from Hacker News

The day MIT won the Harvard-Yale game

by dskhatri on 11/20/18, 3:59 AM with 40 comments

• by vecter on 11/20/18, 10:56 PM

  > But not before a call came from the dean at MIT. The fraternity was already on probation, so getting caught could have been problematic.

  > "I believe it was Bruce Sohn, who was the president [of the fraternity] at the time, who had the fateful call from the dean, who said, 'Did you guys do this?'" said Webster, who is in the process of attempting to turn the story into a feature-length movie. "And he had to think for a second. 'If I say yes, this could be the thing that has the straw on the camel's back and kicks us off campus forever. And if I say no, there might even be more trouble if they found out we did.' So he goes, 'Yes sir, we did.'

  > "And then there's a pause on the phone, and then the dean goes, 'OK, you're off probation.'"

  That's hilarious. Props to the dean for having a sense of humor.

• by ChuckMcM on 11/20/18, 11:53 PM

  I love that story, and the one where during the summer MIT students would wear a black and white striped shirt, blow a whistle and then throw bird seed out on the field. Eventually training the local pigeon population to respond to this, the early scrimmages were apparently mobbed by pigeons.

• by christophilus on 11/21/18, 12:44 AM

  > MIT president Paul Gray said: "There is absolutely no truth to the rumor that I had anything to do with the planning or promoting of [the hack], but I wish there were."

  That’s probably my favorite bit. Then, the sad reality of the present day sinks in:

  > If anyone were to attempt the harmless type of stunt they pulled off -- let alone the one in 1948 -- it would likely be met with a prison sentence.

• by hprotagonist on 11/20/18, 10:39 PM

  If you tried this, or any other famous MIT hack, at today's MIT, you would be in Big Person Trouble in a heartbeat. It's quite depressing.

• by WalterBright on 11/21/18, 1:44 AM

  My father was at MIT in 1948, and he'd regale me with stories about MIT pranks, especially the explosive wire one.

  MIT at the time was full of older men who were WW2 veterans on the GI Bill. They were skilled at handling explosives.

• by WalterBright on 11/21/18, 1:52 AM

  Caltech's most famous prank is the Rose Bowl prank. The instructions for which cards the audience would hold up were altered so they would spell out CALTECH rather than the team name. It's the only time Caltech ever was at the Rose Bowl :-)

• by jrochkind1 on 11/21/18, 2:43 AM

  > "There have been some big changes between then and now," Douglas said. "Not just that 9/11 has happened, but if something like this happened today, they would probably evacuate the stadium.

  > "I would say anyone who was there absolutely remembers the event in the stadium. It didn't evoke the kind of panic that we are sometimes accustomed to seeing in news accounts or whatever, and so it makes me, in many ways, it makes me yearn for those days again."

  Me too, me too.

• by veddox on 11/21/18, 2:39 PM

  Never been to MIT or any such place, but I know the story from the Jargon File: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/meaning-of-hack.html (It mentions the Caltech hack, too.)

  Interesting to read some more details in this article.

• by kchoudhu on 11/21/18, 9:15 AM

  "All MIT men carry batteries for emergencies."

  Sounds about right.

  "One night, they ran into another group of pranksters from Brown University"

  Harvard, destined to be the butt of everyone's jokes.

• by rconti on 11/21/18, 12:28 AM

  I like the fact that I can Google "30 feet in smoots"

  https://www.technologyreview.com/s/410360/smoots-legacy/

• by ggm on 11/21/18, 2:04 AM

  Imperial College London, 1940s, the engineering students winched a car onto the roof. Apparently they hid sheer-legs down trousers (oxford bags were in again) and constructed a viable winch from short lengths, hidden ropes &c.

  I know the modern MIT prankery is pretty big, but I just wanted to say it does happen at other universities.

• by starbeast on 11/21/18, 1:05 PM

  >The way the device was designed, it would have been nearly impossible for anyone but them to activate it because it required a double male extension cord.

  I can think of one group of people who would have been able to activate it. I am guessing that they had surprisingly low electricity bills as well.

• by beat on 11/20/18, 11:19 PM

  I remember that! Made me want to go to a fancy tech school. Didn't get in to MIT or Caltech, tho.

• by hkmurakami on 11/21/18, 9:21 AM

  Stories like this are what made a teenage me want to attend MIT (though alas it was not to be). And countless more will feel similarly on the coming years. I hope it lives on.

• by ada1981 on 11/21/18, 12:25 PM

  Am I correct in reading that this was on the same day as “The Play”?

  They reference it in the article, but I thought that was Stanford.