彩票中奖成乌龙

　　Many gaze upon the members of Forbes’s annual billionaires list with awe and envy. For an hour last week, 300 Danish lottery winners looked at them as equals。

　　According to Reuters, Denmark state lottery company Danske Spil told lottery winners that they had won cash prizes up to 280 billion Danish Krone, the equivalent of $50 billion. Turns out, that wasn’t quite the case。

　　The company claimed human error by employees composing the EuroJackpot winning letters caused the prize glitch, and sent a follow-up email to winners informing them that the correct amounts were in the range of only $35 to $70. A Danske Spil spokesman told Reuters that the lottery was considering boosting payments as a way of making up for the mistake。

　　glitch：小故障；失灵

　　follow-up：后续的；增补的

　　Of course, that course correction doesn’t make everyone happy, nor does it erase the brief moment when 300 ticket-holders thought their lives had changed forever。

　　The Copenhagen Post talked to one winner, who told them, “I got butterflies in my stomach and started to think of all the things I could spend the money on. Travel with the family, buy a new house, a new car – I got very excited。”

　　get butterflies in my stomach：七上八下；心里紧张

　　Many real billionaires have gotten rich quickly, but not this quickly. Jay Walker founded Priceline in 1998 and jumped to a billion dollars net worth just one year later. Global Crossing founder Gary Winnick, laid underwater fiber optic cable network across the Atlantic Ocean and became a billionaire in 1.5 years. Neither man is still a billionaire, showing that sometimes real wealth can be just as fleeting as mistaken wealth。

　　fiber optic cable：光缆，光纤；纤维光缆的

　　fleeting：飞逝的；转瞬间的

　　Below you can see how long it took for some of the most famous billionaires of our time, including Mark Zuckerberg (4 years)， Bill Gates (12 years)， and Warren Buffett (19 years)， to reach 10 figures. The chart was compiled for the 2011 Forbes 400 list. Needless to say, none of them made (or lost) their fortunes in an hour。