"The Lottery" was written in 1948, not long after the end of World War II and the Great Depression. These two events changed society's mindset to an "every man for himself" kind of thinking in order to survive. During this time period, there were several major world events that affected how people thought about luck. The Holocaust took place from 1939-1945, it was a mass murder conducted by the Nazi Germany government against Jews, homosexuals, and others it deemed undesirable. Before then, lucky stars had been found embedded in war medals dating back to 1532 so this wasn't anything new. Also before the Holocaust, there was a famous mathematician by the name of Pierre de Fermat who has been credited with saying "It is clear that I am very far from believing that my work on number theory could be useful for the study of primes". His work did lead to the discovery of many important concepts in mathematics but he never claimed to have discovered any prime numbers. This quote has been attributed to many mathematicians including Isaac Newton but it is believed that Fermat actually said "I am convinced that my work on primes will never be used by anyone". After the Holocaust, people started to believe that luck was important for survival. This belief led to the creation of the Swiss National Lottery which was first introduced in 1969.