Top Prize Winners
Out of all contestants that have played the game, few have been able to win the top prize on any international version of the show. The first was John Carpenter, who won the top prize on the U.S. version on 19 November 1999. Carpenter did not use a lifeline until the final question, using his Phone-a-Friend not for help but to call his father to tell him he would win the million.
Other notable top prize winners include Judith Keppel, the first winner of the UK version; Kevin Olmstead from the US version, who won a progressive jackpot of $2.18 million; Martin Flood from the Australian version, who was accused of cheating much like Charles Ingram but was later acquitted; Takeshi Kitano from the Japanese version, who participated in two celebrity episodes, winning the top prize in his latter appearance after having answered the top question incorrectly in his first; Svyatoslav Vakarchuk from the Ukrainian version, who was the first celebrity contestant outside of Japan to win the top prize; and Sushil Kumar from the Indian version, who is often referred to in Western media as the 'real-life Slumdog Millionaire'.
Read more about this topic: Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
Famous quotes containing the words top, prize and/or winners:
“I can’t forget
How she stood at the top of that long marble stair
Amazed, and then with a sleepy pirouette
Went dancing slowly down to the fountain-quieted square;”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)
“I prize the purity of his character as highly as I do that of hers. As a moral being, whatever it is morally wrong for her to do, it is morally wrong for him to do. The fallacious doctrine of male and female virtues has well nigh ruined all that is morally great and lovely in his character: he has been quite as deep a sufferer by it as woman, though mostly in different respects and by other processes.”
—Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)
“The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don’t acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b. 1922)