1919
Indignant alumni write the Bulletin protesting the unsportsmanlike conduct of Harvard spectators at the annual Harvard-Yale baseball game, including an “organized attempt to rattle the Yale pitcher by means of howling voices and beating drums.” Yale won, 10-8.
1924
Burke Boyce ’22, an instructor in English and former captain of the fencing team, is a member of the U.S. squad at the Paris Olympics, but does not medal.
1944
President James Bryant Conant offers Harvard’s Dumbarton Oaks estate in Washington, D.C., for a conference of delegates from Britain, Russia, and the United States to plan for the preservation of peace in the postwar world.
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 B+.
1979
Despite a June ruling by the Supreme Court that colleges can require “reasonable physical qualifications” of their applicants, Harvard will abide by its plan to make all buildings accessible to disabled persons by 1980 by installing ramps and elevators.
2004
Following the legalization of same-sex 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 by a Cambridge police officer; ensuing controversies eventually lead to a “beer summit” at the White House.