45 Fun Facts About UCLA

What are UCLA's school colours?

Blue and gold are shared with the University of California; UCLA says its blue evokes the sea and sky and its gold the sun and the California poppy. Cardinal and gold belong to crosstown rival USC.

What kind of school was UCLA's forerunner before joining the University of California in 1919?

A teachers' college, the Los Angeles State Normal School, became the university's Southern Branch after its head Ernest Moore and Regent Edward Dickson pushed the plan past a reluctant university leadership.

UCLA's pre-Westwood campus on Vermont Avenue in East Hollywood is now home to what?

Los Angeles City College opened there in 1929 as a junior college, the year the university left a 25-acre Vermont Avenue campus it had outgrown.

Which family's investment company sold UCLA its Westwood site at a deep discount?

Janss Investment Company, run by brothers Edwin and Harold Janss, took about $1 million for land worth several times that, then developed Westwood Village and the neighbourhoods around the new campus.

Which future Nobel chemist enrolled at UCLA in 1929?

Glenn Seaborg arrived in 1929 as valedictorian of Jordan High School in Watts and went on to help discover plutonium; element 106 was later named seaborgium in his honour.

Which of these was one of the four original buildings around the Westwood quad?

Haines Hall, originally the Chemistry Building, was one of the four; the others were Royce Hall, the College Library (now Powell) and the Physics-Biology Building, now Kaplan Hall.

The twin towers of Royce Hall reference which famous Italian church?

Royce Hall's twin towers echo Sant'Ambrogio in Milan, a Lombard Romanesque basilica; the architects Allison & Allison used that style for the whole building.

Royce Hall is named after Josiah Royce, who was what?

A philosopher: Josiah Royce, born in the mining town of Grass Valley, California, went to Harvard in 1882 as a one-year stand-in for William James and made his career there.

UCLA's teams became the Bruins because Montana, a conference rival, already used which nickname?

Grizzlies was the teams' name in the mid-1920s, but Montana already held it in the Pacific Coast Conference they were joining, so the students switched to another bear and became the Bruins.

What are the names of UCLA's costumed bear mascots?

Joe and Josephine Bruin took over from live bears: the first Josephine, bought by alumni in 1961, lived in the Rally Committee chairman's backyard until she grew too large and went to the San Diego Zoo.

The first ARPANET message was sent from UCLA in 1969 to which institution?

Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park received the message on 29 October 1969; the system crashed after two letters, so the first transmitted characters were 'lo'.

The first ARPANET message was sent in 1969 from room 3420 of which UCLA engineering building?

Boelter Hall housed the SDS Sigma 7 host computer and the first Interface Message Processor, making the engineering building the network's first node.

Which UCLA computer scientist ran the lab that became the ARPANET's first node in 1969?

Leonard Kleinrock supervised the student who typed the first message, and his UCLA software team, including Steve Crocker, Jon Postel and Vint Cerf, wrote the network's first host-to-host protocol.

UCLA alumnus Ralph Bunche won the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for what?

Negotiating an Arab-Israeli armistice fell to Bunche after the UN's chief mediator, Folke Bernadotte, was assassinated in 1948; the 1949 agreements made him the first African American Nobel laureate.

Which UCLA astronomer shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics?

Andrea Ghez shared the 2020 prize with Reinhard Genzel: since the 1990s each had led a team tracking stars that whip around the Milky Way's centre, and their orbits revealed a supermassive black hole there.

UCLA pharmacologist Louis Ignarro shared the 1998 Nobel for discovering the signalling role of which molecule?

Nitric oxide was known as an air pollutant from car exhausts until it was shown to tell blood vessels to relax; the finding led to new impotence drugs, and Ignarro has been nicknamed the 'Father of Viagra'.

UCLA's medical school is named after which entertainment mogul?

David Geffen gave $200 million in 2002, and the school took his name; the health system's flagship hospital is named after Ronald Reagan.

Which athletic conference did the Bruins join in 2024 on leaving the Pac-12?

The Big Ten admitted UCLA and USC for the 2024-25 season, putting two Los Angeles schools in a conference founded in 1896 as a Midwestern league.

As of 2026, UCLA's total of NCAA team championships trails only which school?

Stanford leads the all-time NCAA team championship count, with UCLA second; the Bruins were the first school to reach 100 titles, when women's water polo won in 2007.

Which UCLA alumnus lit the Olympic cauldron at the 1984 Los Angeles Games?

Rafer Johnson, the 1960 Olympic decathlon champion and a UCLA alumnus, climbed the steps of the Coliseum to light the cauldron at the 1984 opening ceremony.

As of 2026, where do the Bruins play their home football games?

The Bruins have played home games at The Rose Bowl in Pasadena since 1982; their only national title came in 1954, when a no-repeat rule kept them out of a Rose Bowl showdown with Ohio State.

How many NCAA men's basketball titles did John Wooden win at UCLA?

Wooden won 10 NCAA titles in his last 12 seasons, seven of them in a row, yet the first did not come until 1964, his 16th season in Westwood.

John Wooden earned which nickname 'of Westwood'?

