Headlines from Harvard’s history

Headlines from Harvard’s history

Cartoon shows an audience viewing a 3D rendering of the Holland Tunnel, with a ship floating above it and a car emerging from one end

Illustration by Mark Steele

1930

The Harvard Engineering Society enjoys an illustrated address on the building and running of the first vehicular tunnel under the Hudson River from Manhattan to New Jersey: the two-year-old Holland Tunnel, named for its first chief engineer, Clifford M. Holland ’05, S.B. ’06.

1940

The editors encourage readers to help the University Archives by clipping news of Harvard men, particularly from papers outside the Boston and New York areas: “the more obscure the man and the paper, the more useful the clipping.”

1945

Among the 189 degrees awarded at the close of winter term is the first posthumous A.B. for a student killed in action during the current war: Pfc. William Scoville Moore Jr., who died on a battlefield in France on Armistice Day 1944.

1955

Signs of spring: the Cambridge police begin a crackdown on the latest undergraduate vehicular craze—secondhand hearses. Local citizens, reports a spokesman, find them “depressing.”

1970

Despite limited publicity, note the editors, some 150 people turned up for the first meeting of the Harvard University Ecology Coalition in February. The loose union of campus groups “worrying …about the decline of our environment” made plans for teach-ins and other activities scheduled for April 21 and 22.

1995

Inaugurating its new business section, The New York Times reports publishers’ fevered efforts to find a new college-level introductory economics textbook, noting that Harvard’s N. Gregory Mankiw has received a $1.4-million advance for his nearly finished volume.

2005

The Corporation announces the divestment of stock holdings in PetroChina (which sought drilling rights in Sudan during the brutal war in Darfur) on the recommendation of its Committee on Shareholder Responsibility. Seniors Matthew Mahan and Brandon Terry had launched a campaign urging classmates to put their senior gift into an escrow account unless divestment occurred.

Related topics

You might also like

A Harvard President’s VW Beetle That Kept On Giving

Derek Bok donated his car for a good cause.

The Year a Beat Poet Squatted at Harvard

In 1954, Gregory Corso moved into Eliot House. How he stayed there is a literary legend.

Cambridge Once Fought Harvard’s DNA Research. Now There’s a Play About It.

A theatrical reenactment explores a 1976 clash between science and democracy.

Most popular

Trump Administration Asks Appeals Court to Restore Harvard Funding Cuts

The government’s lawyers homed in on a jurisdictional argument for its authority to to terminate federal grants. 

Harvard Weathers a Year of Turmoil

The federal government has launched unprecedented actions against the University. Here’s a guide.

Trump Administration Will Investigate Alleged Visa Fraud at Harvard

The announcement comes two days after a federal appeals court heard arguments about an international students ban.

Explore More From Current Issue

Colorful word cloud with various emotions and ideas related to learning and reflection.

But it can’t replace human connection.

A busy classroom filled with students working at computers, colorful decor, and a bright atmosphere.

In 2004, a frenzy spread across Harvard Yard in days. Four billion users later, we are only just catching up.

Smiling woman stands beside a large skull in a display cabinet.

From competing in youth gymnastics to studying tetrapods, the Harvard curator has always chased her curiosity.