An Unofficial (And, For That Matter, Not Altogether Pertinent) History of Dartmouth

Below, some events that have little reason to make it to the national history books.

1768

Samson Occom and Nathaniel Whitaker raise 11,000 pounds for Moor's Charity School. It is the most successful fundraising venture in Britain by American educators before the Revolution.

1770

Eleazar Wheelock announces that he is moving his school to Hanover, New Hampshire. Speculators in the other New Hampshire towns on Wheelock's short list are furious.

1774

New Hampshire Governor John Wentworth writes to President Eleazar Wheelock that Dartmouth's "putrefied, stinking" food is causing unrest among his constituents. One irate parent threatens a lawsuit.

1805

The weekly stagecoach from Hanover to Boston takes a week to complete the round trip.

1811

Three students a small cannon to blow down a wall in Dartmouth Hall. The three are expelled; one of them, a brother of future President Franklin Pierce, becomes an artillery officer in the army.

1817

President James Monroe comes to Hanover. The Supreme Court has yet to decide the Dartmouth College Case, so the tactful Monroe pays his respects to the presidents both of Dartmouth College and Dartmouth University.

1821

Students found the Literary Adelphi for the "cultivation of extemporaneous speaking." The society later becomes Alpha Delta fraternity and eventually serves as inspiration for the movie "Animal House."

1872

In an effort to annoy stodgy faculty, the senior class invites a radical poet named Walt Whitman to speak at Commencement.

1892

Robert frost, class of 1896, cuts the hair off another freshman. The victim quits the College in apparent embarrassment.

1895

Shortly after John P. Gifford accepts honors as valedictorian at the Medical School's commencement, he and fellow student Jack McDonnell are arrested and charged with robbing the grave of a suicide victim in Norwich. Both plead guilty and are fined $2,000 and $1,500.

1915

To get the cheapest possible train fare for a football trip to Amherst, some 600 Dartmouth students travel as livestock.

1925

A "Gully" Lenson, who is a stranger to everyone in his class, appears in the senior section of the Aegis. His "widow" later shows up at the 25th Reunion. In 1960, the class newsletter reveals Lenson as a hoax. But in a 1972 issue of Yankee magazine.Ken Andler '26 claims he has met Gully, who was reportedly upset at having his existence denied. No such man can be found in alumni records today.

1932

On an expedition to Estonia, Biology Professor William Patten discovers a new fish, which he names Dartmuthia patten.

1934

"They were a stench in the nostrils of every good taste," writes an irate alumnus to the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine the of new Orozco Murals in Baker.

1941

Babe Ruth Declares The Hanover Country Club to be "too hilly."

1942

Stuents break into Baker's bell tower and play a rendition of "How Dry I Am." Thinking the ringing signifies the end of the war, townspeople flood the police and radio stations with telephone inquiries.

1950

For Winter Carnival, the brothers of Sigma Nu sculpt two tons of frozen orange juice trucked in from Florida.

1952

Dean L.K.Neidlinger proposes alcohol regulations. Two weeks later, 2,000 students march in a torchlight protest, accompanied bycymbals and firecrackers. The parade ends after midnight at Neidlinger's house. When the dean emerges, he is met with shouts of "We want a beer!" The College coincidentally announces the dean's resignation the following day.

1967

Judy garland arrives with biographer Tom Green '60.She plays pool with the brothers in Alpha Theta and listens to them sing Dartmouth songs around the piano.

1963

Freshmen lose the annual tug of war, a battle that determines whether they have to keep wearing their caps. Disgruntled over foul play by upperclassmen, a group of '67s burn their demeaning hats in a heap on Webster Avenue and then riot in Thayer.

1973

Freshmen are no longer required to wear beanies or caps.

1987

Citing The "Unstable Environment" of Parkhurst Hall, officials move the original oil portrait of Eleazar Wheelock to the Hood

Museum and substitute for it a giant Polaroid photo of the painting.

1988

The Dartmouth Alumni Magazine submits that the College's first mascot was a stuffed zebra.

Samson Occam

Students chose Whitman as a radical.

Barber Frost

Too hilly, said the Babe.

Sculpture concentrate

Judy in AD

The preceding history was excerpted from the Alumni Magazine department, "Dartmouth Undying," which appears on," the back page of each issue,

The freshmen lost the war but won the battle

Parkhurst was too "unstable" for Dr.Wheelock.