The Wizard of Westwood was a name Wooden never liked, saying he was no wizard; his teams also set a men's college record with 88 consecutive wins.

John Wooden was the first person inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in which two categories?

Player and coach: Wooden was enshrined as a player in 1960, four years before he won his first national title as a coach, and again as a coach in 1973.

Where did John Wooden play his own college basketball?

Purdue was Wooden's school, and the Midwest nearly kept him: in 1948 a snowstorm cut the phone lines before Minnesota could offer its job, so he said yes to UCLA and kept his word.

Which architect designed UCLA's Pauley Pavilion, opened in 1965?

Welton Becket, whose firm also drew Hollywood's Capitol Records Building, designed the arena; regent Edwin Pauley matched the alumni's donations to get it built.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played at UCLA under what name?

Lew Alcindor led UCLA to three straight titles from 1967; he converted from Catholicism to Islam and, from 1971, went by the name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Who led all scorers in the 1964 final that sealed UCLA's first unbeaten season?

Gail Goodrich scored 27 as UCLA beat Duke 98-83 to finish 30-0, pressing full-court in a zone that assistant Jerry Norman had talked a reluctant Wooden into using.

The Victory Bell contested with USC originally came from what?

A Southern Pacific locomotive supplied the bell; UCLA's alumni association gave it to students in 1939, USC students stole it in 1941, and the rivalry game has decided its owner since 1942.

Which UCLA center made 21 of 22 shots in the 1973 NCAA final?

Bill Walton scored 44 points on 21-of-22 shooting against Memphis State in the 1973 final, a title-game scoring record, as UCLA won its seventh straight championship.

Which future Wimbledon champion won the 1965 NCAA singles and doubles titles for UCLA?

Arthur Ashe arrived on a full scholarship and sharpened his game in practice with Pancho Gonzales; he took both titles in 1965 as UCLA won the team crown, then served in the Army after graduating.

Which New Hollywood director earned his master's degree at UCLA's film school in 1967?

Francis Ford Coppola submitted the feature You're a Big Boy Now as his UCLA thesis, and Warner Bros. released it in cinemas years before he made The Godfather.

Which annual UCLA event presents a lifetime award named for George and Ira Gershwin?

Spring Sing, UCLA's student talent show since 1945, hands the award to a music star each year; it carries the Gershwins' name because in 1936 they reworked one of their show tunes into a Bruin fight song.

Which coach led UCLA men's volleyball from 1963 to 2012?

Al Scates coached the Bruins for 50 seasons, winning the first NCAA men's volleyball championship in 1970 and his last in 2006.

The all-male a cappella group Bruin Harmony appeared as a college group in which 2010 film?

The Social Network, David Fincher's 2010 film about Facebook's founding, put Bruin Harmony on screen four years after the group formed; its Harvard scenes were shot on stand-in campuses such as Johns Hopkins.

Until 1958, UCLA's official name had which word where its comma now sits?

At: the Regents named it the 'University of California at Los Angeles' in the 1920s, then in November 1958 gave the campuses, Berkeley included, the comma form in one sweep.

Which football coach redesigned UCLA's uniforms in 1949, adding the shoulder 'UCLA Stripe'?

Red Sanders, hired in 1949, added the shoulder stripe and lightened the navy to a shade he dubbed 'Powder Keg Blue', reasoning it would show better on the field and on film.

What is the title of UCLA's alma mater song?

Hail to the Hills of Westwood, written by Jeane Emerson, became the alma mater in 1960, replacing a 1925 student song; before that UCLA had simply shared the University of California's.

Which team ended UCLA's record 88-game men's basketball winning streak on 19 January 1974?

Notre Dame won 71-70 in South Bend on 19 January 1974, having also been the last team to beat UCLA before the streak began in January 1971.

Who beat the two-time defending champion varsity in the first game at Pauley Pavilion in 1965?

UCLA's own freshman team won 75-60 on 27 November 1965 behind a 31-point, 21-rebound debut from its young centre, later known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Pauley Pavilion was the venue for which sport at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics?

Gymnastics filled Pauley Pavilion in 1984, when Mary Lou Retton edged Romania's Ecaterina Szabo by 0.05 points to become the first American woman to win the Olympic all-around title.

Which Bruin quarterback won the 1967 Heisman Trophy?

Gary Beban won the 1967 Heisman although his rival for it, USC's O. J. Simpson, beat UCLA 21-20 that November on a 64-yard run; Beban threw for over 300 yards that day with torn rib cartilage.

Which company did UCLA alumni Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham and Frank Pearce found?

Blizzard Entertainment began in 1991 as Silicon & Synapse and went on to build the Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo franchises; Riot Games was founded by USC graduates.

Which future Nixon chief of staff led the fundraising campaign to build Pauley Pavilion?

H. R. Haldeman, a UCLA alumnus and later a regent, led the drive; Regent Edwin W. Pauley matched its million dollars, earning the arena his name at the June 1965 dedication.

UCLA students started the Undie Run in the early 2000s as a ritual of which week?

Finals Week: student Eric Whitehead started the run, which grew within a few years to well over a thousand runners each quarter, until UCLA barred it from campus in 2009, citing injuries and damage.