Mega Millions rockets to record $476 million

Welcome to jackpot freak-out.

Even major media outlets like Good Morning America are going gaga over Mega Millions smashing through the $400 million barrier, soaring toward the half-billion-dollar mark, and rewriting the record book.

Forty-seven tickets, including two in Pennsylvania and two in New Jersey, just missed last night. They matched the first five numbers - 9, 19, 34, 44 and 51 - but not the Mega Ball of 24.

Most will win $250,000 - instead of more than 1,000 times that much.

The annuity jackpot rocketed to $476 million for Friday night's drawing - obliterating the old U.S. mark of $390 million set by Mega Millions in March 2007.

The $120 million jump in the annuity also was a record, beating the $115 million also witnessed in March 2007.

The cash jackpot clobbered its own record, catapulting from $259 million to $341 million - $101 million more than the second-biggest cash jackpot ever, the $240 million reached by Mega Millions in January last year. (See list of record jackpots: http://bit.ly/Hd1oJ8.)

If piled in a single stack of $1 bills, the cash windfall could start at the bottommost spot of the ocean and still tower above Mount Everest.

If paid at the rate of $1 every minute, the payout would take more than 600 years.

If anybody wants to give us a wheelbarrow full of cash, we'd be happy to count and calculate that, too.

California's nine second-tier winners will each get $308,573 under that state's pari-mutuel system.

In other states, the usual payout for matching five numbers is $250,000. The amount gets boosted to $1 million if a player also bought the $1 Megaplier multiplier option.

New York had 11 players match five, while Washington State had three. With two apiece, besides Pennsylvania and New Jersey, were Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan and Texas.

Washington, D.C., Virginia, West Virginia, Vermont, South Carolina, Missouri, Colorado and Montana each sold one.

Mega Millions is played in all but eight states - Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Alaska and Hawaii.

The Powerball jackpot tonight is a comparatively modest $50 million, $30.2 million cash.

For more on lotteries, go to