33 Fun Facts About 33 Colleges - mental_floss on YouTube (Ep.43)

Hi, I'm John Green. Welcome to my salon. This is Mental Floss on YouTube

And did you know that in 1978, students at Binghamton University built ramps for salamanders

The migrating critters kept getting trapped in roads because the curbs were too high for them to climb up

and then they would get run over by cars, so the students took action. And in fact, those ramps remain there today

And that's the first of many facts about colleges I'm going to share with you today

that you probably wouldn't hear on an admissions tour. The University of Michigan has a squirrel club, which is actually one of the most popular campus clubs

It has over 400 members. What does the club do? It feeds squirrels

The Boston University Bridge is the only place in the United States where an airplane can fly over a car

driving over a train, driving over a boat. Isn't that what the movie Inception was about

Anyway, Crest toothpaste was invented at Indiana University thanks to an accident by a grad student who forgot to take a calcium phosphate sample out of a furnace one night

This error resulted in the substance that researchers were trying to develop, one that was compatible with fluoride

The University of Pennsylvania was founded in 1740, 47 years before Pennsylvania actually became a state

The University of Pennsylvania, where its alumni say, I went to an Ivy League university, and then you say, yeah, not really, though

I feel kind of bad about that joke, University of Pennsylvania people, so here's another fact about your school

Spectators throw toast onto the football field after the third quarter of each game

Apparently, fans used to bring alcohol and would toast the team, but then alcohol was banned at Franklin Field, so they switched to actual and literal toast

Ohio University is considered the most haunted university. There's even a closed dorm room, number 428 in Wilson Hall

because it's allegedly haunted by a girl who practiced witchcraft and died there

One of my brother's alma maters, the University of Montana, is also believed to be haunted

but by the first United States Congresswoman, Jeanette Rankin. She graduated from UM and apparently haunts Jeanette Rankin Hall

because, you know, where else would she haunt? Now people tend to view Fenway Park as one of the most historical destinations for Boston sports but actually Northeastern University hockey arena is older Matthews Arena opened in 1910 and the Huskies still play there to this day In Chapel Hill North

Carolina, home of UNC, the fire trucks are the school colors, Carolina blue and white

There's an iconic statue of Harvard founder John Harvard sitting in Harvard Yard, but

it's not technically a statue of John Harvard. When it was created in 1884, there was no

picture of the founder of Harvard, so Harvard student Sherman Hoare modeled for the statue

The Hoare's were actually one of the first families of the United States. Sherman Hoare would later go on to be a congressman. And lest you think that he had the worst possible

name, he had a cousin named Ebenezer Hoare. You want to go to the same college that both

Buffy Summers and Seth Cohen attended? If your answer isn't yes, then there's something

wrong with you. The University of Southern California provided locations for Buffy's

fictional UC Sunnydale, and the OC crew also transformed locations on campus into Brown

University. The word campus emerged in the 1770s and was invented to describe Princeton

Oberlin College's Allen Memorial Art Museum rents paintings to students for $5 a semester

These paintings include original works by artists like Renoir, Picasso, Jackson Pollock

Andy Warhol. So if you're one of those people whose roommate puked on the walls of your

dorm room freshman year, be grateful that there wasn't an original Renoir hanging up

there. And let's be serious, it wasn't your roommate. In 2013, a Dartmouth College fraternity caused chaos when they announced that their three-foot-long python had gotten loose on campus

One of their dogs later found the snake in a hole next to the house. Long-time fans of Menoplos Video will remember Nick Cage and his pet snake, but he would never be that careless

At Villanova University's Vatican internship program, students manage the Pope's social media accounts

When the University of New Hampshire hockey team scores their first goal in a game, fans throw a fish onto the ice

That's kind of a bummer. I thought it was gonna be that they throw a tiny Incredible Hulk and a weird superhero monkey onto the ice

Oh, Mark, you know someone's gonna know what that superhero monkey is and get mad at me for not having any nerd cred

