<p>The</a> Johns Hopkins University - We've changed our name to John Hopkins</p>
<p><a href="Baltimore,%20April%201,%202010">QUOTE</a> The Johns Hopkins University announced today that it is bowing to the inevitable and officially changing its name to "John Hopkins."</p>
<p>"We give up," university President Ronald J. Daniel said. "We're fighting a losing battle here. And we strongly suspect the extra 's' was a typo in the first place."</p>
<p>Since its establishment in 1876 as America's first research university, Daniel said, anyone and everyone has stumbled over "Johns Hopkins," omitting the seemingly superfluous "s" altogether or dropping it randomly into the name anywhere but where it belonged.</p>
<p>"It's not just 'John Hopkins,'" Daniel said. "We've heard 'John Hopskins.' We've heard 'John Shopskins.' One flustered high school kid in an admissions interview the other day actually called us 'Bob Hoskins.'"</p>
<p>"We've had an entire team of psychiatrists doing nothing but treating our undergraduates for advanced identity crisis," Daniel said. "It just had to stop."</p>
<p>Squads of staff members fanned out early today over the university's campuses throughout the Baltimore-Washington area; in Bologna, Italy; and in Nanjing, China. They employed screwdrivers, chisels, spackle, spray paint - whatever it took to remove the annoying surplus sibilant from residence halls, lab buildings, buses and trucks.</p>
<p>"Thank heavens," a history of art/flute double major said as she joined a grounds crew trying to pry a particularly recalcitrant consonant from the East Gate at the Homewood campus. "It's bad enough trying to convince everyone that we're not all pre-meds. But correcting people's pronunciation 41 times a day? It's just exhausting."</p>
<p>The confusion began in 1873 when wealthy Maryland merchant Johns Hopkins died and left a then-record $7 million bequest to create the university and hospital that have - until now - borne his name. The long-told legend has been that the curmudgeonly Quaker - and wouldn't you get a little surly if people were calling you "Johns?" - was given his great-grandmother's maiden name as his first name.</p>
<p>Recently unearthed evidence suggests, however, that one of the most epic misspellings in the history of birth certificates really resulted from nothing more than a slip of the quill by a myopic, and perhaps slightly tipsy, hospital registrar.</p>
<p>"This was," Daniel noted, "long before The Johns Hopkins Hospital. Darn. I mean, John Hopkins Hospital."</p>
<p>It is unclear exactly how long it will take for the university to change all its signage, but campus bookstores are distributing huge vats of Wite-Out™ to allow faculty members to immediately amend their business cards and stationery.</p>
<p>The bulk of the switchover should be complete within 41 days, university spokesman Dennis O'Hea said. "This is April 1st," he said. "You do the math."
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>Congratulations to all those accepted... and for those still waiting, hopefully this brightened your evening! It gets me every year =)</p>