This month in Harvard history

April 21 & May 12, 1939 – In the New Lecture Hall (now Lowell Hall), New York City Parks Commissioner Robert Moses delivers the 1938-39 Godkin Lectures: “Notes on Theory and Practice in Politics.”

April 1942 – The Class Secretaries of 1903 (Roger Ernst), 1904 (Edward A. Taft), and 1906 (William H. Nye) send an open letter to the “Harvard Alumni Bulletin” to sound the alarm about a fraudulent telegram recently received by five alumni in the three Classes. The telegrams are all “signed in the name of an intimate friend, either a classmate or a contemporary at Harvard, asking the recipient to telegraph cash to cover emergency expenses due to an accident to the sender while on a trip. In each case the telegram was a fraud perpetrated by an unknown third party, but one who obviously knew that all the individuals concerned were intimate friends.” (Quote: “Harvard Alumni Bulletin,” April 25, 1942)

April 1942 – The Harvard Auxiliary Fire Department organizes to help the Cambridge Fire Department in case of enemy air attack.

– From the Harvard Historical Calendar, a database compiled by Marvin Hightower