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Gee, what a co-incidence after 9-11 and in NY even! What are the odds? Since odds of probably no longer apply in this universe maybe I will win the lottery 5 times in a row! I better start buying tickets.

You're comparing the wrong things. Odds can be figured for multiple instances of the same thing, such as winning the lottery 5 times in a row but not for different things of different origins. In any one place there are always things happening simultaneously which you'd be hardpressed to predict, but they happen anyway. It doesn't mean their occurrence was improbable, just unpredictable. Improbability and unpredictability are two different things. Since they are not occurring through the same mechanism, their relative frequency of happening singly or in unison is not described in terms of probability.

In any one place there are always things happening simultaneously which you'd be hardpressed to predict, but they happen anyway. It doesn't mean their occurrence was improbable, just unpredictable

TRENTON, N.J. (Reuters) - The New Jersey Lottery will pay out more than $1 million to thousands of lottery winners who bet on the flight number of the jetliner that crashed in New York this week, lottery officials said on Tuesday.

American Airlines Flight 587 plunged into a quiet Queens neighborhood on Monday morning, killing all 260 people aboard the Airbus A300 in a fiery air disaster that shook New Yorkers with fears of a deadly new attack almost exactly two months after Sept. 11.

Hours later, not only did "587" turn out to be the winning number in the New Jersey Lottery's Pick-3 game, but players wound up buying a whopping 27,829 winning tickets. They each won $16, and the money won by other types of tickets that also contained the flight number pushed the total payout over $1 million.

The macabre twist of fate did not end there, however, because a slight variation on the plane's flight number -- 578 -- had also been the winner in a midday lottery drawing.

Virginia Haines, executive director of the New Jersey Lottery, said the matching numbers were an obvious rarity. "Since I've been director, for over seven years, it's the first time this has happened with Pick-3," she said.