I’m going to be honest and admit that my research on this was not that exhaustive. But I find it hard to believe that there are any cases in the university’s annals weirder than that of Charlie McCarthy. McCarthy was a well-known entertainer, whose Chicago-based radio show, The Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy Show, aired on NBC from 1937-1956. In August 1938, during an appearance on the show, School of Speech dean Ralph Dennis awarded McCarthy an honorary “Master of Innuendo and Snappy Comebacks” degree. What’s so strange about that, you ask? Well, McCarthy is a dummy. No, I’m not insulting his intelligence–McCarthy was actually a ventriloquist’s doll.

McCarthy’s creator, Edgar Bergen, discovered at a young age that he had a talent for throwing his voice. So while attending high school in Chicago he created a dummy, named Charlie McCarthy and modeled after a local newsie, and began performing as a ventriloquist. In the 1920s, Bergen came to Northwestern originally to study medicine, but soon decided to transfer to the School of Speech and eventually dropped out to pursue his career in entertainment. After a few years performing in vaudeville shows and short movies, Bergen landed the aforementioned radio show in 1937. The McCarthy character soon became famous for his witty lines, which were allowed to be much racier than other performances of the day because the character was supposed to be a young boy. Bergen was posthumously inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1990, but McCarthy received an even greater honor: he now resides in the Smithsonian, right next to Fonzie’s jacket.

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When I toured Northwestern’s campus before I applied here, the one feature of the campus that drew me was the Lakefill. When I stepped out onto that little park we had built for ourselves, looking out on the amazing view of the Chicago skyline, my immediate thought was, “I HAVE to come here.” And as I spent many days and nights wandering around, iPod blaring, pretending to be brainstorming yet really procrastinating, I spent a good amount of time staring into the lagoon we designed into it, watching the koi swim by. But as the Chicago winter approaches I can’t help but wonder: What happens to those fish when the lagoon freezes in the winter? Are they encased in the ice, waiting to be thawed out and reanimated come springtime, like some caveman in a low-grade science fiction movie?

Not really. As anyone who has so much looked at a glass of ice water knows, ice floats, because of a peculiar property of water that makes it expand as it get colder at temperatures below about 40 degrees. So when temperatures plunge below freezing, a sheet of ice floats to the top, which then acts as an insulating layer, keeping the water below at a (relatively) stable temperature. The fish move toward the bottom, where the water stays at about 39 degrees Fahrenheit. This is what makes ice fishing possible (although not necessarily sane). But because they’re cold-blooded, and not as much sunlight can poke through the ice to warm them, the fish will slow down a bit, in many cases entering a state of hibernation, shutting down metabolic functions temporarily. But just like any hibernating animal, as the temperature rises the fish return to their lives as normal, being gawked at by nerdy Northwestern students.

Bonus fun fact: Although koi are sometimes called “Japanese goldfish,” they’re not really goldfish. Although both evolved from types of carp, koi are a specific breed of the common carp, while goldfish are a distinct species evolved from Crucian carp, which lack the little mustache-like apparatuses that koi and common carp have. In the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries, farmers in Japan who had been raising carp to supplement their diets noticed that some had mutated, taking on white, red and orange color patterns. They used selective breeding to separate out the colors, creating the bright, distinct patterns we see today.

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The year was 1948. Fresh off a disappointing 3-6 season, little was expected from second-year coach Bob Voights and Northwestern’s football team. But the Wildcats marched through the season, losing only to perennial powerhouses Michigan and Notre Dame. (And remember, this is long before Appalachian State or Charlie Weis, so that was to be expected.) Their 7-2 regular season record was enough to be first runner-up in the Big Nine (This was after the University of Chicago dropped their football program, but just before Michigan State was admitted to the conference, so the Big Ten was short a member), with the Wolverines taking the conference championship. Thanks to a technicality in the Big Nine rules that didn’t allow the same team to represent the conference twice in a row, the defending Rose Bowl champions stayed home, and the ‘Cats booked flights for Pasadena.

Even before the game, there was plenty of drama built up on Northwestern’s side. They would have to face an undefeated California team who had outscored its opponents 276-80 in its ten victories. And Cal’s coach at the time was Lynn “Pappy” Waldorf, Northwestern’s coach from 1935-1946. It was Waldorf who first convinced Hall of Famer Otto Graham to play football, and he had even coached Voights himself ten years earlier. But Northwestern came out swinging, taking an early 7-0 lead on a then-Rose Bowl-record 73-yard touchdown run by senior tailback Frank Aschenbrenner. Yet after blowing a 13-7 lead at halftime, NU found itself down 14-13 on its own 12-yard line with under three minutes left in the fourth quarter. But after moving their way to Cal’s 43-yard line, the ‘Cats took the lead on a direct snap to running back Ed Tunnicliff, who took advantage of a confused Bears defense and some solid downfield blocks to swing the score to 20-14. The play wasn’t exactly Boise State material, but the trick play combined with an interception by Loran “Pee Wee” Day on Cal’s final drive, it gave the Wildcats their first (and so far only) bowl win. So if, come late December, you’re hurting from our loss to God-knows-who in the Motor City Bowl, take comfort in the fact that one day, almost sixty years ago, Northwestern football was awesome.

