Fortune cookies lucky for 110 lottery winners

[underpants]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050511/od_nm/life_fortune_dc

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The cookie crumbled right for 110 people who chose Chinese food.

Betting on the numbers recommended in fortune cookies, they won from $100,000 to half a million dollars each in a multi-state U.S. Powerball lottery, organization director Charles Strutt said on Wednesday.

By the laws of statistical probability, there should have been only four or five winners among the 10.4 million ticket buyers in the lottery operated by the governments of 27 U.S. States, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

But there were nearly 20 times that many, meaning $19 million had to be paid to unexpected winners in the March 30 drawing.

They even replayed and replayed an ABC television show "Lost" and an episode of soap opera "The Young and the Restless" in which Powerball numbers were discussed. No match.

The first hint came from Tennessee, where the first three winners told lottery officials they took the numbers from fortune cookies. The story was repeated across America.

Tennessee and Idaho officials visited dozens of Chinese restaurants and traced the cookies back to a distributor in the New York area. The New York Times investigated the story, tracking the cookies to New York's Wonton Food, which calls itself the world's biggest fortune cookie maker.

The fortune cookie featured six lucky numbers. The first five were good enough for six-figure prizes, The sixth figure, needed for the jackpot of $25.5 million, was listed as 40, when the winning number was 42. A Tennessee man who shunned fortune cookie luck landed the biggest prize, Strutt said.