Mystery History -- Solved!

Jean wins with her 7:36 a.m. Tuesday guess "Caltech with Charles Richter, showing off his seismographs."

In the photo above, Dr. Charles Richter makes a post-retirement visit in 1976 to the Seismology Lab at Caltech, where his Richter Magnitude Scale was in full swing for quantifying the size of earthquakes.

Richter, who died in 1985 (and is buried at Mountain View Cemetery), was a Caltech seismologist for 42 years until his retirement as professor emeritus in 1970.

A year before finishing his doctorate degree in 1928 in theoretical physics, he applied for an opening for a physicist at the new seismological laboratory.


He invented the Richter Scale in 1935.

He never won the coveted Nobel Prize, but it has been awarded to more than 30 Caltech professors and researchers.

And now the spotlight is on the Caltech Men's Basketball Team, which finally ended its 310-game, 26-year losing streak last week when the freethrow shot heard 'round the world earned the Caltech Beavers a 46-45 victory over Occidental in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletics Conference (SCIAC).

What, you didn't know there were sports teams at Caltech? Well, look again.




Last year Caltech competed in the first annual Pasadena Collegiate Field Tournament against Art Center College of Design, Fuller Theological Seminary, Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts, Pacific Oaks College and Pasadena City College:



Caltech seized the day!



The 2011 Pasadena Collegiate Field Tournament will be on Friday, April 8, at 6:30 p.m. at Pasadena City College's Robinson Stadium. Come cheer on your favorites!


Many thanks to Caltech for the photos of Dr. Richter and the Men's Basketball Team.

Mystery History -- Solved!

Bellis wins with her 9:06 p.m. Tuesday guess "Looks like one of the annual Caltech Mudeos, where the students play around in the mud."

In the photo above, students try to capture tires buried in mud and take them out of the pit during the 1941 Caltech Mudeo (like rodeo - get it?).

For many years this annual contest, which began in 1915, was held at Tournament Park on the Caltech campus.

Annual Mudeo events included tug-of-war in which 20 students were allowed on each side, wheelbarrow race with 10 teams of two with one man grasping the legs of the other and propelling him forward, a sack race, horse and rider featuring two-man teams engaging in battle with one sitting on the other's shoulders, and the tire spree pictured above.

Now the Mudeo, revived in 2004 after a hiatus of several years, is held on the Caltech campus and it's coed. This photo was taken during the tournament north of Avery House in March 2010:


Ultimate Frisbee has been added to the list of Mudeo games; the tire spree is lost to the ages.


Many thanks to Caltech.

Mystery History -- Solved!

Susan wins with her 7:07 a.m. Tuesday guess "It's the Rose Bowl hoax of 1961, when 14 Caltech students changed the Washington Huskies halftime card stunt to read Caltech."

Sure enough, in the photo above, unsuspecting Washington Huskies football fans hold up flip cards they believe spell out "HUSKIES" during halftime ceremonies at the Rose Bowl Game on Jan. 2, 1961*.

But the joke was on them because several Caltech students, calling themselves "The Fiendish Fourteen," hatched a week-long plan for carrying out a brilliant hoax in front of a sold-out stadium crowd and an estimated 30 million television viewers.

The University of Washington football team, shown here with their coaches, had no idea the stunt was being planned.


Details of the hoax are much too long and complicated for me to run down here on my humble little blog.

According to Caltech, "It has emerged as the standard against which all other pranks are compared, and has never been equaled, let alone surpassed."

The complete, most accurate background is available on the Caltech website here.

The hoax made the cover of Caltech's Engineering and Science publication that month:


That article made local news that was picked up by the Associated Press, which led to the background on the hoax being printed in newspapers around the world.

Excerpt from the Jan. 25, 1961, AP article:

The secret of how California Institute of Technology pranksters tricked University of Washington students into spelling out "Caltech" for a nationwide TV audience at the last Rose Bowl game was laid bare Thursday.

The current issue of Caltech Magazine, engineering and science, carries a story by Lance Taylor, class of 1962, which outlines the almost incredible preparation and ingenuity required.

The article goes on to report the sequence of events, which began before Christmas.

Here's the cover of the program for the 1961 Rose Bowl Game.


The Huskies must have taken some comfort from winning the game 17-7. The Huskies have had seven Rose Bowl wins.

Caltech students have been renowned for their pranks over the years:

• In 1977 Caltech grad Bruce Montgomery inscribed "DEI/FEIF" onto the valve package he designed for each of the Voyager missions. It was a nod to the long-time Dabney Eats It/Fleming Eats It Faster fraternity rivalry.

• In 1984 some students hacked into the Rose Bowl Game scoreboard at halftime and changed it to read "Caltech 31, MIT 9" (UCLA was playing Illinois).

• In 1987 Caltech students modified the Hollywood Sign:


• In 2005 Caltech students stealthfully superimposed the names of hundreds of illustrious scientists onto stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in honor of a commemorative U.S. postage stamp of late Caltech physicist Richard P. Feynman.




Many thanks to Pasadena Public Library, Caltech and the Tournament of Roses Association

* Whenever Jan. 1 falls on a Sunday, the parade and game are the following day.

In the Presence of Greatness

Larry Wilson fit right in with photos of Caltech's Nobel Prize winners during a meeting in a lounge at the Athenaeum last week.

Mystery History -- Solved

11:41 A.M. UPDATE: That Bellis is a sneaky one! I didn't realize until just now that she posted an 11:34 p.m. guess last night: "I like the idea of Jack Parsons, but I think this is the Dutch chemist Arie Haagen-Smit (not to be confused with Haagen-Dazs) in his lab at Caltech." So she wins the fabulous prize!
===================================================

I scooped everybody this week, although Bellis posted her guess from a coincidental location!

