Thursday, April 1, 2010

Johns Hopkins University Drops "S" in Deference to John Hopkins

I know I've been lax in posts to this blog, but I had to post this for today. In an elaborate April Fool's joke, Johns Hopkins University dropped the "s" in Johns Hopkins to be John Hopkins University. A frequent misidentification of the Baltimore university that was founded in 1876 three years after the death of philanthropist Johns Hopkins bequeathed $7 million dollars to establish the university that bears his name. His unusual first name Johns was his great-grandmother's middle name and he was named after her son, his grandfather, the first Johns Hopkins.

The university had been planning this prank for nearly a year and you can read about it in the Washington Post.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

The original press release for the "renaming" can be found on JHU's website here: http://webapps.jhu.edu/jhuniverse/featured/naming_announcement_april01/

Jim Owston said...

Thanks so much - I'm reposting the link to make it clickable.

http://webapps.jhu.edu/jhuniverse/featured/naming_announcement_april01/

Julie Malone said...
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