50 Fun Facts About University of Kansas

The University of Kansas Natural History Museum displays Comanche, a cavalry horse famed for surviving which battle?

Little Bighorn left Comanche badly wounded, and soldiers found him two days after the fighting. When he died years later he was preserved, and the mount went on show in Lawrence.

During a 1950s steel shortage, the University of Kansas kept building Allen Fieldhouse by classing it as what?

An armory was the loophole: federal rules restricted steel use, so officials added rooms for gun and weapons storage and work on the arena carried on.

Kansas Jayhawks students made the Allen Fieldhouse banner warning of 'the Phog' from which dormitory items?

Shower curtains from the dorms became the 1988 original, a slogan inspired partly by ads for a horror film. The first banner is kept in the Booth Family Hall of Athletics.

James Naismith, who invented basketball and founded the Kansas Jayhawks program, is its only head coach with what?

A losing record of 55–60 belongs only to the game's inventor. Kansas hired him in 1898 as a chapel director and physical-education instructor, not as a coach.

Student cartoonist Henry Maloy gave the first drawn University of Kansas Jayhawk in 1912 which human accessory?

Shoes were there for kicking opponents, Maloy explained. His newspaper cartoon was the first to settle what the mythical bird would look like.

The 'Rock Chalk' in the University of Kansas chant flips 'chalk rock', a name for which type of stone?

Limestone of this chalky kind lies under central and western Kansas and resembles the white cliffs of Dover. The phrase replaced an earlier 'Rah, Rah' in the yell by 1889.

Which former U.S. president reportedly called the University of Kansas Rock Chalk chant the best he ever heard?

Theodore Roosevelt's reported praise is part of the chant's lore. Kansas troops also carried the yell abroad, using it in the Philippine–American War in 1899.

Astronomer Clyde Tombaugh earned his University of Kansas degrees only after he had discovered which distant world?

Pluto was his 1930 find at Lowell Observatory. Only afterwards did Tombaugh take a bachelor's and then a master's degree in astronomy at Kansas.

The Lawrence childhood home of University of Kansas graduate Brian McClendon is the default center point of which app?

Google Earth opens centered on the Meadowbrook Apartments, where McClendon grew up. He co-founded Keyhole, the mapping company bought in 2004 to produce the program.

Kansas Jayhawks great Lynette Woodard became the first woman to play for which touring basketball team in 1985?

Harlem Globetrotters history changed when Woodard signed in 1985. At Kansas she scored 3,649 points and was the first woman there to have her jersey retired.

At Kansas Jayhawks games, whole crowds sway their raised arms in a tradition named for waving which crop?

Wheat is the crop, with thousands of arms swaying like a field of grain. At basketball games the wave doubles as a sarcastic goodbye to an opponent who has fouled out.

Before the Jayhawk, early University of Kansas football teams used unofficial mascots, including which farm animal?

A pig was among the stand-ins after football began in 1890, when the school had no official mascot. Students were already calling the team the Jayhawkers during that decade.

An 1863 law said which rival town would get the University of Kansas if Lawrence failed to raise an endowment and land?

Emporia was the fallback written into the law. Lawrence had to supply a $15,000 endowment and at least forty acres, and the governor announced in November 1863 that it had.

Mount Oread, the hill under the University of Kansas campus, is named after a women's college in which state?

Massachusetts was home to the Oread Institute in Worcester, and to many of the settlers who founded Lawrence. Before the new name took hold, locals called the hill Hogback Ridge.

Kansas Jayhawks coach Forrest Allen earned the nickname 'Phog' from his foghorn voice while working as what?

A baseball umpire with a foghorn voice, Allen arrived on campus as a student already carrying the nickname. He went on to coach the basketball team for 39 seasons.

Buyers of James Naismith's original basketball rules for the University of Kansas outbid an alumnus of which school?

Duke was where the rival bidder hoped to donate the document. The Booth family won the Sotheby's auction and gave the rules a home in Lawrence.

Which future Kentucky coaching legend played for the Kansas Jayhawks under Phog Allen in the early 1920s?

