Jackpot!
In 1799, Denmark Vesey, a slave, bought a ticket to Charleston’s East Bay lottery. He won. With the stunning $1500 jackpot, he bought his own freedom. Then for the next twenty some years, he planned and recruited for the fearsome Vesey Slave Uprising of 1822.
When you win the Mega-Millions jackpot tonight, what will you do with $540 million?
Hullo?! You’re not going to win the Mega-Millions jackpot. The odds are 1 in 175 million, the equivalent of getting hit by lightning 12 times in a row. It’s not going to happen.
What does happen all the time, though, is winning mini-jackpots. About a year ago, I picked an old sledgehammer for $2 in a pawn shop in Pascagoula, Mississippi . It is functionally identical to this cheesy “War Hammer” that I spotted online yesterday being sold by Rogue Fitness…for $125. That’s one hundred twenty five dollars. That’s a Benjamin + a Jackson + a Lincoln. So how happy does that make me? Very happy – I just swung my one dollar sledgehammer around in big circles over my head to celebrate my $123 jackpot. Read more…