The winning numbers were 4, 8, 19, 27 and 34, with a 10 as the so-called Powerball number.
Lottery fever gripped the United States, with people forming long lines outside stores to buy a ticket and then frantically checking their $2 slips to see if they had hit the mammoth jackpot.
"It`s official! There were 3 jackpot-winning tickets in tonight`s Powerball draw: California, Florida & Tennessee," California Lottery tweeted.
Local television showed swarms of people, many cheering and chanting, descending on the Los Angeles convenience store where the California ticket was sold.
The jackpot, which had stood at $1.5 billion for much of the day, eventually crept up to nearly $1.59 billion.
Wednesday`s jackpot started at $40 million on November 7 and was the result of 20 draws with no overall winner.
"Sales are doing exponentially more than we`ve ever done before," Gary Grief, chair of the Powerball game group, told AFP on Tuesday.
"I`m hearing anecdotally and through news outlets, millions of people who have never played Powerball before are indeed purchasing a ticket."
It was a bonanza of sorts for retailers too, particularly those in US states bordering the handful that do not participate in the game.
The lottery had anticipated that 85 percent of all possible combinations would be wagered on so there was an 85 percent likelihood of a jackpot winner on Wednesday night.
The previous US jackpot record of $656 million, on March 30, 2012, was scooped up by three winners from North Carolina, Puerto Rico and Texas.
The world`s richest lottery is Spain`s annual Christmas "El Gordo," which in 2015 handed out 2.2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) but which capped individual wins at 400,000 euros and handed out thousands of smaller prizes.
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