Military bases, a talking tree, and an annual festival to the Sun God might sound like something out of a weird history book. But you’d be surprised to find out that those three things and more are a huge part of what makes UC San Diego unique. Here are the 10 Fun Facts about UCSD that you might think you know - we guarantee you don’t know them all. 1. UCSD is divided into six separate colleges with their own campus and set of general education classes. The six colleges are: Roger Revelle College (founded in 1964), John Muir College (founded in 1967), Thurgood Marshall College (founded in 1970), Earl Warren College (founded in 1974), Eleanor Roosevelt College (founded in 1988), and Sixth College (founded in 2002).
2. The school is built on top of two former military bases: Camp Matthews (a former Marine Corps rifle range) and Camp Callan (a former WWII anti-aircraft training base).
3. There are more than 220,000 Eucalyptus trees on campus that were originally grown for railroad ties and shipbuilding.
4. Geisel Library is a futuristic building named after Theodor Seuss Geisel (better known as Dr. Seuss).
5. The Talking Tree is a tree sculpture with built-in speakers that plays anything from Beatles tracks to Presidential speeches. It’s one of three tree sculptures on campus by Terry Allen for the Stuart Collection.
6. The school’s annual Sun God music festival is named after the Sun God statue and has seen festival headliners such as Snoop Dogg, Diplo, Kendrick Lamar, Silversun Pickups, and Drake.
7. At exactly 10:00 pm during every finals week, Muir, one of the six colleges on campus, holds a “primal scream” for five minutes.
8. There’s an annual watermelon drop from the top of Urey Hall right before the summer starts just to see how far it will splat.
9. There’s direct beach access from the UCSD campus to Blacks Beach.
10. Due to the close proximity to many beaches in the area, UCSD is always recognized as a top surf school.
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