Yesterday’s News

From the pages of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and Harvard Magazine

Unhappy bell-ringer replaced by an automated bell switch sits high in the steeple looking out over part of the Harvard campus below

Illustration by Mark Steele

1914

Lionel de Jersey Harvard ’15, the only member of the founder’s family ever to attend the College, speaks at exercises held at the Harvard statue on November 25 commemorating the 310th anniversary of his ancestor’s birth.

1924

In the largest presidential straw vote taken at Harvard to date, faculty and students give Calvin Coolidge a landslide victory over John Davis (Democrat) and Robert La Follette (Progressive).

1934

The “dial method of signaling” for telephones has arrived, and the old exchanges University and Porter have been replaced by Kirkland, Trowbridge, and Eliot. Unfortunately, note the editors, that requires dialing “Eli” to speak with Harvard parties on the Eliot exchange.

1944

Enrollment figures for the term beginning November 1 are roughly 1,800 for civilians and about 5,500 for military men.

1954

After 311 years of being rung by hand, the principal bell in Memorial Church that calls students to prayers and class will soon be operated electronically. The editors report that there will be no detectable difference for listeners.

1969

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences approves a spring-term experiment in coeducational living in which 150 volunteers from Adams, Winthrop, and Lowell will move north to the Quad, and an equal number of Radcliffe students will take their places in the Houses.

1974

FBI agents recover almost half the ancient Greek and Roman coins stolen from the Fogg Art Museum the previous year. The approximately 3,100 coins are found buried in a bowling-ball bag in a rural wooded area in Lincoln, Rhode Island. In a second find, 843 coins are discovered in a Montreal bank’s safe-deposit vault.

1999

WHRB has begun broadcasting over the Internet, which will make its forthcoming January reading- and exam-period Orgy® offerings available to listeners far from Cambridge.

2009

The editors report that 17 of Harvard’s 114 varsity football players are wearing new helmets intended to help insulate their brains from sudden movements during impact that can result in concussions.

Click here for the November-December 2019 issue table of contents

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