This month in Harvard history

April 17, 1928 – In Emerson Hall, Pierre Roland-Marcel, Director of the National Library of France (Bibliothèque Nationale), gives an illustrated public talk in French on the library he runs. The event is sponsored by the University Library and the Romance Languages & Literatures Department.

April 16, 1943 – Beneath cold, snow-spitting skies, the Harvard baseball team plays an exhibition game with the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. The Sox win, 21-0.

April 14, 1944 – In honor of the 50th anniversary of the American movie industry, Warner Brothers presents the Harvard Film Service with a reprint of a 150-foot film of Mark Twain made in 1907 by Thomas Edison with a hand-cranked camera. The presentation occurs 50 years to the day after the first motion picture was shown for an admission charge on the second floor of a shoe shop near the current Macy’s department store in New York City. The footage constitutes the only motion picture ever made of Twain.

April 20, 1968 – New York Mayor John V. Lindsay visits Harvard as the Republican Club’s Man of the Year.

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