99 Fun Facts About Notre Dame

The University of Notre Dame's campus is just outside which Indiana city?

South Bend is the neighbouring city, but the campus lies just outside its limits and has its own post office, so its mail goes to Notre Dame, Indiana.

Which Catholic religious order founded the University of Notre Dame in 1842?

The Congregation of Holy Cross, then only recently established, sent Father Edward Sorin, who was given the land on condition that he build a college on it.

What does the full French name that founder Edward Sorin gave Notre Dame mean in English?

Our Lady of the Lake is odd for a campus with two lakes: one account is that Sorin first saw them in deep winter, frozen and under snow, and took them for one.

What sits atop the Golden Dome of Notre Dame's Main Building?

A statue of Mary, 19 feet tall, tops a building that went up in 1879, the very year fire destroyed the one before it.

The Word of Life mural on Notre Dame's main library is better known by what nickname?

Touchdown Jesus faces the football stadium with both arms raised, just like a referee signalling a score, which is how the mural earned its nickname.

The campus Grotto, built in 1896, is a replica of the shrine at which French town?

Lourdes was visited by founder Edward Sorin, who vowed to reproduce its shrine on campus; a priest's gift paid for the rock cave within three years of his death.

Which president served Notre Dame for 35 years, from 1952 to 1987, and made it coeducational?

Theodore Hesburgh also sat on the US Civil Rights Commission from its start in 1957 until 1972, when President Nixon replaced him for criticising the administration's record.

Which women's college nearly merged with Notre Dame before it went coeducational?

Saint Mary's, the neighbouring women's college, stayed independent when the merger was called off, so Notre Dame admitted women on its own in 1972.

What is the official mascot of Notre Dame athletics?

A leprechaun has been the official mascot only since 1965; before that the teams were represented by a line of Irish terriers, usually named Clashmore Mike.

Which nickname did sportswriters give Knute Rockne's much-travelled Notre Dame teams?

The Ramblers, like the Rovers, was a press label for teams that travelled far and wide, until president Matthew Walsh said in 1927 that the university had no objection to 'Fighting Irish'.

Notre Dame's first-ever football game, in 1887, was a loss to which team?

Michigan won 8-0, though the campus paper reported that the visitors had come 'more to instruct' the weeks-old home team in the game than to win fresh laurels.

In a famous 1913 upset of an Eastern power, Gus Dorais threw what to Knute Rockne?

Downfield forward passes were legal but little used; Dorais and Rockne had practised them that summer while working as lifeguards at Cedar Point on Lake Erie, and Notre Dame won 35-13.

Knute Rockne was born in which country?

Norway: born in Voss, he reached Chicago at five and later spent years as a post office night clerk to earn the money to enrol at Notre Dame.

What killed Knute Rockne in 1931, at the age of 43?

A plane crash in Kansas: he was flying from Kansas City to Los Angeles to work on a film, The Spirit of Notre Dame.

George Gipp died in 1920 of a throat infection and which illness?

Pneumonia killed him at 25, and the deathbed request that Knute Rockne later said he made became the 'win one for the Gipper' legend.

Against which opponent did Knute Rockne deliver his 'Win one for the Gipper' speech in 1928?

Army lost 12-6 at Yankee Stadium after Rockne told his players of a request he said the dying Gipp had made eight years earlier: to win one for him when things were going badly.

Which sportswriter coined the 'Four Horsemen' nickname for Notre Dame's 1924 backfield?

Grantland Rice wrote the line for the New York Herald Tribune; a student publicity aide, George Strickler, then posed the four in uniform on livery-stable horses, and the wire photo did the rest.

Which future NFL team founder played in Knute Rockne's first Notre Dame backfield?

Curly Lambeau lasted only the 1918 season before an illness sent him home to Green Bay, where a job at the Indian Packing Company led to his founding the Packers in 1919.

Notre Dame players slap a locker-room sign telling them to play like a what today?

Play Like A Champion Today hangs at the foot of the locker-room stairs; a newly arrived coach had it made in 1986 after spotting the slogan in an old photograph in a book about the team.

Which Notre Dame Heisman winner is the only player to take the award while on a losing team?

Paul Hornung won in 1956 as the Irish went 2-8, even though Oklahoma's Tommy McDonald drew more first-place votes; Syracuse's Jim Brown finished only fifth.

Which coach's post-war Notre Dame teams went 39 games unbeaten?

