'Forgotten' winning $1m lotto ticket was stuck on fridge
One lucky couple have suddenly found themselves over $1.5 million richer after finding an old winning lottery ticket stuck to their fridge.
Alan and Kim Elliott, from Nottingham in the United Kingdom, had originally bought a lottery ticket for the Euromillions draw on 23rd March but had stuck it on to their fridge door and then forgot all about it.
Mr Elliott, 46, only discovered he had the winning numbers over two months later when he saw an advert for a $112m lottery rollover on television and he took a batch of tickets to his local newsagents, who scanned them all in.
And he knew something was up when the shop assistant asked him to "sit down and stay calm".
"I thought she was pulling my leg but her boss came over and called [lottery organizers] Camelot for me as I couldn’t think," Mr Elliott told the Sun.
"I couldn’t even write my name I was shaking so much.”
Mr Elliott, who works for a building firm, added: “I was only talking with my colleagues about what we’d do if we won the lottery not knowing that sitting in my kitchen was a real life-changing slip of paper.”
Not that the money is likely to change life much for the couple, who plan to continue working. They celebrated victory with a takeaway meal and bottle of bubbly, and said their first purchase would be a Range Rover.
Millions of dollars of lottery winnings goes unclaimed around the world every year. One of the most high-profile cases of unclaimed winnings came in Georgia, the United States last December when a winning ticket for $80 m went unclaimed and expired after the 180-day deadline passed.
Earlier this month, a $25m winning lottery sold in a Sydney servo went unclaimed - but only for a couple of days before the anonymous winner - who had never played before - came forward.
