We all hope for one of these by guessing 6 numbers correctly, but where did this term originally come from? You, guessed it, I have the answer.

In the days of King George III, a common decree was that any tree greater than 24" in diameter belonged to the king. So, in other words, it was reserved exclusively for building materials for ships of the Royal Navy. It was forbidden to cut them down by commoners. However, if a big tree was felled by natural causes, such as a windstorm, then it was free and available for use by anyone. Thus a 'windfall' became applied to any unexpected stroke of fortune.

Large trees were needed for masts on ships as well as keel plates. Therefore they were very important to the ship building industry in England. Of course a large diameter tree would be very useful to a commoner as well for making large beams in buildings.