Headlines from Harvard history

Headlines from Harvard history

 1911

The College Library expects to be without money to buy new books for the next several months. 

 

 1926 

Construction under way includes Straus Hall, the Fogg Art Museum, McKinlock Hall (a freshman residence fronting the Charles), and the Business School complex, a gift of George F. Baker.

***

The first movie theater in Cambridge is about to open across from the Yard.

 

 1931

The masters of Adams, Kirkland, Leverett, Eliot, and Winthrop, the five new Houses, have joined the masters of Dunster and Lowell in apportioning a cross-section of current sophomores and juniors to each House for the coming year. The Bulletin reports that the proportion of public-school graduates is approximately the same in all the Houses, as is the distribution of students from different sections of the country. 

***

The Corporation declines a Boston lawyer’s bequest of $25,000 for a lectureship designed to prove that the “modern feminist movement…[impairs] the family as a basis of civilization and its advance….” 

 

 1936 

Harvard has established a laboratory at Glen Cove, Long Island, to study the origin, spread, and eradication of various plant diseases, especially Dutch elm disease. 

 

 1951 

A survey of Bulletin readers finds that only one in four subscribers owns a television set. 

***

 

President Conant urges passage of the Universal Military Service and Training Bill, partly because “the U.S. monopoly of the bomb has ended [and] Soviet allies have shown a readiness to gain their ends by force.”

 

 1961

President-elect John F. Kennedy ’40, LL.D. ’56, is mobbed by enthusiastic Harvard students as he arrives to attend a meeting of the Board of Overseers. 

 

 1966 

The Cambridge City Council approves Harvard’s request to construct, at its own expense, a six-lane underpass at the western end of Cambridge Street, north of the Yard. 

***

Linda McVeigh ’67 becomes the first female managing editor of the Crimson. 

 

 1986 

Backed by Alumni Against Apartheid, John Plotz ’69, Gay Seidman ’78 (the first woman president of the Crimson), and Kenneth Simmons ’54 collect enough signatures to run as petition candidates for the Board of Overseers, seeking to press Harvard to divest its holdings in companies doing business in South Africa. 

Related topics

You might also like

Wadsworth House Nears 300

The building is a microcosm of Harvard’s history—and the history of the United States.

Highlights from Harvard’s Past

The rise of Cambridge cyclists, a lettuce boycott, and Julia Child’s cookbooks

In Sermon, Garber Urges Harvard Community to ‘Defend and Protect’ Institutions

Harvard’s president uses traditional Memorial Church address to encourage divergent views.

Most popular

See Their Faces

Confronting “some of the most challenging images in the history of photography”

What Trump Means for John Roberts’s Legacy

Executive power is on the docket at the Supreme Court.

Martin Nowak Sanctioned for Jeffrey Epstein Involvement

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences announces disciplinary actions.

Explore More From Current Issue

Wolfram Schlenker wearing a suit sitting outdoors, smiling, with trees and a building in the background.

Harvard Economist Wolfram Schlenker Is Tackling Climate Change

How extreme heat affects our land—and our food supply 

Illustration of tiny doctors working inside a large nose against a turquoise background.

A Flu Vaccine That Actually Works

Next-gen vaccines delivered directly to the site of infection are far more effective than existing shots.