This Week in Princeton History for August 19-25

In this week’s installment of our recurring series bringing you the history of Princeton University and its faculty, students, and alumni, a sophomore watches as the USSR invades Czechoslovakia, a junior unseats a 15-time golf champion, and more.

August 19, 1887—Princeton professor Charles Augustus Young is leading an expedition to Moscow to view a total solar eclipse.

August 20, 1968—Stephen Fuzesi ’70 watches from the balcony of the Hotel Intertourist in Uzsgorod, stunned, as Soviet tanks invade Czechoslovakia to crush the “Prague Spring.” Fuzesi will later write, “The realistic Czechs were now victims of an innocent but naïve interpretation of their own fate. However, we were naïve all over the world.”

August 23, 1958—The Winnipeg Tribune reports that a group of tourists, four young men from Princeton and Yale, have arrived in the Port of Churchill by canoeing from The Pas.

August 25, 1996—Mary Moan ’97 wins the Pennsylvania State Women’s Amateur Championship, beating former U.S. Women’s and British Amateur Open winner Carol Semple-Thompson for the title in a stunning upset. (Thompson has previously won the Pennsylvania competition 15 times.)

Mary Moan ’97. Undergraduate Alumni Files (AC198).

For the previous installment in this series, click here.

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This Week in Princeton History for June 24-30

In this week’s installment of our recurring series bringing you the history of Princeton University and its faculty, students, and alumni, the sophomores conduct their annual end-of-year book burning ritual, women are enrolled in a course for the first time, and more.

June 25, 1980—Ernest Gordon, Dean of the Chapel since 1955, retires.

Ernest Gordon, undated. Dean of Religious Life and of the Chapel Records (AC144), Box 35.

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