Nihar Janga (far right) with team champions Photo: Mark Thiessen, National Geographic
Nihar Janga, an 8th-grader from Canyon Ridge Middle School in Austin, Texas, won the 31st annual National Geographic GeoBee held in Washington, D.C. But get this — in 2016, Janga was the co-champion of the Scripps National Spelling Bee! It was a very competitive championship round with five tiebreaker questions — Nihar was tied with Atreya Mallanna, a 6th-grader at William Diamond Middle School in Lexington, Massachusetts, heading into the final round. The winning question was “More than one-third of Norway’s northernmost county is located on what plateau?” How many of you Friends of the Planet know the answer? Did you Google it already? It’s the “Finnmark Plateau.”
May 30, 2019 » #GeoBee, geography, National Geographic
