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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 11, 1983)
« Q ^ 3 OS Cu-o c o a 2 -c ^ V5 O-r-Jr *- J *“ ^ 2 e c^rr^l 3 , H w E -S A'«e=r r i* r^T\ i-* Would you believe From proposals to turn the campus into an insane asylum to wolf attacks to students falling out of windows, Texas A&M has its share of stories. Believe it or not, many of them are true. In today's issue of At Ease, you will find some of these stor ies. These are documented in various places on campus. The University Archives is a valu able source of amusing stories. Another excellent source of in teresting stories is A Centennial History of Texas A&M, 1876- 1976 written by history profes sor Henry C. Dethloff. We're not saying that you have to believe all of these stor ies. Indeed, some are rather hard to fathom, but they 're all true and you'll find them to be quite interesting. If nothing else, maybe this will give you and your roommate something to talk about. And maybe you can use the information to im press visitors with amusing little tidbits about Texas A&M's past and present. Enjoy ... Next step's a doozy Would you believe two stu dents fell out of their dorm room windows during the 1982-83 school year? It's an amusing story because neither student was hurt. A&M almost a loony bin In the 1880s, several news papers — especially the Galves ton Daily News, along with the Austin Daily News — com mented favorably on a plan to close Texas A&M because of the academic impoverishment of the College." The plan was to close Texas A&M in College Sta tion and transfer it to Austin. The buildings and grounds could then be converted into a "grand central lunatic asylum." me plan, which was mentioned again several times in the fol lowing 50 years, even appeared in the Legislature as a bill. Anything for an Ag Aggies are true friends to the end. At a former students gathering after World War II a U.S. Army general saw an old Aggie pal. He went up to the friend and offered to do any favors he might need. The friend replied that there was something that he had al ways wanted to do, but he had never had the chance. He hesitated to tell what his goal was until the general in sisted. He replied that he had always wanted to kick a general right square in the tail. The two star general bent over and the old school chum got his wish. Have a job, my friend In 1876, when Texas Agricul ture and Mechanical College was established, Jefferson Davis, the first and only presi dent of the Confederacy, was elected to be the president for the school. He declined the offer and in stead recommended his friend, Thomas Sanford Gathright, as candidate for the job. Gathright accepted and served as president and also as professor of mental and moral philosophy. Varsity, Farmers rival Football on the Texas A&M campus began in 1892. The first recorded football game wasn't until Nov. 29,1894, when Texas A&M defeated Ball High School, in Galveston, by a score of 14-6. In the same month, the "far mers," as they then were called, were beaten by the University of Texas, 38-0. In 1897, the University of Texas beat Texas A&M again, but in 1899 the story was a little different. The game was played on Nov. 4 in San Antonio after a morning of flower shows, poultry dis plays, horse races and a "baby show." The Varsity (University of Texas) team arrived nearly two hours late and by kickoff time, at 3:15 p.m., the crowd had grown to an excess of 5,000. The Battalion believed the crowd to be the largest ever to witness a football game in Texas. At halftime the score was 6-0, in Varsity's favor. During the second half, a vio lent dispute broke out on the field regarding who had posses sion of the ball. The umpire insisted that the ball belonged to Varsity. The team captain of the Far mers, Hal Moseley, picked up the ball and led his team off the field to the train station and back to College Station without com pleting the game. The referee awarded Varsity the victory. Surprisingly, an Austin Daily Statesman sportswriter, in his account of the game, said, "The game as a whole demonstrated the fact that the A&M College is to be the great future rival or the University for football honors." The following year, in 1900, Texas A&M and the University of Texas began playing their annual Thanksgiving Day ball game. During the 1896 season, the Aggies adopted their first offi cial college yell: Rah! Rah! Rah! Hi! Ho! Ha! AMC Boom! Cis! Bah! College! CAPET 5MITH, 1O0 W£KE LATE TO CLA5$ ToPAf, yOO GET TO STAi IE H IMP AMP PEFE/VP THE K00/A FKOfA WOLVES--- Crying wolf The Agriculture and Mecha nical College of Texas formally opened its doors on Oct. 4,1876, in an unsettled and wild en vironment. Packs of wolves challenged the intrusion of civilized man into their domain. One student who had come to enroll in the institution was attacked by wolves during the day in full sight of the main building. One night another student finished eating, walked out on the porch, slipped, fell and was attacked by a pack of hungry wolves. "Oh, I'm killed, I'm killed," he cried. The residents of Old Main rushed out to save him. The disappointed wolves were reported sniffing and snorting at the windows as if they meant to come through. For several years the wolves refused to be intimidated by higher education. It hasn't always been Aggieland The first Texas A&M annual was the Olio, which was pub lished in 1895. The name is Ita lian for hash; the editors wanted to make the book a scrap book compounded of odds and ends. amount of print, because, as the editors said, "the photographer took the pictures, then, for some reason ne never explained, failed to send over half of them." The book was supplemented with poetry, cartoons and "mor- The book contained a large - al" stories. The second yearbook pub lished was called the Long Horn. Yearbooks were called by this name until 1949 when the student body voted to change the name. It was changed to the Aggieland. Hullaballoo on the moon? No Aggie astronaut yet has walked on the moon, but it was an Aggie who put the astronauts there. Gerald Griffin, class of 1956, was the flight director on the first 11 Apollo missions. He also was the director of the Apollo 12 flight that landed Alan Bean, a graduate of the Univer sity of Texas, and Charles Con rad on the moon. Griffen had the astronauts roused from their sleep one morning to the tune of the Aggie War Hymn as a reminder to Bean that while a University of Texas graduate may be about to walk on the moon, he was there by the grace of Texas A&M. Bean was later made an hon orary Texas Aggie. But did they even have any hair? During the early years of Texas A&M, a club for red-headed men only was formed. The first and only article of their constitu tion stated that "all members shall be red headed, and the red ness thereof shall determine his standing in the club." The members even had a club yell. Red, red, red are we Red headed men of A&M C.