What’s big, red, and is celebrated like a hockey version of Mardi Gras? That would be Rensselaer’s Big Red Freakout, of course!

Sixty years ago, NASA was formed, the microchip was invented, Ella Fitzgerald was on the radio, and four men from RPI won the National Handball Championship in Chicago, Illinois. That’s right! Mike McQuillen, Harvey Poppell, Jerry Gonick, and Fernando Arias, under the guidance of RPI’s Athletic Director, “Pop” Graham, won the National Cup in handball, a sport that the team, besides Gonick, had never played until freshman year of college.

The Institute’s ninety-third commencement took place on Wednesday, June 13, 1917 in the ’87 Gymnasium. Eighty-nine students received bachelor’s degrees: 53 in Civil Engineering, 19 in Electrical Engineering, 12 in Mechanical Engineering, and 5 in Chemical Engineering.

In our last two Continuing Up the Hill posts we described the Warren estate property purchased by the Institute after the 1904 fire that destroyed the Main Building. The first building to be erected on the newly acquired property was the Carnegie Building.

In our efforts to bridge the gap between the past and present, we share with the Class of 2015 a look back 100 years to Wednesday, June 16, 1915, when Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute graduated 87 men, one of the largest classes on record at that time for the Institute.

This Friday is RPI's 4th annual Spirit Day, in which member's of the Rensselaer community are encouraged to show their pride by wearing or displaying RPI gear. We consider spirit everyday here in the Archives where it pervades the memorabilia collections that we house. We have certain items because they say Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute but we don't know who owned them, wore them, or touched them. We simply know that at some point in history certain items had particular significance to someone!

In our efforts to bridge the gap between the past and present, we share with the Class of 2014 a look back one hundred years ago, when Rensselaer bid farewell to the Class of 1914.

The Institute Archives wishes everyone a happy Spirit Day at Rensselaer. 

It's time for another mystery image! I realized this morning that we haven't posted anything bewildering in quite a while. Who is the man in the photo? Can anyone tell us about that specimen he seems to be focusing on?