Did you know? Jose Rizal won lottery while in Dapitan exile

MANILA, Philippines — Many Filipinos think of Jose Rizal as a hero or a renowned author, but few may know that like most Pinoys, he often bought lottery tickets and finally got lucky while in exile in Dapitan.

Celebrated historian Ambeth Ocampo, in the fifth entry of his "Looking Back" series "Rizal's Teeth, Bonifacio's Bones," details the one time Rizal was a lottery winner.

Ocampo wrote that while studying in Madrid, Rizal would regularly buy 1/10 of a lottery ticket but never won. Even Rizal's sisters also frequently bought tickets, writing lucky random numbers to bet on in their letters.

While exiled, Rizal gambled more, purchasing 1/3 of a lottery ticket though he forgot about it until one day, mail boat arrived to announce that Rizal, the Dapitan governoer Ricardo Carnicero, and an unidentified Spaniard won the second prize jackpot worth P20,000.

Since the three individuals had to split the winnings, Rizal's take was P6,300, which would be around over P800,000 today.

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The historian said Rizal spent a majority of his winnings "acquiring, tilling, developing a neglected piece of sea-side property" in Talisay and sent the rest to his father Francisco as opposed to "spending the money on consumables or hasish to drown his sorrows."

Ocampo shared that Rizal was a licensed land surveyor, having grown up in a home built from sugar land earnings leased from Dominicans, and his mother Teodora's businesses.

In a 1893 letter to his friend Ferdinand Blumentritt, Rizal wrote he opened an abaca business and a store, ran a school, looked after fruit trees, and treated patients.

Rizal even described a river beside the property he bought resembled the Calamba River only "wider and more abundant and crystalline" — drawing comparisons to the Pasig River and Pansol — and better than Montalban's Ilaya River.

The historian ended noting Rizal tried buying whole lottery tickets, though he never got lucky again, but Rizal's Talisay property now stands as the José Rizal Memorial Protected Landscape.

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