In the photo above, Caltech Professor Arie Haagen-Smit is in a campus laboratory demonstrating how smog is formed by photochemical reactions of unburned hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides and ozone.


Born in Utrecht in the Netherlands, this “father of air pollution control” is best known for finding a direct link between automobiles in Southern California and the heavy smog that plagued the region for decades.

Ironically, Dr. Haagen-Smit was a heavy smoker. He died of lung cancer in 1977 at the age of 76.

There’s a nice little tribute to him here by a Caltech biology professor who worked closely with him.

Every year the State of California Air Resources Board presents the Haagen-Smit Clean Air Awards in his memory.

Chip Jacobs has a smog blog.

And see a recent L.A. Times article here.

As you probably know, there’s always a direct tie-in to local Pasadena government on all of my Mystery History reveals. So where’s the City of Pasadena tie-in for this one, you ask?

Bike Week Pasadena is coming up in two weeks!


There will be activities at Pasadena Museum of History, Central Park and other locations.

One of the guiding principles of Pasadena’s General Plan states “Pasadena will be a city where people can circulate without cars.”

Not a bike rider? You can still leave your car behind a take a Pasadena ARTS Bus, the Metro Gold Line (or even a combination of the two), or put on your walking shoes and get going!


Many thanks to Caltech and the California Air Resources Board.

First-ever Pasadena Collegiate Field Tournament

Today at the first-ever Pasadena Collegiate Field Tournament at the Rose Bowl Stadium, we proved that we're a college town extraordinaire when teams from Art Center College of Design, Caltech, Fuller Theological Seminary, Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts, Pacific Oaks College and Pasadena City College competed for the top prize in a series of goofball challenges.

In the photo above, PCC President Lisa Sugimoto presents a platter of burgers to the judges during the Cheeseburger Challenge.

During this challenge, teams of two from each college had to assemble a grill and prepare cheeseburgers to wow the palates of judges (seated left to right below) restaurateur Jack Huang, City Councilwoman Jacque Robinson and Honda Design Center Director Dave Marek.


Here's the Art Center team creatively assembling their grill.


And a member of the Fuller team faithfully biding her time while the meat marinades, a technique they prayed would get them high marks.


The judges may have needed some Alka Seltzer by the time this competition was over!



The team from Le Cordon Bleu won the challenge.

A fun little irony was that the food cooked in the Cheeseburger Challenge was for the judges; when noon rolled around and people got hungry, Robin's was there with cheeseburgers, hot dogs and lemonade to the save the day. (That's Fuller PR Director Fred Messick waving.)


But wait -- I'm getting ahead of myself.

It all started with the National Anthem sung by a chorus made up of one member of each college team plus a referee.


John Rabe of KPCC Radio's "Off-Ramp" served as master of ceremonies.


During each challenge, teams racked up points, with some shaved off if necessary for penalties, and the team with the highest score at the end of the tournament won the grand prize.

In the Monster Croquet challenge, teams had to use a monster-size mallet to push a monster-size ball through monster-size wickets. Here's the Cordon Bleu team:


The Art Center team (with a Cordon Bleu interloper):


Then it was the Frisbee Toss. Teams had to catch Frisbees tossed from downfield in the time allotted. Here's PCC:


And Le Cordon Bleu:


For the meteor toss, each team was provided with a bag in which there were pieces of fabric and some duct tape. They had to create what they thought would be the perfect catching implement for a series of "meteors" that were lobbed at them. This may have been the most important challenge of all because each team was charged with saving the world from certain destruction!

The Pacific Oaks team had their strategy for assembly...


...and Art Center had theirs:


All of the teams were fearless against the hurtling meteors -- from tennis balls to potatoes -- hurled via slingshot by Eric Duyshart, the city's economic development manager:


Here's Caltech saving planet earth:



In the Blind Faith Challenge, each team had one blindfolded member who had to take a series of pennants from the field, guided only by the voices of teammates. Here's the PCC team:


Next it was the Giant Puzzle Race. In this competition, teams had to run to the far side of the field to get individual puzzle pieces color-coded for their specific colleges, then run back and assemble them.


Once the puzzles were assembled, they revealed a map of sorts showing the various college locations and then some.


The Art Center team couldn't help themselves -- after this competition was over they created a sculpture with the puzzle pieces!



Before I forget, each team had a station complete with a bench and a round throw. Here's the Pacific Oaks station, which they appropriately adorned with children's pinwheels:


And here's Jered Gold, Art Center's director of public relations and communications, on the college's iconic orange dot:


While I make you wait in suspense about which college took the grand prize, here's Tony Bondi, president of Le Cordon Bleu:


The teams also earned points for their uniforms. Art Center's uniforms were an homage to the college's founder, Edward "Tink" Adams.

And Caltech students donned Albert Einstein wigs, although they took them off during physical competitions.


Many people from the community stopped by to watch the action, including Phoebe and Larry Wilson:


And now, without further ado, the college with the highest number of points overall: Caltech!


Mayor Bill Bogaard presented the trophy to the team leader...


...then all of the teammates shared in the thrill of victory.

By the time everyone was leaving the stadium, the trophy was entrusted to Caltech President Jean-Lou Chameau for safe-keeping.


Final team scores (along with their team colors), provided by Eric Duyshart:

Caltech 194
PCC 162
Fuller 160
Le Cordon Bleu 145
Art Center 143
Pacific Oaks 139

The entire event was shown live on the stadium's big screens. I'm told it was also recorded, so whenever I get a DVD I'll do some editing and run it on KPAS.



Gigantic kudos to Eric Duyshart, Ariel Penn and others in the Planning and Development Department who made this event happen, and thanks so much to all the colleges for participating!