Computers were made for such things: What are the odds of an entire village winning the same lottery prize?
Yet that's exactly what happened in Sodeto, Spain, where the residents entered the annual nationwide lottery and won. The prize for "El Gordo" was $950 million, and the distribution, after the government took its chunk, ended up being the equivalent of $130,000 for each winning ticket bought by residents of the planned community in the northern part of the country. Some people bought a handful of tickets and so got more money than their neighbors did, but all seem to be taking the good fortune in stride.
Sodeto, which has been around only since 1950, has an agricultural focus and is not exactly where you would expect to find a whole lot of commercial activity going on. But that is what is happening, as word spreads of the village's winnings.
The population is only a couple hundred these days, but you wouldn't know it by glancing around town. Salesmen and bankers have descended on the town, offering deals surely being described as "historic" and "too good to pass up."
The one disappointing result, if it could be called that, is that one member of the community didn't buy a ticket that day. Not to be outdone, the one non-winning man promptly sold some land to a neighbor who was among the winners. He wasn't too upset about not winning the money, apparently.
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