A 46-year-old Kentucky man may be the first known man among the four very happy people who live in or recently visited New Hampshire, Delaware, Minnesota, or the Bluegrass State.
Those were the states where the winning Powerball Lottery tickets — bearing the numbers 8, 17, 22, 42, 47 and Powerball number 21 — were bought, entitling their purchasers to a share of the estimated $295 million jackpot.
The Ashland Daily Independent newspaper reported that David Edwards, of Westwood, Ky., is holding one of the winning tickets.
Edwards is a fiber-optics worker who was recently laid off. He is single and has an 11-year-old daughter, and bought $8 worth of tickets at Clark's Pump n' Shop in his hometown using birthdays to select numbers.
Edwards told the newspaper: "I was just stunned. I just praised God and Jesus."
Lottery spokesman Rick Redman said it won't be officially revealed whether Edwards was a winner until Monday.
Despite the 80 million-to-one odds, there was little surprise that there was at least one winner, since over 91 percent of the winning combinations were sold before Saturday's drawing.
The prize is believed to be the third-largest lottery jackpot in United States history and the second-largest Powerball prize.
One of the winning tickets in Saturday night's drawing was sold at a Cumberland Farms convenience store in Rollinsford, N.H., just over the Maine state line, New Hampshire lottery spokeswoman Maura McCann said Sunday.
"I was thrilled, absolutely thrilled!" she said, even though she likely faced a night of little sleep and a busy day Sunday.
"I'll die if I won," said New Hampshire customer Nick Vatistas, 21, who had bought five tickets but hadn't checked them yet.
Cumberland Farms will get 1 percent of the value of the winning ticket — but not more than $30,000, she said. The cap is a state law.
In all, 88 tickets matched the first five numbers, but missed the Powerball, lottery officials said. Those winners will receive $100,000 each.
The lottery is played 21 states and the District of Columbia. Residents in states where the lottery is not available were rushing across state lines, crushing some border communities with long lines and crowds.
Convoys of car-poolers from Las Vegas, the nation's gambling capital, caravaned across Hoover Dam and down U.S. Highway 93 into Arizona where Rose Larsen, owner of Rose's Den café, has been selling about 60,000 tickets a day along with the roadhouse's homemade meatloaf and barbecued ribs.
In New York City, a group of bicyclists pedaled more than 35 miles from Manhattan's Central Park to Stamford, Conn., where the cyclists said they bought about $5 worth of tickets each after the two-hour trip.
The Powerball frenzy has proven especially chaotic for Connecticut because neighboring New York and New Jersey do not participate in the multi-state lottery. Greenwich, Conn., suspended sales Friday because the city was swamped with New York residents. On Saturday, sales resumed to thinner crowds, to the benefit of those who knew the Friday ban was going to be lifted.
"We figured everyone would think Greenwich would be closed today, so we figured 'Let's try it,'" Jen Molloy said.
In other areas, customers and sales clerks didn't get as lucky. Connecticut as a whole sold $11,000 in tickets per minute.
Sales figures in Iowa were expected to top Wednesday's numbers, when 1,600 machines cranked out an average of one ticket every minute.
"I just hope someone wins soon," said Delicia Thompson, a cashier at a U-Stop Convenience Shop in Lincoln, Nebraska. "You can't get anything done besides Powerball."
Workers at a factory in Tennessee chipped in $24,000 to buy tickets in a quick-riches gambit that stunned the owner of the store where they bought the tickets. It took an hour for the lottery terminal to spit out the $1 tickets.
The biggest Powerball jackpot ever is the $295.7 million won in 1998 by a group of factory workers in Ohio. The richest lottery prize in U.S. history is the $363 million Big Game jackpot, won last year by two players in Illinois and Michigan.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
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