PIKESVILLE, Md. — Most people treat the lottery like a tiny, weekly subscription to hope. Twenty bucks here, a quick “what if” there, and then life continues exactly as it was.

Karen L. from Rosedale did the same thing—only her “what if” showed up to work.

One lucky lottery player in Arkansas woke up on Christmas morning with bragging rights to winning the second-largest lottery jackpot in world history worth a tearjerking $1.8168 billion.

Sometimes in life, you follow a sign that says “luckiest store in Michigan,” and instead of getting a clever marketing gimmick, you end up walking out with a ticket worth a million dollars. This is exactly what happened to one Michigan man who, in a moment of casual optimism, stepped into a liquor store and stepped out with a financial plot twist.

Imagine popping out on your lunch break to do something totally ordinary—grab a ticket, grab a snack, maybe complain about work in your head—and walking straight into a plot twist featuring your grandma and a million dollars.

That’s basically what happened in Rochelle, Illinois.

Most of us spend our whole lives trying to catch one big break. A New Jersey couple just caught two — and the universe apparently didn’t get the memo that this isn’t how probability works.

Six months after scoring a cool $1 million from a scratch-off ticket, this husband-and-wife team strolled back into the New Jersey Lottery office… this time holding a $3 million winner. Yes, you read that right. Yes, your brain is doing that little static glitch right now. No, the odds don’t make sense — in fact, statisticians estimate the chance of these two wins happening is roughly 1 in 2 trillion. You’re more likely to be hit by a meteorite. Actually, 1.2 million times more likely, according to the Lottery.

There are birthday gifts, and then there are birthday miracles.

Some people get socks. Some get a new tie. And then there’s a guy from Simsbury, Connecticut, who casually gave himself a $1 million Powerball win for his 60th birthday. Talk about setting the bar high for next year.

Every neighborhood has a “lucky spot.” A corner store that sells more scratchers than sandwiches, a clerk who swears by birthdays and anniversaries, a rumor that someone’s cousin’s barber once hit big. Most of the time, it’s folklore. Then a BP station in Yonkers went and made it real—three $1 million Powerball winners from the same drawing, same store, same night.