Johns Hopkins Trivia Quiz

Answer: The founder's first name was Johns, with an s.

Johns Hopkins (1795-1873) was named after his great-grandmother, Margaret Johns Hopkins. He fell in love with his first cousin, one Elizabeth Hopkins, but the staunchly Quaker family forbid their marriage. As a result, he remained a bachelor and left most of his huge fortune to found the University and Medical School.

He also provided handsomely for Elizabeth, who outlived him by some 15 years.

Answer: Corn whiskey

Johns Hopkins and three of his brothers sold dry goods to farmers in the Shenandoah Valley. They sometimes took moonshine in payment. The boys bottled the stuff, labeled it "Hopkins Best," and sold it in Baltimore. Johns invested his profits in a speculative enterprise called the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which proved better than Hopkins Best.

Answer: 1876

Johns Hopkins died in 1873, leaving $7 million to found a University in Baltimore, MD. At the time, it was the largest philanthropic gift in American history. Another bequest founded -- and funded -- the Johns Hopkins Hospital. The Medical School came later, in 1893.

Answer: Homewood

The first campus was in downtown Baltimore, but the University soon outgrew the available land. Beginning in 1902, the University relocated to Homewood, a 140 acre estate formerly owned by the Carroll family. Homewood House set the architectural theme for the University's red brick and while-columned Georgian buildings. Once used for administrative offices, Homewood House was restored in 1987 and is now a museum.

Answer: A Blue Jay

The belligerent-looking bird with the lacrosse stick in its beak has a bizarre history. It derives from the name of the University's erstwhile humor magazine, "The Black and Blue Jay," founded in 1920. The University's (serious) paper, the News-Letter, borrowed the name Blue Jays to refer to a sports team in about 1923.

The Black and Blue Jay ceased regular publication in the late 1930s, but the Blue Jays live on.

Answer: (Thomas) Woodrow Wilson

While at JHU, Wilson published a book entitled Congressional Government, which appeared to advocate a parliamentary system and the reduction of presidential authority. After a stint teaching at Bryn Mawr College, Wilson served as a Professor and President of Princeton University.

Answer: Milton Eisenhower

Dr. Milton S. Eisenhower served as University President from July 1956 to June 1967, and again from March 1971 to Jamuary 1972. The main library on the Homewood campus is named in his honor. Dr. Eisenhower's older brother Dwight was President of Columbia University from 1948 to 1953 before moving on to the White House.

Answer: Michael Bloomberg

Michael Bloomberg received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from JHU in 1964, and an M.B.A. from Harvard. He put both degrees to good use in founding a highly successful business information software company and media outlets -- and arguably in his subsequent political career as well. The other three are also famous JHU alumni, though somewhat less wealthy.

Answer: The Peabody Conservatory

Peabody is the oldest continuously-operating music conservatory in the United States. It maintains its own buildings and student body, but shares classes with the rest of the University. The Baltimore Museum of Art is adjacent to the Homewood campus, but isn't affiliated with JHU.

The Applied Physics Laboratory is a University division in Laurel, MD, specializing in government research projects.

Answer: Co-education

A few extraordinary women defied the rules, including M. Carey Thomas (founder and first Dean of Bryn Mawr College), Florence Bascom (Ph.D. 1893; also a future Bryn Mawr professor) and Christine Ladd-Franklin (Hopkins faculty member 1904-1909). Dr. Ladd-Franklin earned her JHU doctorate in 1892 -- but did not "officially" receive it until 1926! Women were admitted to the University's graduate schools beginning in 1907, but women undergraduates had to wait until 1970. Meanwhile, the Medical School accepted women beginning with its first class in 1893, as the result of a "Women's Fund Campaign" -- donating $500,000 on condition that women be admitted on the same basis as men.

Answer: Dr. James Kildare (t.v., movies, fiction)

The three "real" fictional Blue Jays are a mixed bag. Dr. House was expelled from the Medical School for cheating, unlike his more admirable colleague and Hopkins grad Dr. Eric Foreman. Hannibal Lecter did work-study in the cafeteria . . . sorry, made that up.

Answer: Study - these three "luck" rituals are bogus

No skeleton, no Pre-Med Chapel, and Poe's grave is not on campus. Don't step on the school seal in the floor of Gilman Hall, however -- if you do, you'll never graduate.

Answer: A reading room

The Hutzler Reading Room is open 24 hours a day, and features a coffee bar for those all-nighters. During final exams, it's so quiet you can hear a GPA drop. It is one of the most striking interiors on the Homewood campus, but most students seem oblivious to its architectural refinement. Can't think why.

Answer: President Remsen's ashes

The ashes are interred behind a tasteful memorial plaque. The National Lacrosse Hall of Fame is at the north end of the Homewood campus, near the athletic center.

Answer: "Famous Beauties of Baltimore"

Alfred Shriver (class of 1891) was a JHU alumnus, life-long bachelor and bon vivant. He bequeathed nearly one million dollars (in 1939 money!) to construct a campus building. He stipulated that it be decorated with a mural depicting ten society ladies of the 1890s -- and he named the specific ladies he desired, so to speak. Noted artist Leon Kroll began with nude sketches of the ladies (drawn from imagination, not life). To the chagrin of generations of male Hopkins undergrads, the finished mural shows the "beauties" fully clothed in belle epoque finery.

More conventional murals depict the early faculty members of the University and the Medical School, Shriver's graduating class, and great philanthropists of Baltimore.