THE LUCK OF THE IRISH

 

You have heard the phrase before, but where does it come from? In the 19th century, when Irish people struck gold it was said that they were lucky, because no one at the time believed that Irish people could be successful through intelligence or skill.  However, this is a story of Irish luck that happened due to intelligence and skill and some real luck.

An Irish woman, Imelda Collins, decided to raffle off her two bedroom house after reading about another woman who raffled off her apartment.  Her goal was to sell 150,000 tickets at five British pounds which would generate one million dollars. She bought the house, which is on 1.75 acres, for $150,000 only three years ago.  Her goal was to move to Italy. 

She sold almost 207,000 tickets for $1.4 million dollars after spending $25,000 to market the raffle. She said, "I don't want to say that I believe in miracles, but I always try and give it a go to see what happens. I'm over the moon." She has a few other expenses to pay now, but she made a very nice profit and other people are contacting her on how to raffle off their house.

If you think she was thrilled, how about the winner who won by buying three tickets for $12.67?  Kathleen Spangler, pictured below holding a picture of her house, is a U.S. Marine Corps Officer. She had just moved from North Carolina to Ohio, and had her third child three weeks later at the beginning of this year.  She and her husband, also a Marine Corps Officer, were about to start an engineering program when a friend saw her name as the winner of the raffle.

She bought the three tickets online in December and forgot about it.  Someone had to win and they had also just received Irish citizenship in the hopes that sometime in the future they would own a home in Ireland where her dad's family was from and her grandmother also.  She said, "Nobody really enters these things thinking they are going to win." She had checked out houses online to buy, but she had no luck-until she had a lot of luck almost immediately after becoming an Irish citizen.  

I would wish her and her family good luck, but...