Congratulations to Sara Matulonis and Christina Douglas, a 10 th grader at LPA, who won first place in the History Fair Senior Division for Group Exhibit. The topic for this year's history fair, which is sponsored by National History Day www.nhd.org, was Triumph and Tragedy.

The girls' project was Nuestra Senora de Atocha: Triumphs and Tragedies of a Spanish Ghost Galleon. The students picked this topic because the Atocha's history perfectly fit the theme. The tragic loss of the Atocha and her enormous treasure marked the beginning of the end of the Imperial Spanish Empire. Filled with silver "blood money" received from the slave trade, contraband hidden from the king, and marked bars of gold, the galleon was finally found after obsessive searches by both Spain and modern day treasure hunters. Triumphantly, the Atocha's discovery uncovered not only a wealth of gold, jewelry, silver, and precious stones worth 400,000 million dollars, but also keys to the past as archeological finds continue to divulge new aspects of seventeenth-century Spanish life in the Colonial New World.

This is Sara's fifth year placing first at the Regional History Fair! She won an all-expense-paid trip to Tallahassee with the chance to compete in the state history fair. She has already won three awards at state competition in the past and in 2005 was picked as one of two in her division to represent Florida at the National History Fair in College Park, Maryland. Congratulations Sara!