Featured series 
Tag: Harvard History
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Nation & World
Field trip
For well over a century, Harvard and Yale have gone head-to-head at the end of November for the epic football match known simply as “The Game.” The contest is steeped in history and tradition, not just for the undergraduates who take to the field but also for the thousands of students and alumni who descend…
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Nation & World
This month in Harvard history
November 1942 — A Harvard Alumni Association advertisement for the well-known Harvard chair (black with gold trim and mahogany-colored arms; weight: 28 pounds; advertised price: $13.50) yields the following historical details: “Many Harvard men know well this famous ‘Freshman’ chair which can be traced far back into the history of the college . . .…
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Nation & World
Harvard’s roots: From dirt to display case
Just a year after being pulled from Harvard Yard’s soil, the bones, buttons, pottery shards, and type from the press that printed North America’s first Bible are cleaned up and on display in a new exhibit at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.
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Nation & World
This month in Harvard history
Nov. 14, 1899 — In Sanders Theatre, students, faculty, and administrators celebrate Maj. Henry Lee Higginson’s recent $150,000 gift for building the Harvard Union (now part of Barker Center for the Humanities).
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Nation & World
This month in Harvard history
Oct. 26, 1952 — Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson worships at the First Parish Church in Harvard Square and visits President James Bryant Conant afterwards in Massachusetts Hall.
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Nation & World
John U. Monro portrait is unveiled at PBH
The Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations has unveiled a ninth portrait in its Minority Portraiture Project. The latest honoree on canvas is John U. Monro, former dean of Harvard College. Monro’s portrait, painted by Stephen Coit ’71, was unveiled last week (Oct. 16) in Phillips Brooks House.
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Nation & World
This month in Harvard history
Oct. 15, 1945 — Pulitzer Prize-winning History Professor Paul Herman Buck, PhD ’35, becomes Harvard’s first Provost. Under the terms of the statutory amendment approved on this day by the Board of Overseers, the Provost is also, ex officio, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (the position Buck has held since 1942).
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Nation & World
This month in Harvard history
October 1784 — Harvard awards an honorary Doctor of Laws degree to Maj. Gen. Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette.
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Nation & World
This month in Harvard history
Oct. 14, 1763 — At the College library in Old Harvard Hall, Ephraim Briggs, Class of 1764, checks out “The Christian Warfare Against the Deuill World and Flesh” by John Downame, one of several hundred books that John Harvard had bequeathed to the College in 1638.
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Nation & World
This month in Harvard history
Oct. 17, 1640 — The Great and General Court grants Harvard the revenues of the Boston-Charlestown ferry, which plies the shortest route between Boston and Charlestown, Cambridge, Watertown, Medford, and the plantations of Middlesex County. (From Charlestown, travelers could head for Connecticut.)
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Nation & World
This month in Harvard history
September 1951 — Outside Memorial Hall on registration day, WHRB-Radio conducts a new programming feature: sidewalk interviews of freshmen, who explain why they have come to Harvard and what they think of it.
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Nation & World
This month in Harvard history
Sept. 1, 1922 — The Divinity School and the Andover Theological Seminary formally begin a closer affiliation under a new agreement approved in the spring.
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Nation & World
This month in Harvard history
Sept. 7, 1775 — The “New-England Chronicle or Essex Gazette” advertises that the Harvard Corporation and Overseers have chosen the Town of Concord as “a proper place for convening the Members of the said public Seminary of Learning” as the Revolution rages in Cambridge. Students are due in Concord by Oct. 4; probably less than…
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Nation & World
This month in Harvard history
June 1, 1774 — Several parliamentary punishments for the Boston Tea Party (December 1773) take effect, and British troops occupy Boston. “[C]onsidering the present dark aspect of our public Affairs,” the Harvard Corporation votes “that there be no public Commencement this Year.” Ceremonies do not resume until 1781.
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Nation & World
This month in Harvard history
June 1766 — Designed by colonial governor Sir Francis Bernard, the new Harvard Hall (still standing, with several later modifications) opens to replace its predecessor, destroyed by fire in 1764.
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Nation & World
A joyous peal of bells will ring throughout city in time-honored tradition
In celebration of the city of Cambridge and of the country’s oldest university — and of our earlier history when bells of varying tones summoned us from sleep to prayer, work, or study — this ancient yet new sound will fill Harvard Square and the surrounding area with music when a number of neighboring churches…
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Nation & World
A family’s recollections of commencements
In 1926, William Lawrence published his autobiography, “Memories of a Happy Life.” In 1967, his daughter, Marian Lawrence Peabody, then in her 90s, published “To Be Young Was Very Heaven.” These reminiscences show that although some things change, much stays the same, including certain rituals — and worries — around Commencement.
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Nation & World
This month in Harvard history
May 4, 1943 — At the Boston Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, the Boston firm of Perry, Shaw & Hepburn accepts the J. Harleston Parker Gold Medal for Houghton Library as the best architecture in New England for 1942. The City of Boston has given the award annually since 1923.
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Nation & World
This month in Harvard history
May 6, 1945 — At noon a novel contraption appears on high as a helicopter hovers over Harvard and lands on the riverbank in front of the Business School. A Coast Guard pilot and another officer alight from the craft to present a letter from the president of the Lexington Chamber of Commerce to a…
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Nation & World
This month in Harvard history
May 23, 1910 — The Harvard Corporation formally adopts crimson as Harvard’s official color, based on the tint of several silk scarves used by Harvard rowers in the 1858 Boston City Regatta and preserved in the University Archives.
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Nation & World
This month in Harvard history
May 9, 1643 — Lady Mowlson (Ann[e] Radcliffe) creates Harvard College’s first scholarship fund with a gift of £100. The “Harvard Annex,” founded in 1879 for women’s education, formally adopts her maiden name in 1894 to become known as Radcliffe College.
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Nation & World
This month in Harvard history
April 23, 1949 — For the eighth consecutive time, the Harvard Varsity Crew wins the Compton Cup Race on the Charles, outrowing teams from Princeton, MIT, and Rutgers. “All of the races were rowed under miserable conditions — wind, rough water, rain, and, in the varsity race, semi-darkness,” notes Athletics Director William J. Bingham ’16.
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Nation & World
Scholarly journal reveals precious gems; marks major milestone
One of the oldest scholarly theological journals in the country, the HTR celebrated its 100th anniversary last Friday (April 11) at the Harvard Divinity School (HDS) with a day of talks by several HDS scholars.
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Nation & World
This month in Harvard history
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.
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Nation & World
This month in Harvard history
April 25, 1674 — The Harvard Corporation orders that “freshmen of the Colledg shall not at any time be compelled by any Senior students to goe on errands or doe any servile work for them. And if any shall præsume to send them in times injoyned for study both the sender and the goer shall…
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Nation & World
A record pool leads to a record-low admissions rate
A record applicant pool of 27,462 has led to an admission rate of 7.1 percent, the lowest in the history of Harvard College. Traditional admission letters (and e-mails) were sent on March 31 to 1,948 students. Last year 2,058 applicants were admitted from a pool of 22,955.
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Nation & World
This month in Harvard history
March 13, 1944 — Between matinees at Boston’s RKO Theatre, composer-pianist Duke Ellington visits Paine Hall to give a 20-minute lecture on the blues (“Negro Music in America”). At the keyboard, Ellington illustrates his talk with “Sophisticated Lady,” “Subtle Slough,” “Dancers in Love,” “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” and “Mood Indigo.”