The Cyclotron

By Bruce Irving, Spring 2014 For nearly 65 years, the corner of Oxford and Hammond streets was home to a nuclear family quite unlike the others in the neighborhood. This one was large, mostly male, heavy on the PhD’s (with a few Nobel winners thrown in), and was housed in a pair of buildings called…

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William Henry Lewis (1868-1949), Lawyer, Athlete, Public Servant

By Daphne Abeel, 2002 William Henry Lewis, a graduate of Amherst College and Harvard Law School, was an outstanding athlete and an orator for his college class (1892). He carried on a successful law practice in Boston, served on the Cambridge City Council, was elected to the Massachusetts legislature, and was appointed assistant attorney general…

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Cambridge, The Focal Point Of Puritan Life (Part Four)

Catch up on part one of this post here! By Henry Hallam Saunderson, 1947 Dealing With Dissenters While the Puritan leaders were carrying forward their highly significant enterprises, they had to deal with forces which endangered the very existence of their Colony, in which increasing thousands of people were investing themselves, their lives, and all that…

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Printing In Cambridge Since 1800

by Norman Hill White, Jr., 1920 This article can be found in the Proceedings of the Cambridge Historical Society Volume 15, from the years 1920-1921. From 1692, when Samuel Green retired as manager of the college press, there was no printing done in Cambridge for over a hundred years, except that done by the brothers…

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Trout Fishing in America Communal School

By Cambridge Historical Society Staff, 2012 There was once a school in Mid-Cambridge called the Trout Fishing in America Communal School. It was based on the book of the same name by Richard Brautigan. On November 3, 1969, the Harvard Crimson reported: ‘‘A night session two weeks ago at Trout Fishing in America… resulted in…

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Swimming in a Countercultural Sea

By Dick Cluster, 2010 For much of its brief existence between 1968 and 1970, the 16-page tabloid underground newspaper Old Mole featured a column of short items called Zaps on page 4. Here are two: “PEACE CORPS EXPELS 13 FOR ANTI-WAR ACTIVITY –– a real, live headline from the Washington Star.” “If it isn’t in…

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The Cyclotron by Bruce Irving

For nearly 65 years, the corner of Oxford and Hammond streets was the home of a nuclear family quite unlike the others in the neighborhood. This one was large, mostly male, heavy on the PhD’s (with a few Nobel Prize winners thrown in), and housed in a pair of buildings called the Harvard Cyclotron Laboratory…

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Lights, camera, action…

2007 On a rainy weekend in April, the Chandler Room at the Hooper-Lee-Nichols House was transformed into a movie set. With its pine paneling and open hearth, it became the Charlestown home of John Harvard and his wife, Ann, for a reenactment of the final hours of Harvard’s life on September 14, 1638. The film,…

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