Frank Leahy had already won the 1943 title before he left for the Navy; his post-war teams added three more, in 1946, 1947 and 1949, before the run ended in 1950.

The 1966 'Game of the Century' ended in a 10-10 tie between Notre Dame and which team?

Michigan State, ranked second, held top-ranked Notre Dame level after Ara Parseghian kept the ball on the ground at the end rather than risk a turnover, a choice argued over ever since.

Which bowl did the Four Horsemen win in 1925, Notre Dame's last for 45 years?

The Rose Bowl ended 27-10 over Stanford, with Elmer Layden returning two interceptions for touchdowns; Notre Dame's next bowl was the Cotton Bowl of January 1970.

Which future NFL great quarterbacked Notre Dame's 1977 national championship team?

Joe Montana also won the 'Chicken Soup Game' on New Year's Day 1979: ill at halftime, he was warmed with blankets and soup, then led a 23-point fourth quarter to beat Houston 35-34.

For the 1977 'green jersey game', Dan Devine's Notre Dame team wore green against which rival?

USC lost 49-19 after the Irish warmed up in blue, found green jerseys hanging in their lockers and ran back out behind a Trojan horse.

Who coached Notre Dame to the 1988 national championship?

Lou Holtz's team survived top-ranked Miami 31-30 when a late two-point pass was batted down, then beat unbeaten West Virginia in the Fiesta Bowl to finish 12-0.

Which network has televised Notre Dame home football games since 1991?

NBC signed Notre Dame away from the television package most colleges shared, at a time when no team had most of its games shown nationally on one network.

As of 2025, in which conference do most Notre Dame teams other than football compete?

The ACC has housed most Irish teams since 2013, when Notre Dame left the Big East; football stayed independent but agreed to play five ACC opponents a year.

The 'Notre Dame Victory March' was written by two brothers with what surname?

Shea: Michael wrote the music and John the words, and the fight song was first heard in public in 1908 not at a game but on a church organ in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

Who plays the title role in the 1993 film Rudy?

Sean Astin was carried off on the players' shoulders in a scene shot at halftime of a real Notre Dame home game in 1992, with the crowd of 59,000 chanting 'Rudy'.

What did the real Rudy Ruettiger do on the final play of his only game for Notre Dame?

Sacked the quarterback: he was on the field for just three plays, a kickoff, an incomplete pass and the sack, before his teammates carried him off.

In the 1993 film Rudy, Rudy Ruettiger finally gets into a game against which opponent?

Georgia Tech was the real opponent too, in November 1975, but the film's scene of players laying their jerseys on the coach's desk in protest was invented.

Notre-Dame de Paris stands on which island in the Seine?

Île de la Cité is also where France's roads begin: a marker set in the square in front of the cathedral is the zero point from which distances from Paris are measured.

Which saint's statue on the front of Notre-Dame de Paris holds its own severed head?

Saint Denis, by tradition the first bishop of Paris, was beheaded for his faith; legend has him picking up his head and walking on, which is how sculptors show him.

Which structural feature was Notre-Dame de Paris among the first Gothic cathedrals to use?

The flying buttress props the upper walls from the outside, so the walls themselves could be opened up for the much larger windows added in the 13th century.

Which English boy-king was crowned King of France inside Notre-Dame in 1431?

Henry VI was ten, and is the only English monarch ever crowned King of France; Paris had to do because Reims, the usual coronation church, was held by his French rival, crowned there in 1429.

During the French Revolution, the cathedral was rededicated in 1793 to what?

The Cult of Reason took over a building under attack: that same period saw the 28 statues of biblical kings on its façade pulled down and beheaded, mistaken for kings of France.

Whose 1831 novel is credited with inspiring the restoration of the crumbling Paris cathedral?

Victor Hugo called his novel simply Notre-Dame de Paris, and the hunchback took over the title only in English translation; its popularity is credited with prompting the restoration.

Which relic, bought by Saint Louis IX from the Latin Emperor of Constantinople, is kept at Notre-Dame?

The Crown of Thorns first went into the Sainte-Chapelle, which Louis built to house it; in 2019 it was carried out of the burning cathedral and taken to the Louvre for safety.

Which part of Notre-Dame de Paris collapsed in the fire of April 2019?

The spire was a 19th-century addition rather than a medieval original; the two bell towers, feared lost as well that night, were saved by the firefighters.

Which French president promised after the 2019 fire to rebuild Notre-Dame de Paris within five years?

Emmanuel Macron made the pledge within days of the fire; the cathedral reopened in December 2024, about eight months past his five-year mark.

