This month in Harvard history

February 15, 2001 1 min read

February 1949 As a gesture of sympathetic distress over a Jan. 26 fire that destroys 11 of 12 great murals in the Gondo (Golden Hall) of Horyu-ji Monastery at Nara, Japan, the Fogg Museum dedicates its Courtyard to a display of the only full-scale reproductions of the murals in the West.The originals had been housed in what the Fogg describes as “the oldest wooden building still standing in the world,” in constant use for Buddhist devotions since its foundation in 607.
Feb. 14, 1949 For the benefit of U.S. listeners, the British Broadcasting Corp. records the bells of Southwark Cathedral (John Harvard’s baptismal church) pealing to celebrate the opening of Conant House, a new apartment complex named for President James Bryant Conant and built in a formerly bombed-out sector near the Surrey end of London’s Vauxhall Bridge.
February 1950 A capacity Sanders Theatre crowd hears Eleanor Roosevelt discuss “The World Struggle for Human Rights,” as guest of Harvard’s United Nations Council. She urges the United States to ratify the U.N. Covenant of Human Rights, the legal underpinning to the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. From the Harvard Historical Calendar,
a database compiled by Marvin Hightower

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