1927
The editors produce excerpts from the hundred-year-old freshman diary of Frederick West Holland, A.B. 1831, including the following: “Received a lesson in Gymnastics from Doctor Follen…on Wednesday he informed me—what I before knew—that my arms were weak.” Holland rushed to purchase a pair of dumbbells.
1932
Although the “business depression” prompts Harvard to allocate $40,000 for part-time jobs for 200 to 300 students, Herbert Hoover carries the College (1,211 votes) in the Crimson’s presidential poll. The Alumni Bulletin attributes Norman Thomas’s strong showing (484 to FDR’s 620) to “an extraordinary increase of independent thinking among the students.”
1957
Harvard Student Agencies is founded “to assist financially needy students…by…helping to organize student-conducted business enterprises…” Other students form a credit club.
1967
The Law School celebrates its sesquicentennial amid construction of two five-story buildings, one for faculty offices, one for classrooms and administration.
1982
Sharon Beckman ’80, partly supported by a $1,000 grant from Radcliffe College, becomes the first New England woman to swim the English Channel (covering almost 21 miles in nine hours and six minutes). Two weeks later she wins the 10-mile Boston Light swim in Boston Harbor.
1992
Harvard begins a large-scale renovation of the Yard dormitories, with construction expected to end mid year. As a result, first-years who would have been assigned to live in Weld or Massachusetts halls will instead be housed at 29 Garden Street, the former Hotel Continental.
2007
Drew Gilpin Faust is installed as Harvard’s twenty-eighth president—the first woman to lead the University.