Cornell University could have been in Syracuse, New York, but at least allegedly, Ezra Cornell was once robbed in Syracuse

so he convinced his co-founder, Andrew Dickinson White, I didn't get anything named after me, to put the university in Ithaca

And ever since Cornell students have been wondering wait why didn you just build the university in Miami Speaking of Syracuse Syracuse University has a student magazine called Jerk The website promises to quote represent the jerk in all of us The oldest college marching band belongs to

Notre Dame, whose band has been around since 1843. The fear of diseases like cholera and yellow fever

can cause hypochondria in people like me, but it can also cause, like, the foundation of universities

One example is Tulane University, which began as the medical college of Louisiana because people

needed a place to study how to fight yellow fever and cholera. In 1996, Kermit the Frog gave a commencement address at Southampton College

The school gave him an honorary doctorate of amphibious letters. I feel like that rather devalues my honorary doctorate from Butler University

You didn't think I was going to make it through this whole video without mentioning that I'm a doctor, honorary

The Georgetown University official cheer, Hoya Saxa, is essentially meaningless. It's a combination of Greek and Latin words that literally translates to, what rocks

But despite unknown origins, fans still yell the phrase during athletic events all the time

While we're talking about cheers that mention rocks, the University of Kansas' chant is

Rock Chalk Jayhawk. Apparently it's just a shout out to the limestone called chalk rock that can be found in Kansas

You know you got yourself a great state when the thing you're proudest of is your limestone

Nah, I'm just kidding Kansas people, you've got so much to be proud of. Meredith, can you do some research on what Kansans have to be proud of

In 2012, MIT students put a life-sized Dalek on the roof of the Stata Center, a computer

science and engineering building. Speaking of schools that are better than the University of Pennsylvania, organic chemistry

students at Columbia University have to beware of the night before the final, also known

as Orgo Night. The marching band plays a visit to the library, where they play a few presumably unwelcome songs

Here at Mental Floss Video, we too have a marching band. It's just Elmo. Boston College in Minnesota has an annual softball game called the Rotblat

The game gets longer each year as they play one inning for every year the school has been

in existence and it was founded in 1866. So in 2013, they played 147 innings

In 2011, a 41-year-old SUNY Albany alum chained himself to the campus fountain in protest

In protest of what? the cancellation of an annual event called Fountain Day in which students all hopped in the fountain Rumor has it that George W Bush George H Bush William Howard Taft and John Kerry were all in Yale infamous secret society Skull and Bones

President Nathan Hatch of Wake Forest University has started a tradition in which students camp out in the lawn of the President's house and participate in activities for one night

of the school year, which is an excellent plan for keeping students out of your actual house

the University of Chicago received a package addressed to Henry Walton Jones, aka Indiana Jones

It contained the journal of Jones's fictional mentor, University of Chicago Professor Abner Ravenwood

The admissions department hoped that this was some kind of extraordinarily clever college application

but in fact it was just memorabilia from the movie delivered to the wrong place

File under Reasons to Attend College in Texas, Rice University provides a puppy room during finals to relieve stress through pet therapy

And lastly, we return to the salon so that I can share with you that the Empire State

Building lights up purple and white on the evening of New York University's commencement

Thanks for watching, MetaFloss, here on YouTube, which is made with the help of all of these

nice people. Every week we endeavor to answer one of your mind-blowing questions, and this week's question

comes from Stephanie Sweeka, or Sweeka. Sorry if I mispronounced your name, Stephanie, but mispronouncing things is my thing

Anyway, Stephanie asks, what's the origin of people using 555-5555 when giving out a

fake phone number? Stephanie, that's a great question and the short answer is I don't know

The long answer is that I don't know, but movies and TV shows have been using the 5555555

numbers since the 1960s when telephone companies and producers agreed that entertainment should

use fictional phone numbers rather than real ones, you know, so like Jenny doesn't get

calls at 867-5309. Thank you again for watching and as we say in my hometown, don't forget

to be awesome. Hey, P.S., I'm coming to you from the future where we are remodeling, but I wanted to thank Audible.com for sponsoring today's Mental Floss video

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