Headlines from Harvard’s history

Headlines from Harvard’s history

Illustration by Mark Steele

1924

In a likely first for Harvard, mother and son Martha Brown Fincke, M.Ed. ’24, and C. Louis Fincke ’24 receive degrees at the same Commencement.

1939

Modern pedagogy is well rep resented in the Summer School: J.R. Brewster ’25, of the Harvard Film Service, offers for the first time a course in the development of visual education, with special emphasis on audiovisual aids.

1944

After two years on campus training 6,500 “sky pilots” of all faiths for active service with U.S. troops, the Army Chaplain School departs for Fort Devens.

1949

Decanal records reveal that the 50-member football team set a scholastic record during the previous spring semester: placing almost half its men on the Dean’s List. Most of the rest showed up in the C category. A total of 205 courses revealed only one E and nine Ds.

1954

A 16-year-old camp counselor asks President Pusey’s office for help in winning his camp’s College Competition. Rival cabins had received stickers and photographs from Duke and Notre Dame, and stickers and a yearbook from Georgia Tech. Harvard’s stickers, pennants, a copy of The Harvard Book, “miscellaneous Harvard novels and stories,” copies of the Bulletin and the Crimson, and photographs help Cabin H win first prize.

1974

More than 2,000 people, many of them students, gather in Harvard Square on the evening of August 8 to mark Richard Nixon’s announcement that he will resign the next day.

2004

Following the legalization of gay marriage in Massachusetts, professor of comparative religion and Indian studies Diana Eck and University chaplain Dorothy Austin, the heads of Lowell House, take their vows in Memorial Church on July 4.

2009

As the result of “an unfortunate set of circumstances” (as described in an official statement), Fletcher University Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. is arrested at his home by a Cambridge police officer; ensuing controversies eventually lead to a “beer summit” at the White House.

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