Finding a winning lottery ticket left forgotten on a bedside table has given a couple in the US state of Louisiana a Thanksgiving to remember.

Tina Ehrenberg said she found a stack of lottery tickets while cleaning her home ahead of family visiting for the American holiday.

Realising they had forgotten to check the tickets, she and husband Harold plugged the numbers into the lottery website and to their disbelief discovered they had won a US$1.8m (1.58m) Lotto jackpot.

"We kept checking the numbers again and again!" Mr Ehrenberg told the Louisiana Lottery Corporation.

"Plus, I called the winning numbers hotline over and over," Mrs Ehrenberg added.

Their winning ticket had been from June 6th - meaning the couple had only around two weeks to claim their prize before the ticket would expire.

The couple, from Mandeville, a small town around 75 miles east of the state capital of Baton Rouge, managed to secure the winnings in time: $1.3m (€1.14m) after state and federal taxes.

"I kept waiting for something to go wrong," Mr Ehrenberg recalled from the run-up.

The couple will put the money away for their retirement, with Mrs Ehrenberg saying: "We don't have any plans to buy anything crazy or go on any big trips."

Mr Ehrenberg said "the most fun is going to be depositing that cheque".