Campus & Community

This month in Harvard history

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November 1956 – The Soviet invasion of Hungary prompts Harvard students to form the Committee for Free Hungary. Similar groups also quickly form at Radcliffe, M.I.T., and Yale. The Harvard group sends out a resolution to student councils at 700 other colleges, urging them to support the use of the U.N. to restore Hungarian freedom and the use of U.S. military force as a last resort.

In the New Lecture Hall (Lowell Hall), the Student Council and the “Crimson” sponsor a meeting at which 800 hear Hungarian student rebel leader István László describe the role of student groups in the abortive revolution and call on Western nations to help liberate his homeland. The Student Council also sets up a special Combined Charities drive for Hungarian student relief.

Nov. 2, 1956 – At a dinner for some 200 guests at the Harvard Club of Boston, Winthrop House alumni present the University with a portrait of retiring House Master Ronald M. Ferry ’12, painted by Peter Pezzati. After the House dinner (spring 1957), the portrait is hung in the Winthrop Junior Common Room.

When Ferry retires in 1957 after 26 years at Winthrop, he is the last of the seven original House masters of the early 1930s.

Nov. 5, 1986 – Boston firefighters make a dramatic rescue at the Blodgett Pool after Water Polo Coach Christopher Hafferty gets an electrical shock while changing a light bulb from a catwalk. The rescue crew cuts a hole through the roof to retrieve him. Hafferty is released from the hospital on the following day.

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