The latest group prize draw of the Singapore Sweep lottery game has seen a record $19.4 million split among eight winning tickets, a Singapore Pools spokesman said. This is the highest amount ever won on a single ticket, beating the previous top of $13 million won by a pair of winners in the Group 1 category in 2022. The winning tickets were bought at Giant supermarket in Pioneer Mall, FairPrice in Woodleigh Mall and Singapore Pools outlets in Chinatown Point, The Star and Marina Bay Sands.
The prize money has been distributed to the winners through their banks. The winner’s names have not been announced. The group prize draw was conducted on Feb 11 at the Singapore Pools headquarters in Toto Hall, located on the second level of the iconic Victoria Theatre.
Archaeologist John Miksic’s book about the discovery of ancient artefacts in Singapore has won this year’s National University of Singapore (NUS) History Prize. The award was given in recognition of the book’s “fundamental reinterpretation and retelling” of Singapore’s early history. The work also reframed the country’s position in Asia.
NUS historian Kishore Mahbubani, who mooted the history prize last year in a Straits Times column, hopes that the prize will encourage more people to study and understand Singapore’s past. He said: “The idea is to recognise that nations are ‘imagined communities’, and a shared imagination rooted in history is key to bringing them together.”
The shortlist for the prize includes non-fiction works with a personal slant, such as Kamaladevi Aravindan’s Sembawang (2020, available here) which details life on a suburban estate across five decades. Another entry, Leluhur: Singapore’s Kampong Gelam (2019, available here), by Hidayah Amin, shines a light on the history of the Gedung Kuning (Yellow Mansion) at the heart of Kampong Glam.
The prize was first awarded in 2014, and is open to books that contribute significantly to Singapore’s historical knowledge. Books can be written in English, Malay or Tamil. They can cover any time period, theme or field of Singaporean history, and be either scholarly or non-fiction. Other creative works with a clear historic slant can be considered as well, such as films and comics.