Adolph Rupp attended Kansas from 1919 to 1923 and worked part-time at the student Jayhawk Cafe to help pay his way. His 1922 and 1923 teams were later named Helms national champions.

Which member of the 1952 Kansas Jayhawks title team later coached North Carolina to two national championships?

Dean Smith went to Kansas on an academic scholarship and won the 1952 title as a player. In 2013 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama.

Which forward led the 1988 Kansas Jayhawks, a team nicknamed for him 'and the Miracles', to the national title?

Danny Manning left Kansas as its all-time leading scorer and rebounder. He had moved to Lawrence for his last year of high school when his father joined the coaching staff.

Whose late three-pointer forced overtime for the Kansas Jayhawks in the 2008 national title game against Memphis?

Mario Chalmers hit the shot after Sherron Collins drove the length of the court and found him with seconds left. Kansas then won in overtime, 75–68.

Wilt Chamberlain won conference titles for the Kansas Jayhawks in which track and field event?

High jump brought Chamberlain conference titles in 1957 and 1958, and he tied the Big Eight indoor record as a junior. On the court, his first varsity game brought 52 points and 31 rebounds.

Which Chicago Bears running back, twice an All-American for the Kansas Jayhawks, was nicknamed 'the Kansas Comet'?

Gale Sayers piled up 4,020 all-purpose yards in three Kansas seasons. Both the Bears and the Jayhawks football program later retired his jersey number.

Which actor raised in suburban Kansas City majored in theater at the University of Kansas before his 1991 acting debut?

Paul Rudd belonged to the Sigma Nu fraternity at Kansas, then studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He once glazed hams for a living in Overland Park.

Which senator, once recruited by Phog Allen to play Kansas Jayhawks basketball, has a politics institute on campus?

Bob Dole enrolled in 1941 after the coach traveled to his home town of Russell to recruit him. The institute that bears his name opened on his 80th birthday in 2003.

University of Kansas chemists Hamilton Cady and David McFarland were the first to find which element in natural gas?

Helium turned up in a gas from Dexter, Kansas, that would not burn. Nobody had found the element in natural gas before, and the result led to its first industrial source.

University of Kansas graduate Elmer McCollum co-discovered which nutrient in 1913 while experimenting on rats?

Vitamin A began as 'factor A', found by McCollum and Marguerite Davis. His rat colony, started in 1908, was the first in America used for nutrition research.

University of Kansas graduate Juan Manuel Santos won the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize as president of which country?

Colombia's president won the prize for negotiating peace with the FARC guerrillas. Santos graduated from Kansas in 1973 and belonged to the Delta Upsilon fraternity.

University of Kansas engineering graduate Alan Mulally left Boeing in 2006 to become chief executive of which carmaker?

Ford avoided the bankruptcies and bailouts that hit its American rivals in the Great Recession, a turnaround widely credited to Mulally. He grew up in Lawrence.

As a Wichita schoolboy, future Kansas Jayhawks runner Jim Ryun became the first high schooler to break which barrier?

The four-minute mile fell to Ryun in 1964, when he was a high school junior. He went on to win Olympic silver in the 1,500 meters in 1968.

The 12–1 Kansas Jayhawks football team beat Virginia Tech to end its 2007 season in which major bowl game?

Orange Bowl victory by 24–21 capped the most successful season in school history. It was the program's first BCS bowl, under coach Mark Mangino.

Kansas Jayhawks runner Billy Mills pulled off a famous Olympic upset by winning the 10,000 meters in which city?

Tokyo in 1964 made Mills famous, because he went into the race a virtual unknown. At Kansas he had been a three-time All-America cross-country runner on an athletic scholarship.

Former Kansas Jayhawks athlete Al Oerter won gold at four consecutive Olympic Games in which throwing event?

Discus gold went to Oerter at every Games from 1956 to 1968, making him the first track and field athlete to win one event four times running. He reached Kansas on a scholarship in 1954.

Coach John Outland founded the Kansas Relays in 1923 after seeing a famous track meet at which Ivy League university?

