Garbage workers in the city of Bitonto, Italy recovered a €1 million ($1.15 million) lottery ticket, after having to search through an entire truck full of trash. Waste management company SANB administrator Roberto Nicola Toscano told AFP news agency that the ticket was found "miraculously still in one piece."
Toscano received the panicked call from the woman who had won the big prize and lost it.
The unnamed woman entered the Saturday lottery and on Sunday she went to check her ticket's result at her local shop.
But the machine read "non-payable," a common message indicating the prize was too large for the small retailer to redeem. She mistook the message to say that there were no winnings.
"The winner always played the same numbers, as they were associated with a loved one," Toscano said. According to Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera, the woman's winning combination was 2, 4, 8, 10, and 51. A family member of the woman noticed the combination was the winning one and informed her, but she had already discarded the ticket.
