Mar 7, 2007 4:21 pm US/Eastern
(AP) BALTIMORE There are just two winning tickets in the record $370 million Mega Millions jackpot — one sold in New Jersey and the other in Georgia, lottery officials announced Wednesday.
One lucky player bought a Mega Millions ticket in Maryland that missed the big jackpot by just one number, making it worth $250,000.
The ticket was purchased at Burtonsville Crown Beer & Wine in Montgomery County.
No one had come forward to claim their share of the prize at midday, but lottery officials in both states were expecting to hear from the winners soon.
The winning numbers: 16-22-29-39-42, with the Mega Ball 20.
The odds of hitting it: about 1 in 176 million.
Georgia officials said a winning ticket was sold at Favorite Market in Dalton.
"We don't know if someone local, if it's someone traveling through, if it may be someone from Tennessee who's come across the border," Margaret DeFrancisco. president and CEO of the Georgia lottery, told CBS Radio News.
New Jersey's winning ticket was sold at Campark Liquors in Woodbine.
Janice, at a 7-11 in Wildwood, N.J., said the news that someone in the area won is causing a lot of excitement at her store.
"I'm hoping (it's) someone that we know," she said. "Every customer who has come to the front door has wanted a printout of the numbers."
California's results were delayed until mid-day, but the Lottery finally announced that the count was complete and that the state had no tickets matching all winning numbers. The other nine states also struck out, said Mardele Cohen of the Ohio Lottery, which compiles all the states' information.
In Georgia, Favorite Markets president Sam Turner told the Dalton Daily Citizen he believes someone living in his area could be the winner.
"That's a store that's in a heavy industrial area, so odds are it's somebody that lives and works around there," Turner said. "Very few people get lost on Abutment Road, so my guess is it's a local, which from my standpoint, if that bears out, that's wonderful."
Tuesday night's drawing was held in New York's Times Square in ABC's television studio rather than Atlanta after brisk sales pushed what had been an estimated $355 million jackpot estimate to a record $370 million.
Even though the temperature was just 16 degrees, a handful of hopefuls showed up in Times Square to watch the drawing.
Millions of others had lined up at lottery agents in the 12 states to buy tickets Tuesday. New Yorkers bought more than 1 million tickets an hour, said Robert McLaughlin, the state's lottery director. Virginia retailers sold about 8,550 tickets per minute.
New York construction worker Andelko Kalinic had an idea of what he would do if his Mega Millions ticket paid off.
"Go to the moon," he said. "Why not?"
Vendors in Chicago reported long lines at lottery-ticket machines Tuesday, especially around lunchtime and during rush hour.
The Tower News and Video normally sells about 500 Mega Millions tickets a day but has recently been selling around 1,500 daily, said Arin Patel, an attendant at the Chicago convenience store.
"It's crazy," Patel said Tuesday. "We sold 500 within the three hours that we opened today."
There were three second-prize winners in Illinois from Tuesday night's drawing, matching five numbers to win $250,000 apiece. Those tickets were purchased at stores in Mt. Carmel, Plainfield and Greenville. Another 20 players from Illinois matched four of the five numbers, plus the Mega Ball number. Those tickets are each worth $10,000.
Some lottery hopefuls in Ohio never had a chance. Ohio's lottery ticket system went down statewide at about 10:20 p.m., 25 minutes before the deadline, Cohen said. The cause hadn't yet been determined.
"For those people who wanted to make a wager and didn't get a chance, we're very, very sorry," she said.
The largest previous multistate lottery jackpot was $365 million in 2006, when eight workers at a Nebraska meat processing plant hit the Powerball lotto. The Big Game lotto, the forerunner of Mega Millions, paid out a $363 million jackpot in 2000.
Mega Millions tickets are sold in California, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Texas, Virginia and Washington state.
The Mega Millions logo. There are at least two big winners in Tuesday night's US$370 million ''Mega Millions'' lottery drawing which is held in 12 U.S. states. The two winning tickets were sold in Georgia and New Jersey, but lottery officials say that no one has come forward to claim their millions.

One ticket was sold at a store called Campark Liquors, which is located in Woodbine, New Jersey. The other ticket was sold at what is called the Favorite Market, located in Dalton, Georgia.

The drawing, the biggest in ''Mega Millions'' history, was moved from its usual location in Atlanta, Georgia to Times Square, New York because at one point, according to New York's lottery commissioner, Robert McLaughlin, at least 1,000,000 tickets an hour were being sold in the state of New York.

Some people in Ohio were not so lucky. In fact, the state's lottery system, for reasons still not known, went off-line at 10:25 p.m., just over a half hour before the drawing was to be held.

At least one person was one number away from winning the jackpot, matching five of the six numbers. That ticket is worth $250,000 and was bought at Burtonsville Crown Beer & Wine in Montgomery County, Maryland.

The previous record for the highest multi-state lottery was set back in 2006 when the ''Power Ball'' jackpot paid out at least $365 million dollars to eight people in Nebraska. Another multi-state lottery, ''The Big Game'' (which was later named ''Mega Millions'') has the third highest jackpot of $363 million dollars which was paid out in 2000.

The lottery numbers were, 16-22-29-39-42 and the Mega Ball was, 20. The odds of actually winning the jackpot, by yourself, was at least one in 176 million. Each group of numbers costs only one dollar.