A Gallo-Roman temple to which god is believed to have stood on the site of Notre-Dame de Paris?

Jupiter was honoured by the boatmen of Roman Paris on a carved pillar set up under Emperor Tiberius, and its blocks were unearthed beneath the cathedral in 1710.

Who crowned himself Emperor inside Notre-Dame de Paris on 2 December 1804?

Napoleon Bonaparte had Pope Pius VII come to Paris to officiate, then placed the crown on his own head instead of receiving it from the pope's hands.

Which two architects led the major 19th-century restoration of Notre-Dame de Paris?

Lassus and Viollet-le-Duc began together, but Lassus died in 1857 and his partner finished alone; the brooding chimeras and gargoyles that look medieval came from his workshop.

Which ruler married France's heir at Notre-Dame in 1558?

Mary, Queen of Scots was fifteen and the Dauphin Francis fourteen; he became king the next year, died the year after, and she sailed home to Scotland a widow at eighteen.

Which high-wire artist walked a tightrope between the bell towers of Notre-Dame de Paris in June 1971?

Philippe Petit rigged his wire in secret and juggled as he crossed; three years later he did it again between the Twin Towers in New York.

Since a 1905 law, who has owned Notre-Dame de Paris?

The state owns it, like France's other old cathedrals, so the government is responsible for its upkeep while the Catholic Church has the exclusive right to use it.

What are the names of the two largest bells of Notre-Dame de Paris, hung in the south tower?

Emmanuel and Marie are the two bourdons; Emmanuel, cast in 1686, was the only great bell spared when the rest were melted down for coins and cannon in the Revolution.

Which general attended a thanksgiving service at Notre-Dame the day after Paris was liberated?

Charles de Gaulle led a procession down the Champs-Élysées to the cathedral, the day after the German garrison in Paris surrendered.

What practical job were the stone gargoyles of Notre-Dame de Paris, added around 1240, designed to do?

Their job was to throw rainwater clear of walls: a channel cut along each gargoyle's back sends roof water shooting out of its mouth, away from the masonry.

Which future US president played doomed Notre Dame star George Gipp in the 1940 film Knute Rockne, All American?

Ronald Reagan never shook the role: when he ran for the White House four decades later, reporters took to calling him the Gipper.

Notre Dame plays which service academy every year as thanks for wartime training that kept the university solvent?

Navy made the campus an officer training center in World War II and paid enough to keep the all-male school afloat, so Notre Dame treats the annual game as a debt of honor.

Which Notre Dame fullback, later a Super Bowl winner with the Pittsburgh Steelers, was nicknamed 'the Bus' on campus?

Jerome Bettis got the name from a reporter at the student newspaper, who wrote that he looked like a bus taking tacklers for a ride.

Which star of Ghost voiced the dancer Esmeralda in Disney's 1996 animated film The Hunchback of Notre Dame?

Demi Moore supplied only the speaking voice: Esmeralda's singing in the film was performed by Heidi Mollenhauer.

Which video game, set in Revolutionary Paris, did Ubisoft give away free after the 2019 Notre-Dame de Paris fire?

Assassin's Creed Unity lets players climb a detailed Notre-Dame, and Ubisoft paired the week-long giveaway with a €500,000 donation toward the rebuilding.

Revolutionary crowds beheaded 28 statues of biblical figures on Notre-Dame de Paris, mistaking them for whom?

French kings is what the crowd took the crowned figures for; many of the severed heads resurfaced in a 1977 excavation nearby and now sit in the Musée de Cluny.

The 1988 college football game nicknamed 'Catholics vs. Convicts' pitted Notre Dame against which top-ranked team?

Miami arrived ranked No. 1 on a 36-game regular-season winning streak and lost 31–30 when a late two-point pass was batted down.

Which US Supreme Court justice graduated first in her class from Notre Dame Law School and later taught there?

Amy Coney Barrett earned her law degree at Notre Dame in 1997, joined its faculty in 2002 and became a full professor there in 2010.

What nickname did the vast medieval roof frame of Notre-Dame de Paris, lost in the 2019 fire, go by?

The Forest was a dense lattice of oak beams under the roof, and rebuilding it took about a thousand mature trees chosen from woods across France.

A medallion set in front of Notre-Dame de Paris in 1924 marks the spot from which what is measured?

Road distances across France are counted from this spot, the official point zero of the national highways, which faces the main entrance of the cathedral.

