1. Magic is real, at least at Duke University. Researchers created a perfect unidirectional invisibility cloak that can hide anything smaller than a centimeter. It’s only a matter of time until you’re living out your Harry Potter fantasies.
2. College basketball’s winningest coach is Duke’s Coach K (short for Kyzyzewski, pronounced She-Shef-ski) with a staggering 976 wins as of this February.
3. Dukes alumni include some seriously impressive folks: Richard Nixon, Apple CEO Tim Cook, “Community” star Ken Jeong, “Braveheart” director Randall Wallace, and veteran interviewer Charlie Rose.
4. The barcode was pioneered in Durham’s Research Triangle Park by George Laurer.
5. The very first item scanned with said barcode was a 10-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum, now on display in the Smithsonian.
6. The Blue Devils’ namesake was a group of intrepid Alpine soldiers in World War I known for their great mountaineering abilities—and blue clothing.
7. 17 days after General Lee surrendered at Appomattox in 1865, Union general William Sherman and Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston met to negotiate the Confederacy’s surrender in Durham—and officially ended the Civil War.
8. The Duke Lemur Center has the largest sanctuary for prosimian primates, aka lemurs, outside of Madgascar.
9. One of the earliest first sit-in of the Civil Rights movement took place in Durham on June 23, 1957, when seven African-American men entered the Royal Ice Cream Parlour and sat in the “white-only” booths.
10. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous rallying cry to “fill up the jails” as a form of civil rights protest was coined in a speech outside Durham’s White Rock Baptist Church in 1960. It was King’s first call to nonviolent protest against segregation laws.
11. Bull Durham, the tobacco company that first put the city on the map, has a funny story behind its name. While the “Durham” part is obvious, the “Bull” comes from a brand of mustard the company’s founder loved, that he believed was bottled in Durham, UK. It wasn’t, but the name still stuck.
12. Noted indie folk band, The Mountain Goats, are currently based in Durham.
Source: Youtube user TheRealMufflon
13. Anytime the Duke basketball team beats their hated rival UNC, in lieu of storming the court the school takes to the Main Quad to burn campus benches in a giant bonfire. No, really.
14. The Research Triangle Park is not just good at its job, it’s also the world’s largest university-related research park, and employs over 39,000 people for 140 different companies.
15. American Idol runner-up Clay Aiken lived in Durham until just recently.
16. It’s very common for Duke students to camp overnight in K-Ville, named for the illustrious Coach K, to guarantee their entry into the game in Cameron Indoor Stadium the next day.
17. The story goes that the idea for the Cameron Indoor Stadium was drawn out on a matchbook back in 1935.
18. Those campers are referred to as “Cameron Crazies,” because, well, would you call camping out all night to get into a stadium normal?
19. In 2009 those Cameron Crazies sold out every single home game.
20. The novel “Sophie’s Choice” which laid the groundwork one of Meryl Streep’s finest performances, was written by Duke student William C. Styron.
21. The guy responsible for making you really, really like “Garden State”, Iron & Wine, lives Durham.
22. Pioneering avant-garde filmmaker David Lynch lived in Durham for a time as a child.
23. The hit 90s show “Dawson’s Creek” did on-location shooting at Duke.
24. Jennifer Love Hewitt screamed her lungs out around Durham while filming “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”
25. If you want to have your wedding at the stunning Duke Chapel, you’d better be ready to pull out your diploma, since the chapel is only available to alumni.
26. The Research Triangle Park has one of the highest number of PhDs than anywhere else in the whole country.
27. The area in south central Durham hosted Parrish Street was called “Black Wall Street” in the late 1800s, because of the many enterprising African-Americans who built hugely successful businesses.
28. Bet you thought Broadway dominated national ticket sales, huh? Turns out, the Durham Performing Arts Center regularly ranks in the top ten for ticket sales in the country —not bad, Durham! Culturally-literate high five!
29. The storied history of Duke’s big Tailgate event as the most epic pre-gaming event in Duke history was cut down when an officer found someone passed out in a Porta-Potty.
30. Here’s some irony: the campus whose entire endowment was built on tobacco restricts smoking within 10 feet of any campus building, and you can forget about it entirely on the medical campus.
31. Duke has the fourth-highest number of most cited scientists according to a study by Thomson Reuters—just behind Harvard, Stanford and UC Berkeley.
32. Dr. James E. Shephard founded Durham’s North Carolina Central University as the first publicly-supported liberal arts college for African-Americans in 1910.
33. Another city nickname for Durham is “City of Medicine” for its contributions to the industry through the Research Triangle Park’s numerous innovations in biotech, pharmaceuticals and medicine in general.
34. The interest in Durham’s tobacco was thanks to the Civil War, when veterans returning home wanted to get a taste of that Old North State that they liked so much.
35. Bull Durham was such a driving force behind the city’s growth that to this day Durham’s nickname is still “Bull City.”
36. The city’s name also inspired one of the most popular sports movies of all time, “Bull Durham.”
37. Duke University was originally called Trinity College, until in 1924 it received a generous dose of philanthropic support from the Duke family and the name was changed in their honor.
38. You can still visit the original Trinity College, though: it’s simply Duke’s East Campus.
39. The Duke University Press publishes 120 new books every year.
40. Even back in 1701 people knew Durham was special. Explorer John Lawson called it the “The Flower Of The Carolinas,” a pretty accurate description.
What’s your favorite fun fact about Durham? Tell us in the comments below!
