Sunday, August 23, 2009 ROME: Residents of a village in central Italy were celebrating Saturday after a ticket sold there produced the richest jackpot in European lottery history -- nearly 148 million euros.After weeks of mid-summer lotto madness in Italy, the winning ticket was sold in a bar in the village of Bagnone, in the central region of Tuscany.The identity of the winner -- who is now 147,807,299.08 euros (about 212 million dollars) richer, according to a news agency -- was being kept secret.But Italian television pictures showed emotions running high in the picturesque village of only 2,000 inhabitants."We were watching the football match where Milan were playing when someone came in saying that we had won the SuperEnalotto," the bar's manager, Annamaria Ciampini, told another news agency."We immediately changed the channel and we started to hear the name of the village. What more can I say? I didn't win and I don't know who did," she added.Outside the bar in the centre of the village, some locals were popping the corks on bottles of sparkling wine. Others however, complained about the noise and called for the television to be switched back to the football.Villager Giuliano Di Bernardo, said he had seen the winner, a 47-year-old local man, buy the winning ticket.The last time the thrice-weekly SuperEnalotto paid out was on January 31, meaning the jackpot kept rolling over to the point where it became the world's second-largest after MegaMillions in the United States in March 2007.The winning six-number combination was 2, 16, 38, 67, 70 and 84, the national lottery agency said, and the chances of getting all those digits right were only one in 622 million.
Sunday, August 23, 2009 ROME: Residents of a village in central Italy were celebrating Saturday after a ticket sold there produced the richest jackpot in European lottery history -- nearly 148 million euros.After weeks of mid-summer lotto madness in Italy, the winning ticket was sold in a bar in the village of Bagnone, in the central region of Tuscany.The identity of the winner -- who is now 147,807,299.08 euros (about 212 million dollars) richer, according to a news agency -- was being kept secret.But Italian television pictures showed emotions running high in the picturesque village of only 2,000 inhabitants."We were watching the football match where Milan were playing when someone came in saying that we had won the SuperEnalotto," the bar's manager, Annamaria Ciampini, told another news agency."We immediately changed the channel and we started to hear the name of the village. What more can I say? I didn't win and I don't know who did," she added.Outside the bar in the centre of the village, some locals were popping the corks on bottles of sparkling wine. Others however, complained about the noise and called for the television to be switched back to the football.Villager Giuliano Di Bernardo, said he had seen the winner, a 47-year-old local man, buy the winning ticket.The last time the thrice-weekly SuperEnalotto paid out was on January 31, meaning the jackpot kept rolling over to the point where it became the world's second-largest after MegaMillions in the United States in March 2007.The winning six-number combination was 2, 16, 38, 67, 70 and 84, the national lottery agency said, and the chances of getting all those digits right were only one in 622 million.
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