Fun Facts About The Spelling Bee

Most Champions
Colorado, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas are in a four-way tie for the most national champions -- seven for each state.

Champions Again
1992 champion Amanda Goad and 2005 champion Anurag Kashyap won the “Jeopardy!” Teen Tournament in 1996 and 2008, respectively.

Co-Champions
It happened three years ago -- in the critically acclaimed major motion picture, “Akeelah and the Bee.” In real life there have been only three instances of co-champions -- 1950, 1957 and 1962.

First Champion
In 1925 Frank Neuhauser of Louisville, Ky., spelled gladiolus to win the first National Spelling Bee. He recently turned 95 years old, and he plans to attend the 2009 Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C.

He's Making History
Speller 46, Kun Jacky Qiao, is the first speller in the history of the Scripps National Spelling Bee to represent a sponsor in China.

Check This
Since the advent of widespread spell-check usage in the mid-1980s, participation in the Scripps National Spelling Bee is up 74 percent.

You Can't Memorize This
The Bee's official dictionary -- Webster's Third New International Dictionary and its addenda section -- has more than 472,000 word entries.

She Made History
In 1998 Jody-Anne Maxwell of Jamaica became the first person of African descent and the first spelling champion from outside the United States to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

It Takes 12:
That's how many months it took, and how many people were involved in the production and completion of the competition word list for the 2009 Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Here's a Mythbuster
Four of the five most recent national champions were public school students.

That Long Ago?
The Scripps National Spelling Bee was first broadcast on network television in 1946.

O Canada
Since first participating in the Scripps National Spelling Bee in 2005, Canadian spellers have made strong showings, including consecutive second place finishes by Finola Hackett and Nate Gartke in 2006 and 2007, respectively.

He Made History
In 1996 Jimmy McCarthy of St. Petersburg, Fla., became the first profoundly deaf speller to compete at the national level. He tied for 48th place in the field of 247 spellers.

Since 1978
That's how long Scripps has welcomed participants from outside the United States. This year the Bee will feature 28 participants from the Bahamas, Canada, China, Ghana, Jamaica, New Zealand and South Korea.

Home School Success
Two champions -- Rebecca Sealfon (1997) and George Thampy (2000) -- were home-schoolers at the time of their championships. Sean Conley (2001) attended private school during the year of his championship, but in previous years had received his education at home. Evan O'Dorney (2007) was a charter school student who received much of his education at home.

--Source: Scripps National Spelling Bee