.
Amy Suh, an employee at Vermont House convenience store near K St. in Washington, D.C. said she had people in and out all day long Wednesday buying lottery tickets.
Dozens of K streeters flooded Suh’s store at lunch hour, and by 4:30 p.m. Suh had already sold more than 1,626 tickets.
According to Powerball officials, there was a 75 percent chance the winning combination would be drawn this time, despite the fact that the lottery had already been turned over with out a winner 16 consecutive times.
The winning numbers were announced last night at 10 p.m. and, if the money is claimed, it would result in the second largest lottery payout in history, topped only by the $636 Mega Millions payout in March.
And just as predicted, more than one Powerball ticket holder will hold claim to the millions, just like the massive Mega Millions jackpot winners earlier this year.
That jackpot, which was split between three different winners, caused a media firestorm as rumors spread across social networking sites.
Last night’s results may produce a similar reaction as the country waits to see whether news will surface about the nation’s newest millionaires, or whether they themselves might end up the lucky winners.
Francesca Chambers contributed to this report.
