Banner Elk - Outside a supermarket in the US state of North Carolina, a man found a 20-dollar bill. What happened next turned his life completely upside down.

The average lucky finder would have picked up the twenty and used it to pay for part of his shopping at the store, treat himself to a pack of the good smokes or invest in two "McMenus".

But not Jerry Hicks from the small town of Banner Elk in the middle of the North Carolina mountains. He had a much bigger vision and the necessary bit of luck.

Hicks took the 20 dollars (the equivalent of around 19 euros) and bought a scratch card with the trustworthy name "Extreme Cash", as the US lottery"NC Education Lottery" announced at the end of last week.

The prize that the lucky player won with his ticket was to be as extreme as the name promised: one million US dollars (around 926,000 euros)! Hicks explained that he had actually wanted to buy a completely different ticket, but they didn't have it on the market, so he went for the "Extreme Cash".

A small downer: Hicks is still not a millionaire, as he had to decide whether he wanted to collect 50,000 per year over the next 20 years or 600,000 dollars (around 556,000 euros) immediately. He opted for the latter.

His first official act after the huge win also sounds extremely noble: "We'll go straight to the Golden Corral [a popular all-you-can-eat chain, editor's note] and eat everything they have".