Searching for a Destination Unknown: This Day in History v.24

Monday, November 28, 2011

This Day in History v.24

As part of my Mountbatten Programme, we took a day trip to Cambridge, England. I had been to Cambridge before with my other study abroad programme in 2006. So Cambridge was pretty old hat to me by then....ha, just kidding. Its still beautiful!

If you don't know much about Cambridge:

The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about 50 miles (80 km) north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the city.

Cambridge is well known as the home of the University of Cambridge. The university includes the renowned Cavendish Laboratory, King's College Chapel, and the Cambridge University Library. The Cambridge skyline is dominated by the last two buildings, along with the chimney of Addenbrooke's Hospital in the far south of the city and St John's College Chapel tower in the north.

For the actual university:

It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world, and the seventh-oldest globally. The university grew out of an association of scholars in the city of Cambridge that was formed in 1209, early records suggest, by scholars leaving Oxford after a dispute with townsfolk. The two "ancient universities" have many common features and are often jointly referred to as Oxbridge. In addition to cultural and practical associations as a historic part of British society, they have a long history of rivalry with each other.

Academically Cambridge ranks as one of the top universities in the world: first in the world in both the 2010 and 2011 QS World University Rankings, sixth in the world in the 2011 Times Higher Education World University Rankings, and fifth in the world (and first in Europe) in the 2011 Academic Ranking of World Universities. Cambridge regularly contends with Oxford for first place in UK league tables. In the most recently published ranking of UK universities, published by The Guardian newspaper, Cambridge was ranked first.

Graduates of the University have won a total of 61 Nobel Prizes, the most of any university in the world. In 2009, the marketing consultancy World Brand Lab rated Cambridge University as the 50th most influential brand in the world, and the 4th most influential university brand, behind only Harvard, MIT and Stanford University,while in 2011, The Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings ranked Cambridge as the 3rd most reputable university in the world, after Harvard and MIT.