Which toxic metal, some 400 tonnes of it sheathing the roof of Notre-Dame de Paris, was scattered by the 2019 fire?

Lead from the burning roof came down as dust, sharply raising surface levels in nearby streets, notably the area cordoned off after the blaze.

Which bird tops the relic-filled weathervane found dented but intact in the rubble of Notre-Dame de Paris in 2019?

A rooster, the emblem of France, came down with the burning roof and was found in the debris the next day; a new one was hoisted into its place in December 2023.

Which creatures, kept on the sacristy roof of Notre-Dame de Paris, were found alive days after the 2019 fire?

Honeybees, about 200,000 of them in three hives, were seen coming and going days later; their keeper had first feared the colonies had burned.

Whose mother came to Notre-Dame de Paris in 1455 to open the retrial that cleared her executed daughter of heresy?

Joan of Arc had been burned 24 years earlier; her mother's public plea at the cathedral opened a rehearing that heard about 115 witnesses and ended in 1456.

Statues of which group, plus the four Evangelists, left Notre-Dame de Paris for conservation days before the 2019 fire?

The Twelve Apostles had been lifted away just four days earlier, so they escaped the blaze entirely and were returned to their rooftop perch in April 2025.

Which Bishop of Paris, born to poor parents on the Loire, launched the building of Notre-Dame de Paris in 1163?

Maurice de Sully decided in 1160 to replace the old cathedral with a much larger church; work began three years later and was still going on long after his death.

Which biblical scene, with souls being weighed, is carved above the central west doorway of Notre-Dame de Paris?

The Last Judgment shows the archangel Michael and Satan weighing souls, with sinners led off to hell on one side and good Christians taken to heaven on the other.

At the 2024 reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris, the archbishop knocked on the doors with a crosier made from what?

An old roof beam supplied the wood for the staff, and three knocks with it on the closed central door signaled the return to life of the cathedral after five years.

In the novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, the foundling Quasimodo takes his name from the day he was found: which day?

Sunday after Easter was known as Quasimodo Sunday, and Claude Frollo names the abandoned child for the day he finds him on the foundlings' bed at the cathedral.

In the novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, a festival crowd elects Quasimodo to which mock title for his looks?

Pope of Fools is the prize for the ugliest face at the Festival of Fools on 6 January, and the crowd finds Quasimodo's perfect hideousness unbeatable.

In the novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, what office does Claude Frollo hold, unlike the judge of Disney's film?

Archdeacon Frollo is a churchman in the book and the guardian who raised Quasimodo; Disney's 1996 film made him the Minister of Justice instead.

What kind of animal is Djali, Esmeralda's trick-performing companion in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame?

A goat who performs for coins, Djali can tell the time and spell the name of Phoebus, the captain Esmeralda loves.

Which silent-film star played the bell-ringer Quasimodo in the 1923 Hollywood epic The Hunchback of Notre Dame?

Lon Chaney transformed himself with make-up techniques he developed, a skill that earned him the nickname the Man of a Thousand Faces.

Which composer wrote the music for Disney's 1996 animated film The Hunchback of Notre Dame, his follow-up to Pocahontas?

Alan Menken wrote the songs with lyricist Stephen Schwartz, and the pair picked the project from several offered to them after a year together on the earlier film.

Before coaching full time, Knute Rockne worked as a laboratory assistant at Notre Dame in which science?

Chemistry nearly kept him: Rockne assisted the noted polymer chemist Julius Nieuwland, then turned down further lab work when he was offered a coaching job.

George Gipp arrived at Notre Dame intending to play which sport before Knute Rockne recruited him to football?

Baseball was the plan, but Rockne recruited him on campus even though Gipp had no experience of organized football.

In May 1924, Notre Dame students brawled in the streets with members of which organization holding a rally nearby?

The Ku Klux Klan, then loudly anti-Catholic, had planned a week-long gathering; students blocked members from leaving their trains and ripped off their robes and regalia.

In 1974 Notre Dame men's basketball won 71–70 to end which school's record 88-game winning streak?

UCLA had not lost since a 1971 defeat by Notre Dame, so the Irish bookended the longest winning streak in men's college basketball.

Which Notre Dame wide receiver won the 1987 Heisman Trophy before a sixteen-season career with the Raiders?

Tim Brown attended Woodrow Wilson High School in Dallas, the same school that produced the 1938 Heisman winner Davey O'Brien.

Notre Dame's unbeaten, top-ranked 2012 team lost the BCS title game 42–14 to which opponent?

