1946-1950: Harvard and Beyond

1946:

September
4,000 veterans file into Memorial Hall for registration.

October
Harvardevens Village opens, giving 60 veterans' families places to live.

December
Faculty backs single A.B. degree; waives former Latin requirement.

Harvard Observatory turns 100.

1947:

January
Faculty drops War Science concentration.

February
University reports total enrollment at 4,900.

Cambridge City Council announces plan to use parking meters to regulate local parking.

March
University announces President James B. Conant '14 will take a class.

April
Each House receives $6000 for improvements.

May
College assigns 679 men to Houses after considering 1,360 applicants.

Roscoe Pound ends 35-year tenure with the law school to assist efforts to rebuild China.

June
2,185 receive degrees.

President Conant supports Universal Military Training program.

August
Construction begins on Lamont Library.

September
President Conant teaches Natural Sciences course.

October
The womens' cheering section approved.

December
World mourns loss of philosopher Alfred North Whitehead.

1948:

January
The Chicago Tribune brands Harvard a "hotbed of Communism."

February
Crimson Key Society formed.

May
Mens crew wins Eastern Sprints over Yale, Columbia, Princeton, BU, MIT, Rutgers, Penn, Navy and Syracuse.

June
5,000 alumni and seniors observe Class Day rites.

September
4,205 register for classes.

October
$60,000 plaque argued over as World War II memorial.

November
Republican presidential candidate Dewey ahead in University and national polls, but underdog Truman wins. Yale beats Harvard, 20 to 7.

December
College poll shows slight majority of undergraduates are opposed to blanket draft exemption for students.

1949:

January
Lamont Library opens, 7,200 visit and browse on the first day.

February
Provost Paul H. Buck announces $75 jump in tuition for 1949-50 year--to more than $500 a year.

Harvard's Dick Button retains world ice skating championship title.

"Spring rioting by mob marks Lampoon's succession from the civilized world."

March
During Winthrop House talk, Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Sherwood admits he once flunked English A

April
John Munro picked as assistant to Provost Buck.

Fall
Building arises from what was Jarvis Court--a graduate school for Harvard Law School and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS). Architecture by Professor Walter Gropius.

November
Harvard Square has first full scale riot in at least 10 years. Princetonians had too much to drink at Cronin's, and started a riot, ostensibly over the football game. Broken up at 2 a.m. by police--15 arrested, none injured, two false fire alarms, an hour-long traffic jam and five flat tires.

1950: General

Corcorans Department Store moves onto Boylston Street, Young Lee's Chinese restaurant moved to Church Street, Fred Olsson's art dealer leaves.

Spire of the First Unitarian Church wore scaffolding while workers tried to fix it.

Sever Hall and Wadsworth House underwent renovations. The Sever benches were sold to alumni, replaced by "blond, polished desks in the Lamont tradition." The inside walls of Wadsworth house were renovated and the building became home to the Alumni Bulletin.

The Brattle Theatre (in its second year) entertained with Troilus and Cressida, Henry IV, Shadow and Substance, The Sea Gulls, King Lear and others.

March
Harvard chose Lloyd Johnson as the new football coach.

Petition was circulated through the Harvard community asking people to remove the "stool pigeon" clause that said Navy ROTC students had to report other students "associating or acting with or attending informal or social functions of an attached list of 'subversive' organizations." The petition was sponsored by The Crimson, the Young Republicans, the American Veterans Committee, the National Lawyers Guild, the Teachers Union and was sent to the administration. Harvard loyalty oath declared invalid--wording was wrong.

May
Every House except Kirkland has its own television.

"The Crimson worried about its Radcliffe correspondents, the administration about Communist infiltration and the Student Council about the generally unformed and uncodified state of rules for extracurricular activities."

Administration declares Radcliffe has to stay out of Harvard's extracurricular life.

Real world:

1946:

1946:

The Paris Peace Conference. Twenty-one nations gather in Paris to resolve issues from World War II. United States tests two atom bombs at the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.

Twenty-one nations went to Paris to attend a peace conference with the intention of easing approaching Cold War tensions. But with little cooperative spirit between the powers, the conference was futile.

Jukeboxes go into mass production.

Pennsylvania's ENIAC praises the modern electronic computer.

Automobile radio telephones connect to telephone network.

French engineers build a photo typesetting machine.

1947:

General George C. Marshall is sworn in as Secretary of State.

Truman calls for $40 million of aid for Greece and Turkey before a join session of Congress.

Hungarian engineer in England invents holography.

The transistor is invented (will replace vacuum tubes).

The zoom lens covers World Series baseball championship for television.

1949:

The Soviet Union successfully detonates an atomic bomb.

Mao Tse-Tung and Communist forces take control of China, ousting the Nationalist government.

Network television begins in U.S.

1950:

Alger Hiss convicted of perjuring himself in earlier trials on charges of spying for the Soviet Union.

Joseph McCarthy declares that he has a list of 205 "card-carrying communists" working for the U.S. government.

North Korea invades South Korea, with Soviet support, marking the beginning of the Korean War.

Color television transmission invented.

Miscellaneous:

1947:

1947:

President Conant backs Lilienthal for Atomic Chief.

Student Council probe discloses $350 Red Book deficit.

1947:

January morning
$50,000 stolen from the Coop under the cover of smoke bombs.

Fall
HAA to bar women from Saturday cheering section.

Monitors ordered to "spread girls around" in classrooms.

HAA to seat women in 1948 cheering section.

1949-1950:

September
University enrollment drops by almost 700 to under 5000, and fell by another 200 in the spring term. Freshman class in 1950 was smaller by hundreds than the GI bill class.

October
Harvard Law School decides to accept women students beginning in the fall of 1950.

MGM begins shooting the crime flick "Mystery Street" in the yard.

November
Yale beats Harvard 29-6.

Freshman pilot dies in a New Hampshire crash.

Cambridge holds elections for city government and college students solicited the Harvard and Harvard Square vote. After the elections, Cambridge Civic Association (CCA) had a weak hold on Cambridge city government.

December
Student council begins a study of girls' role in college organizations.

February
Eleanor Roosevelt visits Harvard and urges ratification of the U.N. hunger rights covenant.

Work begins on the Memorial Church memorial to those who died in World War II.

April
Professor of History and Literature F.O. Matthiessen commits suicide by jumping out a hotel window.

June
The Fogg Art Museum acquired a new art collection that included paintings by Degas, Cezanne, Renoir and Picasso.