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

A weekly show where knowledge junkies get their fix of trivia-tastic information. This week, John examines 33 fun facts about US colleges.

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[nausicaa]

So unnecessarily proud that Binghamton's history is bizzarre enough to kick off a Mental Floss list video!

[datonz]

John Harvards Statue is known as "the statue of three lies" because of the inscription. It reads "John Harvard, Founder, 1638". The statue is not of John Harvard. John Harvard is not the founder of Harvard University. And Harvard was not founded in 1638.

[abbyzinger]

I love that you talked about Oberlin's art rental program. I rent art every semester (I go to Oberlin) and it's one of my favorite things in the whole world. They've been doing it FOREVER.

[laotrasarah]

I heard "One of my brother's alma maters" as "One of my brothers' alma maters" and thought there was a third Green brother who's never been shown to the world. I also felt sad that Hank and John weren't including him. Poor guy.

[Waltham]

The monkey is Blip, from Space Ghost.

How could you not know that?

[AtticusAmericanus]

Minor correction: The modern usage of campus may have been invented in the 1770's but not the word itself. It is taken from the Latin for 'Field'. For example, the Campus Martius (The Field of Mars) was used as pasture and the training ground for soldiers of the Legions. My Pantheon still stands there to this day.

[victoriadonelda]

as a kansan, i know for a fact that there is nothing to be proud of here. meredith, there is no need to research.

[anubis]

Bedford Indiana, my home town, is also damn proud of its limestone.  I think there is a rivalry between Bedford and a town in Nebraska for limestone capital of the world..

[TheLikeGroup]

You should make a "48 Worst Movies Ever Made."
To hear you speak of the hardest of the bad films is a delight to the senses, and therefore good for the soul.

[greenpeach]

Every finals week, Benedictine University (where I graduated from) has two Golden Retrievers walked around the school for students to pet.  It's not necessarily a puppy room, but it sure made my finals mildly less stressful.

[eeharris]

So happy for the shoutout to the University of Kansas. Thanks John and Mental Floss team! (And to be fair, it's mostly only the geologists that are excited about our limestone.)

[Morturious]

That haunted thing with the witchcraft girl is actually kind of scary at 3am O.O

[ValentinaAGP]

Another correction: Georgetown's cheer doesn't have unknown origins. The cheer came from a time where the students would watch athletic games while sitting on a stone wall, these would be the rocks. During that time period the students were required to take Latin and Greek and therefore decided to make the cheer in Latin and Greek. Also if someone asks you what is a hoya, just say yes. 

[delusionnnnn]

The phone company (back in the day when there was THE phone company, which was AT&T and its regional monopolies) used to have a service where it provided unassigned telephone numbers to the film industry.  Eventually, through number assignment, these numbers became valid after the fact, which could be a problem for the new number's user.  After discontinuing this service, the 555 prefix was used because in most regional phone companies even today, it doesn't matter what digits you place after the "555" prefix, you will get directory assistance.

[Buhnana-san]

As a resident of Athens, Ohio ( where Ohio University is located) the haunted Wilson Hall room is very infamous around here, and is a very elaborate story.

[BelenGutierrezokawesome]

did you know that when the captions are on every time you say mental floss it comes out as menopause 

[SamanthaPortUkulele]

Only one fact in and I'm already grinning ear to ear. Salamander ramps?! That's FREAKING AWESOME! :D

[stevekehl]

I believe the original mascot for Georgetown was Stonewalls, after Stonewall Jackson, so the students started chanting Hoya Saxa (what rocks) as in what rocks we have in our stone walls (I guess in the 19th century people bragged about the size of the rocks in their walls ). Eventually, people began to call them the Georgetown Hoyas. Any other stories?

[SkyheadStudio]

*DEEP BREATH* Thank god it's John... Nothing puts a cloud over my day like going to watch a new Mental Floss and then discovering that John Green is not hosting. 

[drivernjax]

I just wanted to let you know two things.  One, don't forget that the beginning and ending of "The Wizard of Oz" takes place in Kansas.  If you read the book, you will also understand why the Judy Garland version starts off and ends in monochrome and it has absolutely nothing to do with the expense of color film in 1939.  Seconds, to understand the 555 exchange you would have to understand the way that phone exchanges used to work.  The first two numbers of the exchange were also the first two letters of a word whose letters were also one of the three letters associated with that number.  For example the letters associated with 5 are JKL.  55 would be KL in the word Klondike.  So, originally, when phone numbers were given in the early 20th Century, the person would say Klondike 5-XXXX instead of 555-XXXX.  My hometown uses 26X as their exchange and the word associated with 26 was Amherst, because 2 has ABC and 6 has MNO.  I know this is a bit wordy but it should explain why the numbers 555 are the exchanges used in movies, TV and music.