For some students, there is nothing more daunting than a math lesson.
So after a retired teacher realized that she and 29 of her colleagues had a winning Powerball ticket, she realized there was a perfect place to keep the ticket safe: page 200 of an old book. mathematics text.
Thirty teachers from Rector A. Jones Middle School in Florence, Kentucky, purchased a winning $1 million Powerball ticket on Saturday, Jan. 27, after playing together for eight years.
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When the group’s organizer, a retired teacher who remains anonymous, realized she had put together the correct numbers, she promptly put the ticket in the book until the group was ready to go to the Kentucky Lottery on Tuesday afternoon.
“Nobody looks in a math book,” he joked as he hid his Kentucky lottery ticket. “I knew it would be safe there… I checked it a thousand times.”
After taxes, each of the “Jones 30” — the nickname for the group of school nurses, administrators, counselors and teachers — took home $24,000 each.
“We all taught at the same school at one time or another,” said one of the anonymous winners. “Some have left or retired, but we continue to do so. We have remained friends all these years.”
The ticket was purchased at a Kroger grocery store in Hebron, Kentucky, which will receive a $10,000 prize for selling the winning ticket.
Buying lottery tickets as a group and deciding to split the winnings is a bold strategy that has paid off in the past for others looking to win big.
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In December, a group of coworkers also from Kentucky won $50,000 in shared scratch-off tickets that their boss had purchased for them as a holiday gift.
The employees split the earnings with their boss and each took home $1,750.