FROM WIKIPEDIA COMMONS

Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the world.

Chartered by the Connecticut Colony, the Collegiate School was established in 1701 by clergy to educate Congregational ministers before moving to New Haven in 1716. Originally restricted to theology and sacred languages, the curriculum began to incorporate humanities and sciences by the time of the American Revolution. In the 19th century, the college expanded into graduate and professional instruction, awarding the first PhD in the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887. Yale’s faculty and student populations grew after 1890 with rapid expansion of the physical campus and scientific research.

Yale is organized into fourteen constituent schools: the original undergraduate college, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and twelve professional schools. While the university is governed by the Yale Corporation, each school’s faculty oversees its curriculum and degree programs. In addition to a central campus in downtown New Haven, the university owns athletic facilities in western New Haven, a campus in West Haven, and forests and nature preserves throughout New England. As of 2021, the university’s endowment was valued at $42.3 billion, the second largest of any educational institution. The Yale University Library, serving all constituent schools, holds more than 15 million volumes and is the third-largest academic library in the United States. Students compete in intercollegiate sports as the Yale Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I – Ivy League.

As of October 2020, 65 Nobel laureates, five Fields Medalists, four Abel Prize laureates, and three Turing Award winners have been affiliated with Yale University. In addition, Yale has graduated many notable alumni, including five U.S. presidents, 10 Founding Fathers, 19 U.S. Supreme Court Justices, 31 living billionaires, 54 College founders and presidents, many heads of state, cabinet members and governors. Hundreds of members of Congress and many U.S. diplomats, 78 MacArthur Fellows, 252 Rhodes Scholars, 123 Marshall Scholars, 102 Guggenheim Fellows and nine Mitchell Scholars have been affiliated with the university. Yale is a member of the Big Three. Yale’s current faculty include 67 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 55 members of the National Academy of Medicine, 8 members of the National Academy of Engineering, and 187 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The college is, after normalization for institution size, the tenth-largest baccalaureate source of doctoral degree recipients in the United States, and the largest such source within the Ivy League. It also is a top 10 (ranked seventh), after normalization for the number of graduates, baccalaureate source of some of the most notable scientists (Nobel, Fields, Turing prizes, or membership in National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, or National Academy of Engineering).

WOMEN

In 1793, Lucinda Foote passed the entrance exams for Yale College, but was rejected by the president on the basis of her gender. Women studied at Yale University as early as 1892, in graduate-level programs at the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The first seven women to earn PhDs at Yale received their degrees in 1894: Elizabeth Deering Hanscom, Cornelia H. B. Rogers, Sara Bulkley Rogers, Margaretta Palmer, Mary Augusta Scott, Laura Johnson Wylie, and Charlotte Fitch Roberts. There is a portrait of these seven women in Sterling Memorial Library, painted by Brenda Zlamany.

In 1966, Yale began discussions with its sister school Vassar College about merging to foster coeducation at the undergraduate level. Vassar, then all-female and part of the Seven Sisters—elite higher education schools that historically served as sister institutions to the Ivy League when most Ivy League institutions still only admitted men—tentatively accepted, but then declined the invitation. Both schools introduced coeducation independently in 1969. Amy Solomon was the first woman to register as a Yale undergraduate; she was also the first woman at Yale to join an undergraduate society, St. Anthony Hall. The undergraduate class of 1973 was the first class to have women starting from freshman year; at the time, all undergraduate women were housed in Vanderbilt Hall at the south end of Old Campus.

