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Interesting Colgate Facts

  • Colgate University is the 66th oldest college in the United States.
  • Thirteen is Colgate's lucky number; the college was founded by 13 men with $13 dollars and 13 prayers - no triskaidekaphobia here!
  • Colgate owns a 75 million-year-old petrified dinosaur egg, the first owned by a college.
  • The Colgate Maroon-News is the oldest college weekly newspaper in America.
  • A hallmark Colgate tradition is the Torchlight Ceremony. The night before commencement exercises, the graduates parade from Memorial Chapel down the hill to Taylor Lake, where they sing the Alma Mater. The ceremony also is conducted during first-year orientation and re-enacted by alumni during Reunion Weekend.
  • Colgate's 1932 football team was undefeated, untied, unscored upon, and uninvited (to the Rose Bowl).
  • The stone for several of the first buildings on campus was gathered at a rock quarry located at the top of the Hill.
  • Robert Blackmore '41 (dec.), William Henry Crawshaw Professor of Literature Emeritus, had a weekly jazz show, "Your Monday Date with Jazz," on college radio station WRCU for nearly 40 years.
  • Charles Addams '33 (dec.) was the New Yorker cartoonist known for his macabre drawings, which spawned the 1960s television show The Addams Family. (An Empire-era house in Hamilton purportedly occupied for a time by Addams is said to have been the inspiration for the TV family's home.)
  • Seven Oaks Golf Course, a Robert Trent Jones championship course, is rated by Golf Digest among the top five college courses and the 7th-best public access course in NY State.