This month in Harvard history

April 9, 1968 – Assassinated civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. is buried in Atlanta. At Harvard, Lowell Lecture Hall is the scene of a daylong program of speeches and study groups on urban and racial issues.

April 1, 1971 – At the Palmer Dixon Tennis Courts, the Harvard Varsity Club holds a testimonial dinner for retiring Football Coach John Yovicsin.

April 29, 1975 – Hoisted by a 240-foot crane, a three-ton air-conditioning coil is installed through the roof of (then towerless) Memorial Hall to cool Sanders Theatre. Other Sanders improvements will include the installation of acoustical glass and a new heating system. Cost: roughly $450,000.

April 12, 1976 – The old Soldiers Field gatehouse is demolished to help make way for a new $17.5 million athletic complex.

April 1987 – “Victoria” and “Bessie” – the famous life-size rhinoceros statues sculpted by Katharine Lane (Weems) to guard the entrance to the Biological Laboratories – get a 50th-birthday facelift from Harvard conservators that includes corrosion removal (with blasts of powdered walnut shells) and a final coating to ward off acid rain.

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