Iowan advances again in spelling bee

Iowa’s surviving contestant in the national spelling bee passed the fourth round of competition this morning. 13-year-old Jonathon Hahn correctly spelled a word from geography, biblical history and psychology: “gethsemane”. There were 251 spellers to begin with, sponsored by local newspapers, though Iowa’s second contestant lost in the second round. The final winner of the national bee gets twelve-thousand dollars cash, a thousand-dollar savings bond, a reference library, a set of encyclopedias, and a set of “Great Books of the Western World.”