percy macmahon introduced the ``major index'' of a permutation a century ago and proved that it has the same distribution as the ``inversion number''. such statistics are now called ``mahonian''. baxter and zeilberger considered the joint distribution of inversions and the major index on permutations and showed they are jointly independently asymptotically normally distributed. however, baxter-zeilberger's argument has no hope of giving a more precise ``local limit theorem'' and zeilberger subsequently offered a \$300 reward for a different proof. this is the story of that reward.