1919

King Albert of Belgium, hero of World War I, receives an honorary degree and becomes the first reigning monarch to set foot in Harvard precincts. 

1929

Alumni initiative and money ($60,000 for a three-year trial run) has created the independent Harvard Alumni Placement Service, open for business with the new academic year and ready to assist graduates “toward a satisfactory vocational adjustment.” 

1949

Professor Howard Aiken draws 800 mathematicians, engineers, physicists, social scientists, industrialists, and laymen to a Large-Scale Digital Calculating Machinery Symposium that coincides with the unveiling of Mark III. Although the 10-ton Bakelite and steel structure will be shipped to the navy after final tests, the gathering discusses how such machines could be used to work on problems in the social sciences, physiology, psychology, and other areas.  

1954

The Athletic Association, tired of spending $75 for new wooden goalposts after every home game, installs a brand-new steel set at the stadium. 

1959

A “listening laboratory” of tape recordings opens at the Modern Language Center in newly renovated Boylston Hall. 

1969

On October 15, thousands of people around the country participate in Vietnam Moratorium Day, a symbolic “strike for peace” devised by Jerome Grossman ’38.  

1974

A proposal to extend the subway line farther north triggers discussion on overall planning for Harvard Square. Among the top questions: Should the Kennedy Library be built in Cambridge? And what are Harvard’s long-range plans, and how will they affect the city? 

1984

In two open letters to the Harvard community, President Derek Bok states that impaired freedom of speech hinders the University’s mission, while divestiture of stock holdings in firms doing business in apartheid South Africa threatens that mission—not through financial loss, but through the loss of freedom of action.

1989

The Nieman Foundation welcomes the first Soviet journalist appointed in its 50-year history, Vladimir Voina, chief of the economics, politics, and ideology department of the Moscow-based magazine USA. The College registers Uerkesh Daolet (Wuer Kaixi), a leader of the recent Tiananmen Square student protests, as a visiting undergraduate.