When a Maryland woman had a serendipitous moment while sitting in traffic, she took it “as a sign of good fortune.” The woman was idling in traffic when a license plate caught her eye, Maryland Lottery officials said in a Jan. 23 news release. The license plate number included her late father’s birthday, lottery officials said.

A lottery player has a big reason to celebrate after scoring a life-changing win in North Carolina. The player bought a Carolina Cash 5 game ticket that matched all the numbers picked in the Jan. 21 drawing, making it worth $110,000, results show. The winning numbers: 3-7-8-11-21.

A North Carolina man scored a $120,000 jackpot from a Cash 5 lottery drawing less than four years after winning an even larger sum.

Manoj Chhetry, from Woodbridge, won a jackpot prize worth $4,303,499 in the Dec. 22 drawing for the Merry Money Mania game, the Virginia Lottery said in a Jan. 22 news release. Chhetry told lottery officials he thought it was a scam at first and had to call his wife to help him verify that he really had won. “I didn’t know what happened!” he said.