April Fool's Pranks

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In the spirit of April Fool’s Day, I was talking to my daughter about some pranks that took place in my college days.

I mentioned the abundance of liquid nitrogen and what happens to a flower immersed in it for a few seconds: it becomes very brittle and shatters. Then I mentioned stories about putting a mouse in deep freeze for a while, then tossing it into somebody’s dorm room. A million points of smell come to mind.

MIT was quite proud that they won the great annual rivalry in which we were entirely excluded: The Yale-Harvard football game. A large weather balloon saying “MIT” erupted from around midfield during the game.

A web search found that the MIT Museum “Hall of Hacks” exhibited many of the pranks over the years, and that the Yale-Harvard football hack was not a unique occurrence: https://www-tech.mit.edu/V110/N52/hack.52n.html

 

 

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