In the 1560s, Queen Elizabeth I of England faced a daunting challenge: raising massive funds for national defense. With taxes already at their limit, the Queen devised a clever solution—issuing the world’s first state-sponsored lottery.
The price for a single ticket was 10 shillings, while the grand prize was a staggering £5,000. To put that into perspective, it would have taken an average laborer 500 years of work to earn such a fortune.
On this day, January 11, 1569, the very first lottery drawing took place in front of the doors of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. However, no grand prize winner emerged. Of the 400,000 tickets printed, only a little over 30,000 had actually been sold.
Ultimately, every penny of the profit was taken by the Queen.
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