Saint Paul is currently in the midst of celebrating its annual Winter Carnival.  But did you know that St. Thomas used to host its own version of the this celebration of winter?

The Midwinter Frolic got its start in February 1938, sponsored by the Inter-Club Council. Miss Marion O’Hara, the reigning St. Paul Winter Carnival Queen, oversaw the event, which included an ice cream eating contest and an all-college dance.

In 1956, it was expanded it to a week long celebration, co-sponsored by St. Thomas’s All College Council and the student government at the College of St. Catherine.  The annual celebration included a variety of activities each year including a broomball tournaments, snow sculpture contests, treasure hunts, beard growing contests, and tanning contests. The festival was discontinued in 1991.

To find out more about this and other St. Thomas traditions, search the Historic University Publications database.

The Chesterton-Belloc Collection housed the Department of Special Collections features over 1200 works by the English author G. K. Chesterton (1874 – 1936).  Chesterton’s writings feature wide variety of styles – prose, poetry, drama, journalism – and topics from current events to theology.   Among the materials in this collection, you will find a number of items documenting the prose and poetry written by him during World War I.

At the beginning of the First World War, Chesterton was among several leading British writers whom Charles Masterman, the head of Britain’s War Propaganda Bureau (WPB), recruited to help shape public opinion.  Chesterton wrote and published several pamphlets and numerous articles in Britain’s newspapers promoting the government’s views on the war. The best known of these works is the pamphlet The Barbarism of Berlin.

During the First World War, charitable organizations such as the British Red Cross, The Daily Telegraph Belgium Fund and the Prince of Wale’s National Relief Fund raised over 70 million pounds for the war effort.  Chesterton was among many contemporary writers (including John Galsworthy and Rudyard Kipling) who contributed prose and poetry to works published and sold by charities.  Proceeds of these publications were used to aid war refugees and wounded military personnel.

For more information on the UST Libraries rare books and manuscripts collections see : http://www.stthomas.edu/libraries/special/rare/ .

Members of Omicron Alpha Nu with a “Tin Lizzy,” 1922.

As we circle the campus parking lots and ramps looking for that elusive open parking space, many might think that parking issues are a new thing on the St. Thomas campus.  But as early as 1925, the St. Thomas student newspaper – The Purple and Gray — was reporting problems with cars at the College.   In particular, the noise made by cars entering and leaving campus disrupted classroom instruction so much that the school’s administration was forced to ask the students to park only  in an open area south of the Armory (now the site of the Anderson Student Center).

Purple and Gray, October 2, 1925

The St. Thomas students, however, extolled the virtues of the automobile in aid of their education.  The vehicles brought students from great distances (for example, Minnetonka and White Bear Lake) to attend classes on campus.  Plus, the cars were seen as less of nuisance than the horses which carried commuter students to the College in the past (and perhaps airplanes in the future).

Purple and Gray, October 16, 1925

To find out more about the College of St. Thomas in the 1920s, browse the Purple and Gray newspaper and the Kaydet in the Historic University Publications database.

These days, everyone is familiar with using sites like Match.com and E-harmony to find that special someone.  But did you know that St. Thomas was on the forefront of using computers to match up singles?

From left to right:  Diane Karner, Sue Klein, Steve Nachtsheim, Bob Cochrane, Joe Kellenberger

During Freshman Week in 1965, St. Thomas sponsored a “Computer Dance.”  Freshman from the College of St. Thomas (an all-male school at the time) were matched with dates from the College of St. Catherine and St. Mary’s College (all-female colleges) based on the students’ answers to a questionnaire.  Responses to the questions were coded onto punch cards and fed through St. Thomas’s IBM computer to make the matches. According to the student newspaper, the Aquin, organizers of the event “consulted three Ph.D.’s and ran trial tests on several students” before perfecting the system.

I wonder if any of these couples are still together today…….

For more interesting stories from St. Thomas’s past, browse issues of the Aquin in the Historic University Publications database.

The Rare Books collection in the UST Libraries Department of Special Collections holds a number of rare, unique and just plain interesting books in its collection.  One item that was pulled out recently for a researcher to examine was the Ecclesiastical History Conteynyng the Actes and Monuments of Martyrs, popularly known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.   Written by the English historian John Foxe, this title was first published in English in 1563.   It is a polemical account of the sufferings of Protestants under the Catholic Church (particularly those living in England and Scotland). The book was highly influential in its time and helped shape long lasting popular notions of Catholicism in those countries.

The 1563 edition of the book was to that time the largest publishing project ever undertaken in England. One of the most interesting features of this work are the sixty distinctive woodcut impressions found on its pages (see an example below).

The UST Libraries’ copy of this book is from the third edition, published in 1576.  What makes this edition different from the previous two versions is that the book is printed on smaller size paper and with a smaller type font than the earlier editions.

For more information on the UST Libraries rare books and manuscripts collections see : http://www.stthomas.edu/libraries/special/rare/ .

Did you know that the first Homecoming at St. Thomas happened on May 21, 1918?  Instead of a parade, a football game and a dance, the day included lunch, a baseball game against Macalester plus dinner and a reception.

Over the past 96 years, several Homecoming traditions have been lost or changed.  For example, during the 1950s, student groups erected displays on the lower quad to show their school spirit.  Creative slogans devised by the groups were one of the main criteria the judges used in evaluating the displays.  The best displays won big prizes of $15, $10 and $5 to be used for future activities of the organizations.

“Tilt the Kilts” built by Alph Kappa Psi outside O’Shaughnessy Hall, 1958.

Another bygone tradition is the  bonfire that was traditionally held the night before the football game.  From the 1920s through the early 1960s, college freshman under the supervision of the Tiger Club would spend up to two weeks gathering branches and other materials to add to the pile.   During the bonfire, the students would throw their freshman beanies to the blaze as a sign that they had become “True Tommies.”  Fire codes, unfortunately, prevent this event from happening today.

Crowd of students watch the Homecoming bonfire, 1938.

To see more photographs from Homecomings of the past, search the online University Archives Photograph Collection.