Man wins lottery twice in three months
Robert Hamilton, from Indianapolis, picked up $1 million in the Hoosier Lottery last week. What makes his win even more extraordinary is that he already won $1 million in the competition three months ago. The odds of wining once are 2.1 million: 1, so the odds of picking up a second win are vanishingly small. However, bizarrely, he's not the first man to have won more than once.
Hamilton, who runs a refuse company, first won back in April when he picked up a scratchcard in Jacksonville on his way to a conference. Then last week he thought he'd buy another at a local convenience store, and was stunned to have won a second time.
According to CBS News, he said he had used the first win in order to pay off debts, buy a home, take a holiday and buy a truck for his dad. WTHR reported that after the first win, his wife Donna told him that if he won again he could blow some of the money on a motorbike. However, he pledged that the money wouldn't go to their heads, and they wouldn't stop working - he'll use some of the money to invest in his business and buy new equipment.
Not the first
He's not the first person to have won more than once. Last year James Bozeman Jr from Florida picked up a $3 million jackpot. He added the winnings to the $10 million he picked up a year earlier after buying a ticket in the same convenience store. He changed his numbers after the first win, and again after the second one. He said at the time he was hoping for a third.
Meanwhile, an Arkansas couple managed to win the lottery twice in one day. Stephen and Terri Weaver went out for a day's fishing, and stopped off at a shop on the way to buy a ticket. On the way back they decided to get a second ticket. That evening the first ticket netted them $1 million and the second $50,000.
A man from Liverpool managed the same feat in November last year, but slightly less impressively. Brian McTigue, 66, from West Derby, bought two tickets for the same draw, and while one scooped £2,850,984, the other won £25.
In the UK, property developer George Traykov won in 2011 and 2013 - and was remarkably unimpressed by it. He won £1 million in a Millionaire Raffle the first time and £1,600 in the EuroMillions the second time. After the second win he claimed to be unlucky with numbers - although this is likely to be because he missed out on the jackpot by just one number.
Mike McDermott, a 50-year-old electrician from Gosport in Hampshire, meanwhile, won the lottery twice in 2002 - with the same numbers. Both times he matched five numbers and the bonus ball. He picked up £194,501 the first time and £121,157 the second time. The odds of this second win were roughly 5.4 trillion:1.
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