In this week’s installment of our recurring series bringing you the history of Princeton University and its faculty, students, and alumni, a newspaper pronounces the curriculum “fashionable” for including chemistry, rowing wins support at a mass meeting, and more.

January 11, 1805—The Albany Register notes that Princeton, among a handful of other colleges, offers students an education in chemistry, and notes “This extensive and useful science, is becoming gradually a part of regular and fashionable courses of study. And as soon as its great utility shall be more generally known and acknowledged, Chemistry, will be introduced into all colleges.”

January 13, 1877—Jacob Ridgway Wright, Class of 1879, visits the Stony Brook Sunday School in a Santa costume.

January 16, 1884—At a hastily-called mass meeting of the student body, attendees vote to establish rowing as a sport at Princeton, but strong opposition to it remains.

Though rowing was not supported by many students, a team had nonetheless been in existence for some time before the 1884 vote. This is Princeton’s varsity rowing team for the 1883-1884 academic year. Photo found in Athletics at Princeton: A History (1901).

January 17, 1994—Carrie Ryan ’95 struggles to reach her parents in Los Angeles on overloaded telephone circuits after the collapse of the Santa Monica freeway in the Northridge Earthquake. The 6.6 quake is the strongest ever to hit an urban area in the United States.

For the previous installment in this series, click here.

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