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This Week in Princeton History for April 18-24
In this week’s installment of our ongoing series bringing you the history of Princeton University and its faculty, students, and alumni, the campus mourns Abraham Lincoln, Fidel Castro pays a visit, and more. April 19, 1865—Someone etches “We Mourn Our Loss” into a window on the third floor of Nassau Hall in reference to the assassination…
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Dear Mr. Mudd: Who Was Princeton’s First Jewish Student?
Q. Dear Mr. Mudd, Who was the first Jewish student at Princeton? A. An exhibit at the Historical Society of Princeton speculated that Albert Mordecai of the Class of 1863 was “very likely the first” Jewish student at the College of New Jersey (now named Princeton University). Although Mordecai might well have been the first Jewish student…
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This Week in Princeton History for April 11-17
In this week’s installment of our ongoing series bringing you the history of Princeton University and its faculty, students, and alumni, Swedish royalty visit campus, mysterious postcards from Boston arrive, and more. April 11, 1935—Compulsory chapel attendance is abolished for juniors and seniors; it will be abolished for sophomores in 1960 and freshmen in 1964.
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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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This Week in Princeton History for April 4-10
In this week’s installment of our ongoing series bringing you the history of Princeton University and its faculty, students, and alumni, Betty Friedan is on campus, the school chooses an official shade of orange, and more. April 5, 1895—In a letter to the editor of the Daily Princetonian, the editorial board of the Nassau Lit…
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Princeton University during the Korean War
By Spencer Shen ’16 Beginning in the summer of 1950, reserve officers and those enrolled in the Selective Service System were called up for service in the Korean War, including personnel at Princeton. J. Douglas Brown, then Dean of the Faculty, initially requested information to better cooperate with the government, but later opposed the universal…
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This Week in Princeton History for March 28-April 3
In this week’s installment of our ongoing series bringing you the history of Princeton University and its faculty, students, and alumni, the community gets the first public transit option for leaving town, George H. W. Bush visits the campus, and more. March 30, 1868—John C. and Sarah H. Green endow building and library funds; later gifts…
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An Update on Archiving Student Activism at Princeton (ASAP)
The following is a guest post by Chase Hommeyer ’19, a first-year undergraduate student at Princeton working at the Mudd Manuscript Library this semester. Hi everyone! My name’s Chase, I’m an undergraduate here at Princeton, and I’ll be working at the Mudd Manuscript Library in the Princeton University Archives this semester on the initiative Archiving…
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This Week in Princeton History for March 21-27
In this week’s installment of our ongoing series bringing you the history of Princeton University and its faculty, students, and alumni, a fugitive steals a professor’s car to make his getaway, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first novel makes a big splash, and more. March 22, 1980—About 45 Princeton students join 30,000 protesters in Washington, D.C. at…
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The Temples of Cloacina
Today, behind Nassau Hall just beyond Cannon Green, visitors to the Princeton University campus will see stairs between two large tiger sculptures installed in 1969. This sharp incline had different scenery prior to the twentieth century, however. Students sometimes called it “South Campus,” “The Temples of Cloacina,” or “Cloaca Maxima.” Less euphemistically or poetically, it served…
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