The first lottery can be traced back to Ancient times but, in the US 1964 the first legal lottery was created (NASPL). It was labeled a "sweepstakes" (NASPL).
>New York was the second state to attempt the lottery (NASPL). -1967
>New Jersey started a state lottery, weekly tickets were 50 cents (NASPL).-1970
>Yearly sales for all lotteries went pass $500 Million (NASPL)- 1973
>Massachusetts offered the first scratch off ticket-1974
>Laws were amended to allow state lotteries to be advertised on TV and radio-1975
>A women in Boston won a prize of $104 million, which was the largest prize ever won to date-1999
>Largest lottery jackpot in history-2000
>3rd largest jackpot prize-2015
All information from the NASPL website.