Alabama won a game billed as a rematch of the 1973 Sugar Bowl, which Notre Dame had taken 24–23 on its way to a national title.

Which coach passed Knute Rockne as Notre Dame's winningest before leaving for LSU after the 2021 season?

Brian Kelly took over in 2010 and collected the record-breaking win in 2021, his twelfth and final season at Notre Dame.

Which 1953 Notre Dame graduate later co-hosted a long-running morning talk show with Kathie Lee Gifford?

Regis Philbin took a sociology degree and stayed a proud, vocal supporter of Notre Dame's teams for the rest of his life.

Which coach arrived from Northwestern for the 1964 season and led Notre Dame to national titles in 1966 and 1973?

Ara Parseghian turned the program around so quickly that it came close to a national title in his first season, the start of what fans called the Era of Ara.

In 1993's 'Game of the Century', No. 2 Notre Dame beat which No. 1 team led by Heisman winner Charlie Ward?

Florida State lost 31–24 when a last-play pass was batted down, yet still ended the season ranked first, one place above the Notre Dame team that beat it.

Notre Dame's football games against which fellow Catholic university are known as the 'Holy War'?

Boston College and Notre Dame are the only two Catholic universities still playing at the top level of college football, which gave the series its name.

Notre Dame's publicist had Joe Theismann rhyme his name with 'Heisman', but which Stanford passer won the 1970 award?

Jim Plunkett finished ahead of Theismann, whose name had been pronounced THEES-man until the school's sports information director insisted on the change.

Which coach took over Notre Dame football in 1981 straight from Moeller High School in Cincinnati?

Gerry Faust had spent 19 seasons at Moeller and was a surprise choice; he lasted five seasons at Notre Dame before moving on to Akron.

Which member of Notre Dame's Four Horsemen later coached the school and then served as commissioner of the NFL?

Elmer Layden, the fullback of the quartet, was Notre Dame's head coach from 1934 to 1940 and then ran the NFL from 1941 to 1946.

Which Notre Dame linebacker, the 2012 Heisman runner-up, was the victim of a hoax over a girlfriend who never existed?

Manti Te'o finished second to Johnny Manziel in the voting; weeks later reporters showed that the girlfriend he had mourned during the season was a fiction.

Which future US Secretary of State earned a master's degree in political science from Notre Dame in 1975?

Condoleezza Rice took her bachelor's degree and later her doctorate at the University of Denver, with the Notre Dame master's in between.

Which future comedy star made his major-studio debut as player Jamie O'Hara in the 1993 Notre Dame film Rudy?

Vince Vaughn was credited as Vincent Vaughn, and the same film gave a first major-studio role to Jon Favreau, who played Rudy's friend D-Bob.

Which biblical figure's campus sculpture, one finger pointing skyward, do Notre Dame fans call 'First Down'?

Moses holds the tablets of the commandments in his other hand; Notre Dame has a long habit of renaming its statues with football references.

Which coach led Notre Dame women's basketball to national titles in 2001 and 2018 and to nine Final Fours?

Muffet McGraw's teams also lost five other title games, and the Associated Press named her national coach of the year four times.

What nickname is given to Notre Dame football's legions of fans who never actually attended the university?

Subway Alumni began as New York-area residents who rode trains to Notre Dame's early games around the city, and the name spread nationwide.

Which bestselling novelist attended Notre Dame on a track and field scholarship and began writing while a student there?

Nicholas Sparks majored in business finance and graduated with high honors, years before The Notebook made his name.

Until the 1960s, Notre Dame's sideline mascot was a line of dogs, usually named Clashmore Mike, of which breed?

Irish terrier dogs represented the team for years; the last Clashmore Mike appeared on the cover of the football guide in 1963.

Notre Dame's 7–0 upset in 1957 ended which team's record 47-game winning streak in college football?

Oklahoma was ranked No. 2 and playing at home in Norman when the shutout ended a run that remains the longest in major college football.

Which quarterback became Notre Dame's first Heisman winner in 1943 despite a mid-season call-up by the Marines?

Angelo Bertelli played only six of the ten games before the Marine Corps activated him, yet those six were enough to win him the vote.

Which English actor played Quasimodo opposite Maureen O'Hara in the 1939 RKO film The Hunchback of Notre Dame?

Charles Laughton's own production company was rescued from bankruptcy only when RKO offered him the role, with his Jamaica Inn co-star O'Hara beside him.