Two winning tickets in US$400-m Mega-Millions jackpot

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- The holders of two lucky tickets purchased states apart awoke to good news Wednesday: They will split a US$400 million Mega Millions jackpot, the sixth-largest lottery prize in US history.

The tickets -- one sold at a Sunoco convenience store on Florida's Space Coast, the other at a liquor store southeast of Washington in La Plata, Maryland -- matched all six winning numbers in the Tuesday night drawing: 11, 19, 24, 33 and 51 with a Mega Ball of 7.

The lump-sum option for the entire jackpot was $224 million. The cash option for each of the two winning tickets is about $112 million, and after taxes, the winner would get $74.5 million, Maryland Lottery Director Stephen Martino said.

The Maryland winner bought the ticket at Lady's Liquor in La Plata, a town of nearly 9,000 about 30 miles from the nation's capital. The winner - who has 182 days to claim the prize but can choose to remain anonymous - picked the numbers manually, rather than through a machine's random selection, Martino said.

"Those numbers probably mean something to that winner," he said.

Jay Jhala, the owner and manager of Lady's Liquor, said in a phone interview that he didn't know when the winning ticket was sold or to whom. He said he was excited, though, to have sold a ticket to a new millionaire.

"This is a first ever," he said. The store has sold winning tickets before, "but never this big."