Yesterday’s News

From the pages of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and Harvard Magazine

1914

The outbreak of World War I traps more than 40 faculty members and close to 30 traveling fellows in Europe and sends at least two professors with French citizenship home to fight.

1939

President Conant prepares to move his office from University Hall, where Harvard’s presidents have worked since the building opened in 1815, to newly refurbished Massachusetts Hall.

1944

The summer heat has brought out the “whites” of the Navy V-12 students; skivvies, jumpers, and bell-bottom trousers hang out to dry under the willows of Eliot House.

1954

Hurricane Carol strikes with 120-mile-per-hour winds on August 31, toppling an oak and three of the oldest elms in the Yard, de-roofing the Newell Boathouse shed, and dropping a finial through the roof of Memorial Hall.

The two most popular summer-session courses are Professor Howard Mumford Jones’s “American Literature” and visiting author Frank O’Connor’s “The Nineteenth Century Novel.”

1959

Quincy House is rushed toward completion for September occupancy.

1969

Sixteen students have been required to leave Harvard because of their actions during the occupation of University Hall on April 9-10. Twenty others have been given a suspended requirement to withdraw while 102 more have been placed under warning.

1974

Newsweek reports that B is the average grade in American colleges. Harvard reports that the average grade for the College as a whole is a B+.

1994

Harvard Square landmark Out of Town News has been sold to an out-of-town owner, Hudson County News of New York.

Click here for the July-August 2014 issue table of contents

You might also like

Yesterday’s News

Seniors’ uncertain future c. 1940, Harvard Law Review news, and more

Alice Hamilton

Brief life of a public-health pioneer and reformer: 1869-1970

The Unruly Academy

President emeritus Neil L. Rudenstine on changes in the academy and society that made universities more contentious—and diminished support for humane learning

Most popular

Rebecca Henderson: Does Capitalism Need to be Reimagined?

How to reform capitalism to confront climate change and extreme inequality, with economist and McArthur University Professor Rebecca Henderson

The New Gender Gaps

What to do as men and boys fall behind

An Original Magna Carta, Hidden in Plain Sight

A rare original surfaces at Harvard at an “almost providential” moment. 

Explore More From Current Issue

Jung Yeondoo: Building Dreams at the Peabody Essex Museum

South Korean artist’s socially themed photographs at the Peabody Essex Museum

The Franklin Stove—A Historical Climate Change Adaptation

Historian Joyce E. Chaplin reinterprets an early era of invention, industrialization, and climate challenge

Children's Books from Ann Kim Ha

Ann Kim Ha’s poignant children’s books