Skip to main content

Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh is a wonderfully vibrant and innovative city filled with restaurants, museums, historical landmarks, and nature.  Please use the information on this website to learn more about our city and understand why it makes an ideal living environment for medical school.

Interesting Facts- University of Pittsburgh

  • The University of Pittsburgh is a leader in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding—a major benchmark of research excellence and activity.
  • University of Pittsburgh researcher Jonas Salk invented the world’s first polio vaccine in 1952!
  • The Cathedral of Learning is the second tallest university building in the world and the tallest in the Western Hemisphere!
  • The Cathedral of Learning illuminates gold with “Victory Lights” after all football game wins, much like the Empire State Building lights up for special occasions.
  • Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall, located at the heart of the University of Pittsburgh’s campus, is the largest memorial hall in the country dedicated to all branches of military service.
  • Panthers were once indigenous to the Pittsburgh region, resulting in Roc the Panther becoming the University of Pittsburgh’s mascot.
  • Notable Alumni include actor Gene Kelly, tv icon Fred  Rogers, and future NFL Hall of Famers Larry Fitzgerald and Aaron Donald

Interesting Facts—The City of Pittsburgh

  • Pittsburgh is known as the “City of Bridges” because it is home to 446 bridges, more than any city in the world.
  • Pittsburgh is also known as the “Steel City” because Pittsburgh steel built iconic structures like the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and the Empire State Building in New York City as well as many of the naval ships that carried the allies to victory in World War II.
  • The Pittsburgh Steelers, the city’s NFL football team, has won 6 Super Bowl titles!
  • The very first commercial radio station in the world, KDKA, debuted in Pittsburgh with the broadcasting of the presidential elections in 1920.
  • Pittsburgh used to be spelled without an “h” until 1911.
  • Initially made as a joke, the emoticon was invented by a Carnegie Mellon computer scientist in Pittsburgh in 1980.
  • Pittsburgh became home to the ‘Nickelodeon’, the first theater in the world for motion pictures, in 1905.