Noah Fisher, of Calcutta, wears his regional and national medals from the Great History Challenge and holds up the trophies he earned as seventh-grade and overall winner at the 2025 national championships in Orlando, Fla. (Photo by Stephanie Ujhelyi)

CALCUTTA — When asked what you did over Memorial Day weekend, not many folks can say “became a grand national champion.”

However, Heartland Christian School (HCS) middle school student Noah Fisher can.

By correctly answering a trivia question that the United Nations was responsible for the formation of the World Health Organization in 1948, he reigned supreme after a berth at a national history trivia competition in Orlando, Fla. This was the first year that both Fisher and his classmates had tried their hand at history trivia (Jeopardy-style) online with the Great History Challenge.

Fisher was the only one who advanced to regional competition in Ravenna before landing in Florida for the nationals.

Middle school students in grades six through eighth are eligible before they age out. Fisher has one more year eligibility as there is no high school competition.

It was Fisher’s exceptional knowledge of history that qualified him for the two-day contest.

Over the two-day national, Fisher won both the seventh-grade division, which garnered him the smaller trophy, as well as the larger trophy and a scholarship for his overall win in Orlando.

Medals also were awarded in each of the grade divisions (sixth, seventh and eighth) among the top qualifiers who advanced to the preliminary round.

Questions are based on the curriculum standards of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS).

More than 50,000 sixth- through eighth-grade students initially took the online test with eventually hundreds qualifying for the nationals in Florida.

According to Fisher, the majority of the questions ranged over majority from the Civil War to the 1990s.

His history education at Heartland Christian School is not what he would describe as traditional. While he had American history in fifth-grade and prepares to have it again next year as an eighth-grader, Fisher explained that in sixth-grade he studied ancient history as part of the curriculum as well as geography and Biblical history in seventh grade.

Noah is the only child of Bill and Christina Fisher, who live in Calcutta.

To achieve his Grand National Champion status, Noah admitted almost faltering twice in elimination rounds. Ultimately, he won by properly identifying Santa Anna as the former president of Mexico in the 1840s.

He credits Joshua Toth, his HCS history teacher, for nurturing his love of history.

Fisher said that he is most intrigued personally in post-Seven Years’ war (commonly known as the French and Indian war which was considered the first global war) to pre-World War I time, which would would run between 1763-1914.

For more information about the Great History Challenge, visit ghcplay.com.