Lottery is a form of gambling, in which numbers are randomly drawn and the winners are awarded a prize. This form of gambling is tax-free. The first recorded lotteries were probably held in the Low Countries, where many towns held public lotteries for the benefit of poor people. There are records of lottery games as early as 1445 in Ghent, Belgium. In one record, the prize money was 1737 florins, the equivalent of more than US$170,000 today.