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Princeton’s Class of 1880 v. the Class of 1881
By Carter Mulroe ’20 The freshman vs. sophomore rivalry is one of Princeton’s oldest customs, dating at least as far back to 1760 when a code of unofficial laws stated that “every freshman sent on an errand shall go and do it quickly and faithfully and return.” This was what Princeton once called “horsing,” now…
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Kidnapping Handsome Dan XII
Princeton University’s intense football rivalry with Yale is a longstanding tradition. The tiger has been challenging the bulldog on the gridiron for well over a century. The mascots have done figurative battle with one another about as much as the students have, a fight commemorated in song, line drawings, and magazine covers. In 1979, a…
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Imaginary Princetonians
There have been many famous Princetonians, but there have also been a number of famous—or perhaps infamous—imaginary members of the Princeton community. Here we take a look at the nonexistent people who became legends on campus. Adelbert L’Hommedieu X (Bert Hormone), Class of 1917 The Class of 1917 invented an imaginary member and provided regular…
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Dear Mr. Mudd: Whose Cannon Is It?
Dear Mr. Mudd, My friend goes to Rutgers and keeps saying that the cannon in Cannon Green isn’t really Princeton’s. Whose cannon is it?
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Streaking and the Nude Olympics
In the 1960s and 1970s, streaking became a common prank for students to play on college campuses across America, reaching its zenith of popularity around the mid-1970s. Princeton was no exception. In fact, the school held onto naked running in public much longer than others; the last major such event at Princeton occurred in 1999. The most…
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“War Is Imminent”: The Veterans of Future Wars
Though Princeton University has had a reputation as a relatively wealthy institution, both the school itself and its students faced economic struggles alongside the rest of the nation during the Great Depression. One March evening in 1936, two Princeton roommates, Urban Joseph Peters Rushton ’36 and Lewis Jefferson Gorin, Jr., ’36, went to the movies. The…
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