A decade into co-education, student assault and harassment by faculty became the impetus for the trailblazing lawsuit Alexander v. Yale. In the late 1970s, a group of students and one faculty member sued Yale for its failure to curtail campus sexual harassment by especially male faculty. The case was partly built from a 1977 report authored by plaintiff Ann Olivarius, now a feminist attorney known for fighting sexual harassment, “A report to the Yale Corporation from the Yale Undergraduate Women’s Caucus.” This case was the first to use Title IX to argue and establish that the sexual harassment of female students can be considered illegal sex discrimination. The plaintiffs in the case were Olivarius, Ronni Alexander (now a professor at Kobe University, Japan), Margery Reifler (works in the Los Angeles film industry), Pamela Price (civil rights attorney in California), and Lisa E. Stone (works at Anti-Defamation League). They were joined by Yale classics professor John “Jack” J. Winkler, who died in 1990. The lawsuit, brought partly by Catharine MacKinnon, alleged rape, fondling, and offers of higher grades for sex by several Yale faculty, including Keith Brion, professor of flute and director of bands, political Science professor Raymond Duvall (now at the University of Minnesota), English professor Michael Cooke, and coach of the field hockey team, Richard Kentwell. While unsuccessful in the courts, the legal reasoning behind the case changed the landscape of sex discrimination law and resulted in the establishment of Yale’s Grievance Board and the Yale Women’s Center. In March 2011 a Title IX complaint was filed against Yale by students and recent graduates, including editors of Yale’s feminist magazine Broad Recognition, alleging that the university had a hostile sexual climate. In response, the university formed a Title IX steering committee to address complaints of sexual misconduct. Afterwards, universities and colleges throughout the US also established sexual harassment grievance procedures.

TODAY’S ALMANAC

Question of the Day

Where did the phrase “rain check” originate?

This phrase originally referred to a voucher given to spectators at a baseball game that was rained out. The “rain check” allowed them to watch another game for free. Our sources indicate that the term came into being around 1884 and gradually came to refer to vouchers for other sports and eventually to vouchers you get at, say, the drugstore, when it runs out of sale-priced toothpaste.

Advice of the Day

Experience teaches you to recognize a mistake when you’ve made it again.

Home Hint of the Day

You can repair large cracks and holes in plaster by stuffing wadded newspaper in them, then applying drywall joint compound over the surface.

Word of the Day

Staunch

Strong and tight; sound; firm; as, a stanch ship.

Puzzle of the Day

What is the longest word in the English language?

Smiles, because there is a mile between the first and last letters.

Born

• Robert Fulton (inventor) – 1765
• Claude Monet (artist) – 1840
• Frederick Jackson Turner (historian) – 1861
• Sonia Delaunay (artist) – 1885
• Mamie Doud Eisenhower (U.S. First Lady) – 1896
• Astrid Lindgren (author) – 1907
• Sherwood Schwartz (writer & producer) – 1916
• Veronica Lake (actress) – 1919
• Brian Keith (actor) – 1921
• Edward White (astronaut) – 1930
• King Charles III of England – 1948
• Condoleezza Rice (U.S. Secretary of State) – 1954
• Willie Hernandez (baseball player) – 1954
• Curt Schilling (baseball player) – 1966
• Josh Duhamel (actor) – 1972
• Chip Gaines (home improvement expert) – 1974

Died

• Booker T. Washington (educator & activist) – 1915
• Eddie Bracken (actor) – 2002

Events

• First Western theatrical production in North America, Le Theatre de Neptune, performed– 1606
• Louis Timothee became the first salaried librarian in the U.S.”“– 1732
• Moby Dick, by Herman Melville, was first published in the U.S.– 1851
• Journalist Nellie Bly left N.Y.C. for tour around the world in 72 days– 1889
• Eugene Ely piloted the first airplane take-off from a ship– 1910
• Yale University announces that it will begin admitting women as undergraduate students in 1969– 1968
• Apollo 12 spacecraft successfully launched from Cape Kennedy– 1969
• Princess Anne married Captain Mark Phillips at Westminster Abbey– 1973
• Second successful landing of space shuttle Columbia– 1981
• Jean Drapeau became mayor of Montreal for 8th time– 1982
• First cabooseless Canadian Pacific train left Winnipeg, Manitoba, bound for Thunder Bay, Ontario– 1989

Weather

• Violent, easterly gales in New York City flooded cellars and spoiled wharves– 1753
• 36 seconds into its flight to the Moon, Apollo 12 was struck by lightning, and again 20 seconds later, knocking out its electronic navigation system, and nearly forcing the mission to be “scrubbed”– 1969

COURTESY www.almanac.com