Since mid-April, the Mega Millions kitty has been slowly inching up, with no tickets sold that claimed all of the winning numbers. That includes Friday night's drawing, the 31st since that April drawing, which similarly came up short. Now, the amount waiting to be transferred to someone's bank account has grown to what could be a windfall for the books. CNN reports that a potentially record-breaking jackpot "may be in play" for Tuesday night's drawing, with an estimated $1.55 billion top prize, per a Mega Millions release.
The largest Mega Millions jackpot up to this point was $1.537 billion, scooped up in October 2018 in South Carolina. The largest lottery jackpot ever in the US was $2.04 billion, won in a Powerball drawing in California last year. If just one ticket claims Tuesday's jackpot, that would amount to $757.2 million in a lump-sum cash payment. The odds of that happening: 1 in 302.6 million, per Fox Business. If you haven't checked your tickets for Friday night's drawing yet, you might want to, as CNN notes there were multiple winners who won a million or two. The winning numbers were 11-30-45-52-56, with a Mega Ball of 20. (More Mega Millions stories.)