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Lottery Tickets and Games

Powerball sweepstakes: Winning tickets for $632.6M jackpot sold in California and Wisconsin

Jay Cannon
USA TODAY

The odds of winning Wednesday night's Powerball jackpot was about 1 in 292,200,000. But two Powerball tickets sold in California and Wisconsin won all $632.6 million, the seventh-largest jackpot in Powerball history.

The winners will split the $632.6 million jackpot, according to the lottery website, or have the option of $450.2 million in cash. The winning numbers for the Jan. 5 jackpot were 6, 14, 25, 33, 46 and the Powerball was 17. The powerplay multiplier was 2.

According to the California Lottery, one of the winning tickets was sold at 7-Eleven in Sacramento, California.

In addition to the two jackpot winners, 14 other tickets won million-dollar prizes by matching all five white balls. Two tickets sold in Florida and Georgia had the Powerplay to win $2 million each.

Meanwhile, the $1 million winning tickets were sold in: Arizona, California, Florida (3), Indiana, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, New York (2), and Texas.

The jackpot will now reset to $20 million for Saturday's drawing.

The Powerball had not been won since a lottery player in California won the $699.8 million jackpot back in October. There have been 39 straight drawings without the jackpot being won.

If you weren't a winner Wednesday night, better luck next time. But with odds so slim, there are a whole lot of things that are more likely to happen to you than win the lottery. Here are a few:

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Find a pearl in an oyster shell 

Ever dream of shucking oysters and finding a pearl sitting in the shell? Your chances are highly unlikely, but you still have a better chance of finding a pearl than instantly winning millions. A 1-in-12,000 chance in fact, according to Spey, a high-end jewelry company.

Find a four-leaf clover

If you search hard enough, you may just find a four-leaf clover to perhaps secure some luck in winning the jackpot. John Frett, a professor of landscape horticulture and Director of the University of Delaware Botanical Garden, said there's a 1-in-10,000 chance of finding a four-leaf clover. No guarantee they will help with any future lottery winnings though.

Get struck by lightning

Often when someone talks about winning a lottery jackpot, someone quips that they are more likely to be struck by lightning than win all that money. They're not wrong. According to the National Weather Service, if someone lives until 80, their chance of being hit by lightning is 1 in 15,300.

A hole-in-one, or two

Good news, golfers. An average player has a (much) better chance of making an ace than winning a lottery jackpot. The National Hole-In-One Registry sets your odds at 12,000 to 1. 

In fact, your odds of sinking two holes-in-one in the same round (67 million to 1) are still better than winning the jackpot.

Have conjoined twins

A woman is more likely to have conjoined twins than she is to win the Powerball jackpot. Conjoined twins account for roughly one in every 50,000 to 60,000 births, according to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Death by vending machine

One day you're trying to get a bag of chips from the vending machine and the next thing you know, it's lights out. According to Amram Shapiro, author of "The Book of Odds," people have a 1-in-112 million chance of being killed in a vending machine-related incident.

An asteroid hitting the Earth 

The thought of an asteroid hitting the Earth is scary enough, but the fact you're more likely to be killed by an asteroid than win the lottery is terrifying. According to the National Safety Council, a person in the United States has a 1-in-75,000 chance of dying in a global impact asteroid strike.

Contributing: Kaitlyn Kanzler and John Connolly, NorthJersey.com

Follow Jay Cannon of USA TODAY on Twitter: @JayTCannon

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