40 Fun Facts About Boston University

Which hotel chain took its name from a Boston building that later became a Boston University dormitory?

Sheraton became the whole chain's name because the lit rooftop lettering on its Boston hotel cost too much to replace. That hotel became BU's Kilachand Hall.

Which invention was developed in the 1870s by a Boston University professor who taught speech and elocution?

Telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell taught at BU's School of Oratory, and the university paid him a year in advance so he could chase the idea.

Which baseball legend liked suite 818 of a Kenmore Square hotel, later a Boston University dorm, enough to request it?

Babe Ruth stayed often at the Myles Standish Hotel, a favorite of visiting ball clubs because Fenway Park was so close. BU bought the building in 1949.

Which civil rights leader studied for a Boston University doctorate while assisting at Boston's Twelfth Baptist Church?

Martin Luther King Jr. received his PhD in systematic theology in June 1955, months before the Montgomery bus boycott began. He met his future wife, a music student, while living in Boston.

Nickerson Field at Boston University stands on the site of which Major League Baseball team's former home ballpark?

Boston Braves games filled the park until the franchise left for Milwaukee in 1953, and BU bought it that summer. The old ticket office became the campus police station.

Boston University students of the 1950s renamed their mascot Fumbles after too many losses; what name replaced it?

Touchdown replaced Fumbles once students tired of the jinx. Earlier terriers had answered to Kappa, Gulliver and Danny II.

Which radio host got his start playing records and reading news at Boston University's campus station WTBU?

Howard Stern spent his first two years in BU's College of Basic Studies before earning a communications degree. He also met his first wife on campus.

Boston University's mascot Rhett shares his name with a scarlet-loving character from which novel?

Gone with the Wind gives the usual account of the name, which arrived with the costumed mascot in 1983: Rhett Butler adores Scarlett, and scarlet is BU's main color.

In 1877 Boston University became the first American university to award which degree to a woman?

Doctor of Philosophy degrees had never been awarded to an American woman until classics scholar Helen Magill earned hers at BU with a thesis on Greek drama.

Boston University's Center for Computing & Data Sciences, opened in 2023, has a shape that earned it which game's name?

Jenga is the popular nickname for the stack of shifted, offset floors, the biggest building in BU's history. Others say it looks like a pile of books.

Which varsity sport did Boston University scrap on homecoming weekend in 1997, more than a century after its first team?

Football ended at BU during a one-win season, 113 years after the first team took the field. Soccer took over the stadium it left behind.

Which Boston University graduate captained the Miracle on Ice team and scored its winning goal against the Soviet Union?

Mike Eruzione was one of four Terriers on the 1980 Olympic squad, alongside goalie Jim Craig, who made 36 saves in the 4-3 upset.

Boston University has won more titles than any rival in which annual tournament of Boston's four big hockey schools?

Beanpot bragging rights are fought over each winter by BU, Boston College, Harvard and Northeastern. BU wins so often that it is jokingly called Beanpot University.

Which Boston University hockey player was paralyzed just eleven seconds into his first college shift in 1995?

Travis Roy went on to create a foundation that funds spinal cord injury research and grants. BU retired his number 24 and raised it to the arena rafters.

Which Boston University quarterback, nicknamed the Golden Greek, chose the Red Sox over the Cleveland Browns?

Harry Agganis became Boston's starting first baseman but died of a pulmonary embolism at just 26. BU's hockey and basketball arena carries his name.

Which future Hall of Fame basketball coach led the Boston University Terriers from 1978 to 1983 before joining the NBA?

Rick Pitino pressed full-court for nearly every minute and took BU to its first NCAA tournament in 24 years. He then left to be a New York Knicks assistant.

Which Boston University hockey star won the Little League World Series as a pitcher before his Hobey Baker Award?

Chris Drury threw a complete game to win the 1989 final for Trumbull, Connecticut. He later lifted the Stanley Cup with the Colorado Avalanche.

Which American playwright died in 1953 in a Boston hotel suite that became a Boston University dorm room a year later?

Eugene O'Neill died in suite 401 of the Hotel Shelton, and campus folklore holds that he haunts the fourth floor to this day.

In a 1962 Good Friday experiment on the Boston University campus, divinity students were given which psychedelic drug?

Psilocybin went to half the volunteers and a vitamin placebo to the rest, in a Harvard-designed test of whether the drug could bring on a religious experience.

Which Seinfeld star studied theater at Boston University but left after his third year for an acting job in New York?