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Not surprisingly, the answer is money. Lots of it. The donor behind both Swift and Annie May Swift Halls is (shockingly enough) the Swift family, more specifically Gustavus F. Swift. Making his money in the meatpacking business, Swift was a classic 19^th century, Mr. Burns-esque tycoon. In addition to being an impressive innovator, pioneering the use of refrigerated rail cars and vertical integration, he was also notoriously efficient, and was known to scour his plant’s drainage areas for usable scraps. His South Side plant was supposedly the inspiration behind Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, which your high school history teacher will tell you described scenes so horrifying that it resulted in new federal laws regulating the cleanliness of the meat packing industry.

In addition to being kind of a hardass, Swift was also a philanthropist, and donated huge sums of money to both Northwestern and the University of Chicago. When his daughter Annie May died while attending NU in 1889, he donated much of the funding to finish construction on a building for the School of Oratory (now the School of Communication) which was dedicated in 1895 as Annie May Swift Hall. The Swift family continued to donate to NU through the years, and even after Gustavus’ death in 1903 his widow and their son, Edward, donated the bulk of the money for a second building, with the family name but not specifically in memorial to anyone, thus confusing the hell out of freshman who didn’t realize their class was on the other side of campus.

Thanks to Associate Archivist Kevin Leonard for his help in this article.

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Actually, the answer is none. Alcohol (or, if you want to be specific, ethanol) doesn’t actually destroy any brain cells. Instead, it disrupts the brain’s chemical receptors, which in turn affects the way impulses travel between nerve cells. So while alcohol consumption won’t actually kill your brain, it will affect the way nerve cells communicate with each other and with the nervous system. Dr. Toshio Narahashi, a Feinberg professor of pharmacology and biological chemistry, says that researchers are still debating exactly how alcohol causes these problems and how they lead to the slurred speech, lack of coordination, and memory loss associated with drinking. But it is highly likely that these effects are because of the communication errors, not the destruction of brain cells. (But doesn’t “killing my brain cells” have a better ring to it than “disrupting my chemical receptors?”)

But don’t start gulping down the jungle juice or pounding the Jagerbombs without care just yet. Dr. Narahashi says the long-term effects on the brain are still under debate, so it’s not clear that your nerve cells will be completely normal after a rough weekend. And a recent study by researchers at Wellesley College found that, over time, drinking can reduce the size of your brain. Sure, even people who had 14 drinks per week for years only saw a decrease of 1.6 percent on average, there seems to be a steady increase in the rate of brain shrinkage with the amount of alcohol consumed on a regular basis.

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After exhaustive research (read: 10 minutes on Google), I found that Northwestern isn’t the only place where things didn’t happen 110 years ago. Dozens of blogs and travel articles have mentioned seeing the exact same sign, everywhere from Ireland to the Philippines, and none seem to explain why the sign is there. Apparently, most writers fell into the same trap I did, and thought the plaque was genuine, including a mention of the sign in New York that claimed it was “affixed to the brick wall…in the 19th century.” It turns out, the signs are mass-produced (along with matching coat racks!) and easily available online, so anyone with $15 and a lame sense of humor can decorate their homes with this “rustic” “amusing and cute” plaque. (Amazon’s words, not mine).

But that still doesn’t explain why one of the signs wound up on our fair campus. So I asked one of the guys Northwestern pays to know this kind of thing, Associate University Archivist Kevin Leonard. Surprisingly enough, I’m not the first person to ask about it, but Leonard still had no clue about the sign’s origins.

“Anything we could tell you would just be guess work,” Leonard said.

Apparently, the plaque has been there for at least 10 years, but so far nobody has accepted responsibility for placing it there. Leonard said the University thought they had found who put it there, but the suspect has strongly denied it. “It just appeared one day,” Leonard said. “…And nobody’s touched or moved it since.”

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Greetings, junkies of semi-useless information! With reactions to this year’s Homecoming parade grand marshal ranging from “OMG! That’s SO kewl” to “Who?” it just seems right to kick off my blog with the answer to another popular response: Who chooses the grand marshal, anyway?

Each year, the Northwestern Alumni Association looks at the list of alumni expected to come back for a reunion and tries to find notable alumni among the group. That list is turned over to the Homecoming Student Committee, which selects a few they’d like to see as grand marshal. The NAA takes that list, makes some phone calls, and finds one that’ll take the job.

Last year’s grand marshal, Stephen Colbert, was so successful that the NAA and the student committee searched for another nationally known figure, as opposed to the local alumni who have taken the job in the past, according to Katie Wesner of the NAA. Even though Clinton Kelly graduated in ’93, meaning he wasn’t scheduled to return for Reunion Weekend, he was scheduled to be in Chicago this weekend for another appearance. Wesner said this made Kelly one of the top choices, and when asked to act as grand marshal he was “happy to do it.”

Special thanks to: Judy Moore from NU Media Relations.

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