This month in Harvard history

March 1901 — On Phillips Field (bounded by Linnaean, Walker, and Shepard Sts.), Radcliffe begins building Bertram Hall, its first dormitory.

March 13, 1901 — The Harvard and Yale Glee, Banjo, and Mandolin clubs give a joint concert in Boston’s recently opened Symphony Hall (inaugural concert: Oct. 15, 1900).

March 3, 1939 — Spurred by a bet, Lothrop Withington Jr. ’42 slurps down a four-inch goldfish — and unwittingly starts the national goldfish-swallowing college craze.

March 1, 1942 — Harvard participates in a test air raid. As Civilian Defense personnel scurry about managing fictitious disasters like bomb craters and broken gas mains, a Lowell House senior blows soap bubbles into the sunlight.

March 9-21, 1942 — Twenty-four museum officials from the eastern half of the U.S. meet at the Fogg Museum for the first U.S. conference on “Emergency Protection of Works of Art.” Later that spring, the conference issues a pamphlet describing methods for rating the resistance of art materials to various hazards and suggesting protective measures for art in wartime. It is the first such compilation in the nation.