When, as is usual, a proportion of the money an individual spends on a lottery ticket,goes in part towards helping to fund a charitable project, gambling becomes much more than one person winning or losing. It transforms into something far more altruistic, charitable and beneficial to society as a whole. This happens more and more often these days.
Historically, although the original lottery, called Keno, was begun in China during the Hun Dynasty, or around 100BC, when revenue raised went into projects to defend the country, such as the Great Wall of China, it was the ancient Romans who modified and developed the idea of a lottery, the first such in Europe. Augustus took the idea of private gambling, which was popular with noble households, and expanded it, with tickets sold to fill the Emperors coffers with money to keep the city in a good state of repair. Rather than the cash usually awarded today, objects of virtue were awarded as prizes to the lucky citizens.
It was a long time afterwords, in 1434, that a public lottery is recorded as having taken place in the town of Sluis in the Netherlands. About a decade later. lotteries, which were gaining in popularity around Flanders( an area comprised of parts of modern France, Holland and Belgium) began to give away cash prizes. These lotteries , which were often regarded as a rather less painful way of paying tax, appear to have been in aid of both the poor of the towns and maintaining the towns defenses. In Belgium, in 1465, lotteries are down as a matter of record as being held to raise revenue to help in the construction of almshouses, chapels, ports and canals.
Northern Europe also became lottery mad, with the first of the English state lotteries initiated by Gloriana herself in the late 16th century. This sold an incredible four thousand tickets, with the prizes on offer including tapestries, plate and cash. The government sold the rights to sell the tickets to brokers, who, in turn, hired agents to sell the tickets to the public. In this fashion, the English lottery operated right up until 1826, at which point the lottery ceased.
Lottery fever gripped the world, with the invention of many different forms of the game, played by different peoples the world over. However, this popularity led inevitably to the corruption of the noble ideals of the first lotteries, with money comes the temptation to the criminal nature. Some private lotteries substituted low value prizes to those advertised, or even refused to hand over any prizes aat all. The time inevitably came when Canada and The United States prohibited the playing of lotteries altogether. Where they were still allowed, laws and regulations were implemented to ensure the fair playing and winning of lotteries.
Current practice is for lotteries to allot a percentage of ticket sales to good causes, and the upkeep of public buildings and parks etc. The lottery has even come into the modern era, with the advent of convenient online playing and gambling websites.
Your source for the lottery results: National Lottery Results Checker.