Jason Alexander dreamed of classical roles until a BU professor told him he would never play Hamlet and steered him toward comedy.

Which celebrated science fiction author was also a professor of biochemistry at Boston University's medical school?

Isaac Asimov got the job partly through fan mail: a BU biochemist wrote to praise one of his stories, and the two corresponded for years.

Which Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner taught humanities at Boston University for decades from 1976?

Elie Wiesel won the prize in 1986, ten years after joining the faculty, and BU named its center for Jewish studies in his honor.

Which Boston University president took a leave in 1990 to run for governor of Massachusetts as the Democratic nominee?

John Silber lost a close race to Republican William Weld, went back to BU, and was later appointed by Weld to chair the state Board of Education.

Which Oscar-winning actress studied acting at Boston University but never graduated after failing a movement class?

Geena Davis fell short of the credits she needed, with an F in movement and an incomplete in another class. Julianne Moore and Faye Dunaway both finished BU theater degrees.

Which talk show host earned a broadcast journalism degree at Boston University and wrote for its student newspaper?

Andy Cohen had bylines in The Daily Free Press, BU's student paper, years before he fronted Watch What Happens Live.

Which congresswoman, famed for her speech at the Nixon impeachment hearings, was a Boston University law graduate?

Barbara Jordan finished her BU law degree in 1959 and later became the first woman to give a keynote address at a Democratic National Convention.

Which Boston University law graduate became the first Black US senator elected by popular vote, in Massachusetts?

Edward Brooke recalled that he barely studied as an undergraduate but did little else at BU. He was also the first Black attorney general elected in any state.

Which poet taught a Boston University writing class whose students included both Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton?

Robert Lowell also taught the poet George Starbuck at BU, and another student, Kathleen Spivack, later wrote a book about studying with him.

Who became America's first Black woman physician after graduating from a school that merged into Boston University?

Rebecca Lee Crumpler qualified in 1864 at the New England Female Medical College, the first school to train women in medicine, which joined BU a decade later.

Boston University traces its roots to a Methodist seminary that opened in 1839 in which state?

Vermont's town of Newbury hosted the school for eight years before it moved to New Hampshire and then, in 1867, to Boston's Beacon Hill.

Boston University's first graduating class chose two school colors, scarlet and white, as a symbol of what?

Equality of the sexes set BU apart as a pioneer of coeducation: older single-sex colleges usually had one color, so its mixed classes picked two.

The builder of Boston University's Castle lost his newlywed daughter on her honeymoon aboard which doomed ocean liner?

Lusitania was torpedoed off Ireland in 1915 with the bride and groom aboard on their honeymoon. BU took over her father's mansion in 1939 for the back taxes owed on it.

Boston University's fourth president so loved the campus that his ashes were interred in which building named for him?

Marsh Chapel holds Daniel Marsh's ashes beneath its altar, marked by a small plaque that calls him the builder of the greater university.

Which coach led Boston University men's hockey for 40 seasons, winning national championships in 1978, 1995 and 2009?

Jack Parker was a Terrier lifer: he captained the team as a senior, came back as an assistant, and took the top job in 1973.

The Boston University Bridge, once called the Cottage Farm Bridge, links the campus to Cambridge across which river?

Charles River boats here pass under a rail bridge tucked beneath the road, which feeds a false campus legend that boat, train, car and plane can line up nowhere else.

Boston University students sunbathe on a grassy strip beside busy Storrow Drive that is jokingly nicknamed the BU what?

Beach is a generous name for a lawn with no sand or surf, shielded from the highway by a raised bank of earth that dulls the traffic to a low roar.

Which long-running public radio show began in 1977 at Boston University's station WBUR?

Car Talk was born in 1977 when WBUR invited a panel of local mechanics and only Tom Magliozzi showed up. A decade later the show went national.

Which glowing Kenmore Square landmark, visible from Fenway Park, sat on a roof long owned by Boston University?

The Citgo sign earned BU $250,000 a year in rent, a below-market rate, before a developer bought the building in 2016.

Boston University researchers led by Ann McKee investigate which brain disease found in many former NFL players?

CTE, short for chronic traumatic encephalopathy, had turned up by 2013 in more than 70 athletes McKee examined, among them 18 NFL players and three hockey enforcers.

Which color names the MBTA subway route that runs along Commonwealth Avenue through the Boston University campus?

Green trolleys on the B branch run down the middle of the avenue, stopping at the campus every few blocks after leaving the tunnel at Kenmore.