Five Things to Know About These Crazy-Big Lottery Jackpots

Will we ever get winners for these darn lottery jackpots? Lottery fever continues and continues, doesn't it? Two of the biggest lottery jackpots in American lottery history keep growing larger for this week's latest round of drawings.

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All this big money lottery excitement got me curious about some lottery jackpot fun facts. So, I did a little digging and came up with some factoids you can tell the other people waiting in the lottery line today...

 Five things you need to know about these crazy-big lottery jackpots.

1- Mega Millions, on Tuesday, has a projected $850 million jackpot. USA Today says that's the third largest in lottery history and the game's second largest ever.

A projected $730 million will be up for grabs Wednesday in the Powerball drawing, the fourth largest jackpot in the game's history and the sixth largest in U.S. history.

2- It has been nearly two years since a lottery jackpot has grown so large. No one has won either game's top prize since September. Both Mega Millions and Powerball will mark 35 drawings this week without a winner. That's a record for Mega Millions.

3- The biggest ever lottery jackpot was drawn on Jan. 13, 2016, according to CNN Money. The $1.586 billion Powerball jackpot was shared by three Californians who all had the option of roughly $533 million before taxes as an annuity or $327.8 million as the lump-sum payment.

4- There were $2.89 billion in unclaimed lottery prizes in the 12 months ending June 2017, lottery expert Brett Jacobson told CNN in 2018. And 167 prizes worth $1 million or more went unclaimed that year alone. The biggest-ever unclaimed prize was a $77 million winning ticket purchased in Georgia in June 2011.

5- Nearly 70% of lottery winners end up broke within seven years. Even worse, several winners have died tragically or witnessed those close to them suffer, according to Edward Ugel, author of the book "Money for Nothing: One Man's Journey Through the Dark Side of Lottery Millions."  "You would be blown away to see how many winners wish they'd never won," Ugel said.

Sources: USA Today, CNN Money,  "Money for Nothing: One Man's Journey Through the Dark Side of Lottery Millions."