Penn was where Outland studied medicine and saw its relay carnival getting under way. College football's Outland Trophy, given to the best interior lineman, carries his name.

Memorial Stadium, home of Kansas Jayhawks football since 1921, honors university students who died in which war?

World War I cost the lives of the students the stadium commemorates. Students, faculty and fans paid for the stadium themselves.

What destroyed Hoch Auditorium, the old basketball home of the Kansas Jayhawks, on a June afternoon in 1991?

Lightning struck the 5,500-seat hall and the blaze spared only its stone facade and lobby. The lecture halls rebuilt behind the old front reopened in 1997 as Budig Hall.

Which 1983 TV film about nuclear war shot a climactic hospital scene inside the University of Kansas's Allen Fieldhouse?

The Day After follows the people of Lawrence and nearby Kansas City through a nuclear attack. It became one of the most-watched made-for-TV movies of all time.

In 1994, University of Kansas student station KJHK became one of the world's first radio stations to do what?

To stream live online was almost unheard of when the student-run station began a continuous internet broadcast on December 3, 1994. Its roots on campus go back to 1952.

Lynx, a text-only program built at the University of Kansas in 1992 to share campus information, is an early what?

A web browser with no images, Lynx was written by students and staff for a campus-wide information system. Its plain text works well with braille displays and text-to-speech software.

Dyche Hall, home of the University of Kansas Natural History Museum, was modeled after a church in which country?

France supplied the model, and the 'apse' of the entrance gallery was designed to hold a panorama of North American wildlife first shown at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago.

Which cowboy standard does the University of Kansas band traditionally play as each Jayhawks event in Lawrence ends?

Home on the Range began as a poem by a Kansas homesteader in the 1870s and became the state song in 1947. It counts as one of the university's seven fight songs.

Which country's king got the University of Kansas Rock Chalk chant after asking 1920 Olympians for a college yell?

Belgium's Albert I asked for a typical American college yell at the 1920 Summer Olympics, and the gathered athletes answered with the Kansas chant.

In 2011 a town in which state asked the University of Kansas to drop the Jayhawk, 150 years after raiders burned it?

Missouri's Osceola was burned to the ground by Jayhawkers in September 1861, in the border fighting that gave the mascot its name. The university refused the town's request.

What is the name of the in-state rivalry series between the Kansas Jayhawks and the Kansas State Wildcats?

Sunflower Showdown borrows the state's nickname and its state flower. The football series dates back to 1902 and has been played every year since 1911.

Before crimson and blue, the University of Kansas's official colors were sky blue paired with which other shade?

Corn yellow stood for the state's grain, one protest letter argued when the athletic board picked crimson in 1891. The board wanted a darker shade that showed fewer stains.

The tune of the University of Kansas alma mater was borrowed from the alma mater of which Ivy League university?

Cornell's song supplied the melody, borrowed by a Kansas music professor who was a former student there. The words changed in 1896, when the school swapped its old colors for crimson and blue.

University of Kansas graduates traditionally walk through which landmark on their way down the hill to commencement?

The Campanile carries a superstition too: legend says students who walk all the way through the bell tower before commencement won't graduate. The class of 1950 marched through first.

The University of Kansas has sent more teams than any other school to the national tournament in which activity?

Debate teams from Kansas won the National Debate Tournament as early as 1954, and later champions include the squads of 2009 and 2018.

University of Kansas graduate Ronald Evans orbited the Moon as command module pilot on which final lunar mission?

Apollo 17 flew in December 1972, and Evans became the last person to orbit the Moon alone. He had studied electrical engineering at Kansas before joining the Navy.

Which Tony-winning star of Evita attended the University of Kansas before training at the Juilliard School?

Mandy Patinkin won his Tony for playing Che in the first Broadway production of the musical in 1979, opposite Patti LuPone.

University of Kansas graduate William Inge won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for which of these Broadway plays?

Picnic was one of a string of Broadway successes for Inge in the early 1950s. He graduated in 1935 in speech and drama, and a campus black box theater is named for him.