4 - The Daily Iowan - UNIVERSITY EDITION - Iowa City, Iowa - Tuesday, June 16, 2015
Fun Facts: The University of Iowa, Iowa City Here are a few facts about Iowa City and the UI: • In the fall of 2014, the University of Iowa had a student population of 31,387. The UI, founded in 1847, is one of three regent universities in the state. • The UI became the first U.S. public university to admit men and women on an equal basis when it opened in 1855. It was the first to give a law degree to a woman, Mary B. Hickey Wilkinson (1873), and the first to give a law degree to an African American, G. Alexander Clark (1879). Frank Kinney Holbrook (1895, football) is perhaps the first African American to play in university varsity sports. • In 2008, UNESCO designated Iowa City as the world’s third City of Literature, after Edinburgh, Scotland, and Melbourne, Australia. There are now 11 such cities in the world. • The Daily Iowan was the first daily campus newspaper west of the Mississippi. • Iowa lays claim to the world’s largest wooden nickel, which sits, spanning 16 feet, 3 inches in diameter in a farm field north of Iowa City. • The UI Hospitals and Clinics recorded its 5,000th organ transplant in March. It began organ transplants in 1969. • Former Hawkeye B.J. Armstrong won three NBA titles with Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s. • The Hawkeyes’ No. 40 jersey was retired after All-Big Ten forward Chris Street was tragically killed during the 1993 season. • The Iowa Writers’ Workshop is world-renowned, with its alumni winning a collective 18 Pulitzer Prizes as well as numerous National Book Awards and other major literary honors. • At any given time, there are more than 9,000 employees, students, and volunteers working at the UI Hospitals and Clinics. • The UI’s legal name is the State
Kinnick Stadium is pictured during a football game last fall. Kinnick Stadium is named after the UI’s only Heisman Trophy winner, Nile Kinnick. (The Daily Iowan/File Photo) University of Iowa. However, the state Board of Regents approved using the University of Iowa for everyday use in 1964.
kaw and Ashton Kutcher attended.
• In 1855, the total enrollment at the UI was 124 students, 41 women and 83 men.
• According to the Wall Street Journal, Iowa has produced more Division 1 college football coaches than any other school in the United States.
• In 2014, the Princeton Review ranked the UI as the top party school in the United States. • George Gallup, inventor of the Gallup poll, was a student at the UI and an editor at of The Daily Iowan. • Gene Wilder, James Van Allen, Flannery O’Connor, Tennessee Williams, John Irving, T.C. Boyle, and James Alan McPherson graduated from the University of Iowa. Tom Bro-
• Herky the Hawk has been the only mascot Iowa has had since 1948.
• The UI educates 79 percent of Iowa’s dentists, 50 percent of Iowa’s physicians, and 48 percent of Iowa’s pharmacists. • The UI was the first state university to officially recognize the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Allied Union, in 1970. • The UI had the first public-university law school west of the Mississippi
River (1868, established in Des Moines independently in 1865). • Iowa City was the territory’s first “permanent” capital when the Old Capitol was built in 1840. The state government moved to Des Moines in 1857, leaving the Old Capitol to the university. •Carver-Hawkeye Arena seats 15,500, making it one of the 15 largest university-owned arenas in the nation • A fire engulfed the Old Capitol’s dome in 2001. The damage took five years to repair. • The UI Libraries was named a “Library of the Year” by the U.S. Government Printing Office. The UI Main Library contains more than 5 million volumes, making it Iowa’s largest library.