Yesterday's News

1916 Harvard's baseball team defeats the Boston Red Sox in an exhibition game 1-0...

1916 Harvard’s baseball team defeats the Boston Red Sox in an exhibition game, 1-0. “The professionals,” the Bulletin’s editors note, “did not over-exert themselves at the bat or on the bases.”

1921 For the first time in more than 20 years, the presidential administration (Warren G. Harding’s) contains no alumni of Harvard, Princeton, or Yale.

1936 The Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies begins publication through the Harvard-Yenching Institute.

The program for a “Lowell House Party” during spring break invites the parents of House residents to sleep in the House, eat in the dining hall, listen to special lectures by faculty members, and “in general conform as far as possible to the habits of the undergraduates.”

1941 “In the dead of night,” on the Larz Anderson Bridge, 25 “devotees of voodoo,” mostly sophomores in Lowell House, set fire to an e∞gy of Adolf Hitler.

1946 The Service News, the wartime replacement for the Crimson, ceases publication, and Harvard’s “only breakfast-table daily” resumes its role as the campus’s main newspaper.

1956 Freshmen petition for an extension of parietal rules, complaining that upperclassmen are allowed to entertain women in their dorm rooms until 11 p.m., while the freshman deadline is 8. The request is refused on the grounds that “freshmen entertain more secondary-school girls than do upperclassmen.”

1966 To protest new Radcliffe policies that require most women to live on campus, a junior runs a prank classified in the Crimson: “One-year marriage? seems to be the only way for a Cliffie to get out of the dorm.” Many men, taking her seriously, flood the Crimson with letters.

1971 On March 3, after a rally for International Women’s Day on the Boston Common, about 150 militant women seize a Harvard building at 888 Memorial Drive, proposing to hold it as a “women’s center” until the site is converted to low-income housing. Supportive petitions circulated in College dining halls draw 830 signatures. On March 15, the last 60 occupiers leave amid rumors of an imminent police bust.

1981 A six-alarm fire allegedly set by a Boston man destroys the press box in Harvard Stadium. Estimates for constructing a new, scaled-down press box run to $400,000. In 1903, the entire stadium cost $325,000 to build.

1986 White House aides inform Harvard that President Ronald Reagan’s September schedule cannot acccommodate a visit to Cambridge to speak at a ceremonial convocation during the University’s 350th celebration.

Most popular

Harvard Medical School Renames Diversity Office, Revamps Recruitment Program

The latest in a broader rollback of DEI at the University

Nieman Fellow Eliza Griswold Wins Pulitzer Prize

Her book Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America is the choice in general nonfiction.  

12,000 Harvard Alumni File Amicus Brief in Funding Freeze Lawsuit

Alumni from every Harvard school and class since 1950 rally behind the University 

Explore More From Current Issue

Shepherdess Mary Berle's Massachussetts Mountain Farm

A former educator takes on one last big project: sheep farming

The Trump Administration's Impact on Higher Education

Unprecedented federal actions against research funding, diversity, speech, and more