September-October 2004 > John Harvard's Journal

Yesterday's News

Yesterday's News

From the pages of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and Harvard Magazine

1914 When an alumnus threatens to cut a $10-million bequest to Harvard out of his will unless outspokenly pro-German professor Hugo Münsterberg is fired, the University replies that it "cannot tolerate any suggestion that it would…accept money to abridge free speech, to remove a professor, or to accept his resignation."

 

1929 The editors warn: "Princeton will not allow its undergraduates to keep them. Stevens, head coach at Yale, has forbidden his football squad to ride in them during the season….If undergraduates are less in their rooms today, and consequently less accessible to the knowledge of one another and of books; if they are more in the company of girls, more addicted to dancing and visiting, thanks are largely due to the automobile."

 

1934 For the first time, the Crimson’s pamphlet of "confidential" advice on College courses is sent to first-year students before they arrive at Harvard.

 

1944 The Board of Overseers votes in favor of admitting women to Harvard Medical School, effective with the class entering in the fall of 1945.

 

1949 The football team flies 3,000 miles on United Airlines’ "Harvard Football Special" to play Stanford, loses 44-0, but wows California reporters (one column is headlined "Harvard Players Just Like People").

 

1954 Although a few Houses still hire maids to clean undergraduate rooms on weekdays, "gracious living" no longer means having your bed made; the College, which cut Saturday bed-making in 1951, has ended the service completely.

 

1959 Astronomy professor Donald H. Menzel and his freshman seminar students board a Northeast Airlines DC-6 to observe the first solar eclipse visible from New England in 300 years. Due to cloud cover, no one else in Boston sees anything.

 

1964 A survey of just-graduated seniors reveals 16 percent of those seeking full-time jobs have volunteered for the Peace Corps; only engineering, research, and technical jobs rank higher.

 

1969 Eighty grams of moon rocks scooped up by Neil Armstrong arrive at Harvard for analysis.

 

1974 Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz ’44, associate professor of the history of science, becomes the first woman master of a Harvard House when she is named head of Currier; her husband is co-master.