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$1.586 billion. Powerball, January 2016
The one that made a billion-dollar jackpot a thing that happens. Split three ways.
$528.8mEach of the three winning tickets, before tax.
This was the first time a lottery jackpot became genuinely unavoidable, office pools in workplaces that had never run one, queues at state lines, people who had never bought a ticket in their lives buying five.
Three tickets matched, in California, Florida and Tennessee. The Tennessee winners, John and Lisa Robinson, appeared on morning television within days holding the ticket, which financial advisers watched through their fingers.
For nearly seven years this was the record, and at the time a lot of people assumed it would stand for a generation. It lasted until 2022.
The other thing 2016 changed was the ticket-buying pattern. Sales data from that run showed the classic hockey stick: almost nothing until the jackpot passed about $300 million, then a near-vertical climb. Lotteries have designed around that curve ever since, which is why the odds were lengthened rather than shortened.