Yesterday’s News

From the pages of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and Harvard Magazine

Cartoon shows an audience viewing a 3D rendering of the Holland Tunnel, with a ship floating above it and a car emerging from one end
Illustration by Mark Steele

1930

The Harvard Engineering Society enjoys an illustrated address on the building and running of the first vehicular tunnel under the Hudson River from Manhattan to New Jersey: the two-year-old Holland Tunnel, named for its first chief engineer, Clifford M. Holland ’05, S.B. ’06.

1940

The editors encourage readers to help the University Archives by clipping news of Harvard men, particularly from papers outside the Boston and New York areas: “the more obscure the man and the paper, the more useful the clipping.”

1945

Among the 189 degrees awarded at the close of winter term is the first posthumous A.B. for a student killed in action during the current war: Pfc. William Scoville Moore Jr., who died on a battlefield in France on Armistice Day 1944.

1955

Signs of spring: the Cambridge police begin a crackdown on the latest undergraduate vehicular craze—secondhand hearses. Local citizens, reports a spokesman, find them “depressing.”

1970

Despite limited publicity, note the editors, some 150 people turned up for the first meeting of the Harvard University Ecology Coalition in February. The loose union of campus groups “worrying …about the decline of our environment” made plans for teach-ins and other activities scheduled for April 21 and 22.

1995

Inaugurating its new business section, The New York Times reports publishers’ fevered efforts to find a new college-level introductory economics textbook, noting that Harvard’s N. Gregory Mankiw has received a $1.4-million advance for his nearly finished volume.

2005

The Corporation announces the divestment of stock holdings in PetroChina (which sought drilling rights in Sudan during the brutal war in Darfur) on the recommendation of its Committee on Shareholder Responsibility. Seniors Matthew Mahan and Brandon Terry had launched a campaign urging classmates to put their senior gift into an escrow account unless divestment occurred.

You might also like

Harvard’s Year That Was

Amid academic honors, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences focuses on the campus protest and task forces on antisemitism, anti-Muslim bias, civil discourse, and institutional voice.

Governance Reform from Below?

In a tumultuous year, Harvard professors discuss a University faculty senate.

Finding Harvard’s Voice

Danielle Allen’s educational vision

Most popular

Commencement and Alumni Events

The 373rd Harvard College Commencement Exercises and all activities.

Governance Reform from Below?

In a tumultuous year, Harvard professors discuss a University faculty senate.

Harvard Medalists

Three people honored for extraordinary service to the University

More to explore

Harvard Cardinal Robert W. McElroy on the Changing Catholic Church

Cardinal Robert W. McElroy on how the Catholic Church has moved towards inclusivity.

AI as Cancer Oracle?

How is artificial intelligence (AI) being used for cancer detection and prevention?

The Harvard Graduate and Early Vegetarian Benjamin Smith Lyman

Brief life of the vegetarian trailblazer, 1835-1920