Windsor Student Wins National History Competition

WINDSOR, CT — A Loomis Chaffee School student earned a first-place national honor at this year’s National History Day contest.

Ruopan Song won first place in the Senior Paper category for his project, “The Railway That Toppled the State: The Sichuan Railway Protection Movement and China’s Gentry-State Rupture of 1911,” according to National History Day and a press release shared with Patch.

The annual National History Day contest was held last week at the University of Maryland in College Park. Nearly 3,000 middle and high school students from across the country and around the world competed after advancing from local, regional and state contests, according to National History Day.

This year’s theme was “Revolution, Reaction, Reform in History,” timed to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Students competed in several categories, including documentary, exhibit, performance, website and paper.

Song was one of several Connecticut students recognized at the national level. Aaron Aldrin, of Timothy Edwards School in South Windsor, won first place in Junior Individual Website for “The Day the Sun Took Center Stage: Copernicus’ Silent Revolution and the Collapse of an Old Cosmos.” Julianne Pashe and Katie Smith, of Ellington Middle School, placed second in Junior Group Exhibit for “‘Once Seen, Never Forgotten’: How the Revolutionary Coney Island Incubator Babies Reformed Neonatal Care.”

National History Day said the competition is designed to help students build research skills and develop original historical arguments. The organization said it engages more than half a million students each year.