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A Canadian man has been denied a multi-million jackpot because his 'winning' lottery ticket was printed seven seconds after the deadline.
Joel Ifergan, an accountant from Quebec, would have won half of a C$27 million lottery jackpot, but was denied the prize because the second ticket he purchased was printed moments after the purchase deadline
Ifergan, who lodged an appeal in a bid to claim the money, finally had it rejected by the Supreme Court of Canada yesterday after a seven-years legal battle.
The unluckiest people of 2014Show all 11 1 /11The unluckiest people of 2014 The unluckiest people of 2014 Viktor Yanukovych's chandelier maker Spare a moment for the chandelier makers employed by ousted President Viktor Yanukovych. Who, when elected in tumultuous circumstances in 2010, wasted no time in ordering £24million-worth of chandeliers for his Mezhyhirya Residence. One cost £6.5m alone. Once Yanukovych fled his position in 2014, Ukraine's citizens were, naturally, tickled to see the opulence enjoyed by a man earning £60,000-a-year. Away from the luxury lighting industrial complex, he won't be missed.
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The unluckiest people of 2014 Ice-bucket challenge The ice-bucket challenge was a bizarro viral moment that moved, within hours, from celebrities pouring a bucket of cold water over their head in a fit of very 21st-century narcissism to your grandmother pouring a bucket of water over her head in a fit of very 21st-century narcissism.
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The unluckiest people of 2014 Marius the Giraffe Unlike his French literary namesake, Marius the giraffe from Copenhagen Zoo didn't have Hugh Jackman to rescue him from the brink. Instead, the poor ungulate went out like Bobby Baccalieri in The Sopranos. You never see it coming. Deemed surplus to requirements due to an inability to breed, 18-month-old Marius was handed a death sentence by his Danish keepers, despite a 27,000-strong petition for clemency and offers from around the world – including one from Yorkshire Wildlife Park – to rehome him.
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The unluckiest people of 2014 British-Argentine pathologist Julia Polak Dame Julia Polak was a pioneering surgeon whose work in using stem cells to grow new tissue vastly accelerated the chance of being able to create a working lung for transplant patients, among other ground-breaking work. It was Polak's misfortune to check out on the same day as Robin Williams though, so no one noticed.
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The unluckiest people of 2014 Unnamed set designer on the film 'Stuart Little' A set decorator on the film bought a painting for not very much money in a Pasadena antiques shop and used the artwork in the background of the Little family's home. In 2009, when Hungarian art expert Gergely Barki watched the film, he realised it was a masterpiece by his compatriot Róbert Berény which disappeared in the 1920s. Barki was told by the set designer that he had sold the painting for a small fee to a private collector. Earlier this month, it was sold back in Budapest at auction for £1.8m.
The unluckiest people of 2014 The two daughters of one William H Klein One father's sub-Homer Simpsonian attempt to bond with his 10- and 14-year-old daughters landed him in jail. New Jersey's William H Klein had told his kids he'd landed tickets through a friend to 1D's show at the Hersheypark Stadium in Pennsylvania, but they fell through. Klein decided that the best thing to do was phone in a bomb threat from a local convenience store to get the gig cancelled completely. Sadly, the gig went on with extra security and poor Bill Klein was traced by the FBI and served eight months in a federal prison.
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The unluckiest people of 2014 BBC sound engineers Few could have predicted that after Sachsgate, Savilegate and Executivepay-offgate, one of the major problems faced by Auntie this year would be over the sound quality in an adaptation of a Daphne du Maurier classic. Around 2,200 people complained that they had struggled to hear the dialogue of Jamaica Inn (pictured), with the problem variously blamed on mumbling actors and a technical fault with the first episode.
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The unluckiest people of 2014 Giulietta Carrelli – progenitor of the trend for 'artisan toast' The year's most rapidly mocked food trend was 'artisanal toast'. Tales of people spending $4-per-slice on fancy bread and small-batch butters were initially used as a stick with which to beat the tech yuppies of San Francisco before the trend made its way to New York and inevitably to London. However, the origins of the posh toast trend were traced to a woman named Giulietta Carrelli whose reason for getting in bed with Big Toast were rather charming. Her café, The Trouble Coffee & Coconut Club, centres its menu on the three foodstuffs which help her deal with the condition, schizoaffective disorder.
Alamy
The unluckiest people of 2014 Private S Baldrick In the much-loved Blackadder Goes Forth, Sir Tony Robinson's shambolic comic foil provided – for many – the face of the hapless Tommy, largely ignorant of the reason he was fighting in a French field before being ferried to his death by his generals. That narrative formed a key role in building the modern belief that the First World War was an unparalleled folly. Not so, for erstwhile education secretary Michael Gove, who said the use of Blackadder as a learning device was perpetuating left-wing myths about the war as a "misbegotten shambles". In response, Sir Tony suggested Gove had "just made a very silly mistake". Wibble.
Rex Features
The unluckiest people of 2014 Kanye West One assumes that even a man with an ego the size of the St Louis Gateway Arch would have checked himself after his goof at the jazzily-named Qantas Credit Union Arena in September. In a gap between "All of the Lights" and "Good Life", West repeatedly implored the crowd to rise – "I can't do the rest of this show until everyone's standing up" – and refused to carry on until everyone in the arena was off their seat. Alas... As the Aussie fans chanted "Stand, stand, stand", West was alerted to the fact that the two people refusing to stand and delaying the gig were in wheelchairs and quickly changed his tune. "If he's in a wheelchair, it's fine." Thanks Kanye!
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The unluckiest people of 2014 'White Van Dan' Has anyone since the advent of the printing press been as unlucky to be thrust into the nation's glare than Strood resident Dan Ware? Ware was one of many around the country proud to have St George hanging athwart the front of his house. His just happened to be the one whose home was pictured on Twitter by MP Emily Thornberry in what was assumed to be a down-the-nose gesture at the kind of person voting in the Rochester and Strood by-election (she was quickly hook-slung from the shadow cabinet). Rather than squirm in the full-beam of the media's attentions, Ware went full Joe The Plumber. Writing his own 'Danifesto' in The Sun ("Better discipline. Kids are too mouthy now, not like when we had the cane") and doorstepping Thornberry's house in Islington before drifting gently back into the good night of public indifference.
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The anguishing tale begins in May 2008, when Ifergan went to a local convenience store to purchase two tickets for that night's "Lotto Super 7" drawing. According to a court summary, the checkout assistant told him to hurry before the 9pm deadline, which was fast-approaching.
When they began the transaction, the clock on the lottery terminal read 8:59 pm, but the second, winning, ticket was printed eight seconds later, seven seconds after the deadline, making it technically only eligible for the following week's drawing.
The jackpot was awarded to another winner, and Ifergan sued Loto-Quebec for the processing hold-up, only to go through the pain of missing out on the money yet again seven years later.
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