By April C. Armstrong *14
In this week’s installment of our recurring series, the drinking age goes up, Revolutionary War reenacters take their craft seriously, and more.
December 30, 1950—Newscaster Lowell Thomas, Graduate Class of 1916, tells alumni about his harrowing experience gathering rock specimens on behalf of Princeton geologists in Tibet. Thrown from a horse in a mountain pass, Thomas broke his hip in eight places. The rock specimens in his pocket contributed to his injuries but unfortunately did not survive his trip.
January 1, 1862—A writer in the Continental Monthly describes a typical day in Princeton:
From the gates of the Campus, every afternoon at the hour of five, or after prayers, the whole troop of students, to the number of three hundred, issue, for the purpose of taking their evening walk. Down the street they march, by twos and threes, chatting, laughing, telling college stories, or rehearsing the gossip of the day, into the extreme lower end of the long street, a locality known as Orthodox Corner, where they turn and march back in the same order. As they proceed, their ranks are gradually swelled by a couple of hundreds of “Seminary” students (distinguishable by their more mature appearance, their heavier beards, and their “stove-pipe hats”), and their walk enlivened by the sight of numerous ladies, who, by a remarkable coincidence, have also chosen the hour between five and six as the most fashionable for promenading, the dames of course usually going up the street as the students are going down, and down as the students are going up, in order to afford them opportunities to exercise their graces in bowing to those whom they know, and staring at those whom they do not. For one brief hour, the quiet street presents the appearance of a crowded city, the pedestrians jostling each other as they pass and repass; but soon as the hour of six arrives, all is still again, for youths and maidens are alike engaged in discussing that meal for which their long walk has served as a whet.
January 2, 1980—New Jersey governor Brendan T. Byrne ’49 signs a bill raising the drinking age from 18 to 19. It is anticipated that this will have a heavy impact on business for the Pub, the campus bar for undergraduates. Byrne and others explain that the intent is to solve a significant drinking problem in New Jersey high schools.
January 3, 1877—Offended by his interference in the event, reenactors celebrating the centennial anniversary of the Battle of Princeton seize a photographer and hold him prisoner until they finish.
Did you read the previous installment in this series?
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