History
On February 20, 1863, Kansas Governor Thomas Carney signed into law a bill creating the state university in Lawrence.
The law was conditioned upon a gift from Lawrence of a $15,000 endowment fund and a site for the university, in or near the town, of not less than forty acres (160,000 m²) of land. If Lawrence failed to meet these conditions, Emporia instead of Lawrence would get the university.
The site selected for the university was a hill known as Mount Oread, which was owned by former Kansas Governor Charles L. Robinson. Robinson and his wife Sara bestowed the 40-acre (160,000 m2) site to the State of Kansas in exchange for land elsewhere. The philanthropist Amos Adams Lawrence donated $10,000 of the necessary endowment fund, and the citizens of Lawrence raised the remaining cash by issuing notes backed by Governor Carney. On November 2, 1863, Governor Carney announced that Lawrence had met the conditions to get the state university, and the following year the university was officially organized.
Work on the first college building was begun in 1865. The university opened for classes on September 12, 1866, and the first class graduated in 1873.
During World War II, Kansas was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission.
Read more about this topic: University Of Kansas
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“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)