Did you’ll watch the National Geographic Bee. It was fun to watch smart kids in action.
Mountains of facts add up to $25,000 at geography bee
12-year-old was No. 4 last year
May 25, 2006
Email this Print this BY NATASHA T. METZLER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060525/NEWS07/605250342/1009
Bonny Jain, 12, of Moline, Ill., missed only one question on his way to winning the National Geographic Bee in Washington on Wednesday. (CHRIS GREENBERG/Associated Press)
Know your geography?
Here’s what some contestants faced during Wednesday’s National Geographic Bee finals.
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Name the river that runs through these three cities: Mbandaka, Kinshasa, Matadi.
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Oil production in the United Arab Emirates is dominated by the country’s largest emirate. Name this emirate.
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The Guggenheim art museum on the Nervion River has increased tourism in what major Spanish port near the Bay of Biscay?
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One of the most heavily used mountain crossings in Europe, which links Austria and Italy south of Innsbruck, is the lowest of the major passes in the Alps. Name this pass.
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The Kuril Trench is an ocean depression that reaches a depth of about 34,000 feet. This trench extends northeast from Hokkaido and follows the east coast of which peninsula?
Answers: 1. Congo River. 2. Abu Dhabi. 3. Bilbao. 4. Brenner Pass. 5. Kamchatka.
WASHINGTON – Could you locate the Cambrian Mountains on a map? Twelve-year-old Bonny Jain could, and that knowledge made him the winner of the 2006 National Geographic Bee on Wednesday.
The eighth-grader from Moline, Ill., won a $25,000 college scholarship by correctly naming the mountains that extend across much of Wales, from the Irish Sea to the Bristol Channel.
It was Bonny’s second appearance at the national bee. Last year, he came in fourth place.
Onstage, in banter with the bee’s moderator, “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek, Bonny seemed confident, saying he felt nervous only during the final round after he missed a question about the Andaman islands – his only wrong answer. He also felt uncertain when answering a question about the Tuareg people in the African nation of Niger, but that time he was right.
Although Bonny plans to celebrate his victory by having a huge party, he also needs to prepare for his third appearance in the national spelling bee, which starts May 31.
Neeraj Sirdeshmukh, 14, from Nashua, N.H., came in second. He won a $15,000 college scholarship. Third-place contestant, Yeshwanth Kandimalla, 13, of Marietta, Ga., won a $10,000 college scholarship. The other seven finalists won $500 each