Gabriele Mussi's mother, Candida, played the national lotteries all her life, but cautious Gabriele never did. A slight, earnest man of 35, Gabriele is a farm foreman at Sant 'Ilario, near Genoa, where he lives quietly with his wife. Last year his chance-taking mother died, at 75. Last month Gabriele, walking in downtown Genoa, passed a vendor selling tickets on the Merano lottery, Italy's oldest and largest. He remembered that it was the first anniversary of his mother's death. For the first time in his lifein memory of his motherGabriele bought a ticket, No. H-64306.
Along with the ticket Gabriele received...