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This Week in Princeton History for August 22-28


In this week’s installment of our ongoing series bringing you the history of Princeton University and its faculty, students, and alumni, a 1906 postcard gives a weather update, a Canadian library honors a Princeton president, and more.

August 23, 1906—Someone writes and sends a postcard to let a friend know that “The day is hot and the locusts are singing” at Princeton.

Blair_Hall_Postcard_AC045_Box_3
Historical Postcard Collection (AC045), Box 3.

August 24, 1933—The Chester (Nova Scotia) Library dedicates a memorial collection to former Princeton University President John Grier Hibben and his wife. (View a 2010 photo of this collection at the Zoé Vallé Memoral Library here.)

August 27, 1818—A father writes to his sons at the College of New Jersey (Princeton) joking that the lack of epidemics in Princeton must mean the local doctors will starve. “However, as no spot on the globe exists where epidemics of one kind or another do not prevail at one time or another, so Princeton and its vicinity may sometime hence be able to feed a doctor or two, and the old adage be confirmed that ‘every dog has his day’.”

August 28, 1963— Dennis Livingston *67 attends the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. “It is not always very pleasant to take part in history,” he will later write, but “There is great and simple power in the knowledge that you do not stand alone.”

March_on_Washington_Flyer_MC001_Box_1120_Folder_11
Flyer advertising the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963. American Civil Liberties Union Records (MC001), Box 1120, Folder 11.

For last week’s installment in this series, click here.

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