Sanjay Rangamani is currently an 8th grader at the Jonas Clarke Middle School in Lexington, MA. He has been interested in history from elementary school and is always watching historical shows on Netflix. Even as a kid, he used to go to Wikipedia and read up about ancient battles of the 14th and 15th centuries. One day in 2018, when he was still in elementary school, we were reading about some Indian kids who had excelled at the spelling bee and Sanjay said "I wonder if there is such a thing as the History Bee". Until then, we knew nothing about the History Bee. We did a Google search for the History Bee and sure enough, there was such a thing. 

Even better, the qualifying rounds of the IAC History Bee were happening in a month or so at a venue not far away from where we live. We registered for the event and took the online qualifying test at which Sanjay did exceptionally well, thanks to his interest and all the prior reading he had done on US and World History, even before we knew about this competition.  He spent the next few weeks reading some high school history textbooks and looking up some old test questions. To our surprise, even with the limited preparation, he did well in the regional competition and qualified for the National Finals. We then traveled to Atlanta for the Nationals and Sanjay made it all the way to the national quarter finals. 

As a kid, Sanjay was always looking for other kids his age with whom he could discuss history. The IAC National History Bee at Atlanta was special for him because he got to meet so many other like minded kids to have detailed discussions about Medieval history. He found his clan there and really enjoyed it. At Atlanta, visiting the Civil Rights Museum and the Ebenezer Baptist Church (where Martin Luther King Jr.) preached were also exciting events for Sanjay.

We missed the History Bee in 2020 due to the pandemic but in 2019 and 2021, Sanjay made it to the semi finals in The National History Bee. His next goal is to make it to the National Finals. Meanwhile, Sanjay continues to fill his head up with History trivia and watch shows about history and politics every day. His other passion is piano, which he has played at the Carnegie Hall in NYC on a couple of occasions.